KAUNAS—As in previous years (for example, 2013), the Kaunas District Police Department today informed Defending History that it has issued no permits for a march on February 16th, referring us instead to the body that would have issued the permit — the Kaunas City Municipality, which has not (yet) responded to our queries. The letter received (image below) states “We inform you that Kaunas County Police have not issued a permit for organizing a march / rally” on 16 February 2015, and suggests “you refer to Kaunas City Municipality.”
Documents
Kaunas Police Informs Defending History on Status of February 16th Neo-Nazi March
Posted in Celebrations of Fascism, Collaborators Glorified, Documents, EU, Human Rights, Kaunas, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Neo-Nazi & Fascist Marches, News & Views, Swastikas in Lithuania
Tagged Juozas Ambrazevicius Brazaitis, Kaunas Police, Neo-Nazi marches in Kaunas
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The Two Full Stahlecker Reports: Holocaust Atrocities in the Baltics
D O C U M E N T S
by Rafael Katz
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The Stahlecker Reports offer a rare glimpse into the inner workings of what was the onset the Final Solution: the Baltic invasion within Operation Barbarossa. Naturally, Most wartime documents deal with the effect and aftermath of the war. In the sea of war documents, the Stahlecker Reports are pivotal, in that in that they shed some light on the backdrop and the motives behind the war’s operations.
Posted in Documents, History, Lithuania, News & Views, Rafael Katz, Raphael Katz
Tagged Einsatzgruppen, Franz Walter Stahlecker, Holocaust in Lithuania, Rafael Katz, Reinhard Heydrich, Stahlecker Reports (full text)
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Letter from the Director of SLS of 13 May 2011
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Documents, News & Views, Opinion, The Great SLS About-Face, US State Department, What Do Fake Litvak Games Look Like?
Tagged Mikhail Iossel, SLS Lithuania, Summer Literary Seminars (SLS) Vilnius
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UN Resolution Against Glorification of Nazism Opposed on 21 Nov. 2014 by Just Three Countries
D O C U M E N T S / G L O R I F I C A T I O N O F C O L L A B O R A T O R S
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The following is the official 21 Nov. 2014 United Nations voting sheet for the resolution (A/C.3/69/L.56/Rev.1) “Combating glorification of Nazism, neo-nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.” The original is posted on the UN website. This copy has three added arrows for rapid identification of the three states that voted “No.”
Media coverage includes: Margaret Besheer in Voice of America; Joseph Brean in Canada’s National Post; Ken Hanly in Digital Journal; Dovid Katz in The Times of Israel; Ryan Maloney in Huffington Post; Jim Miles in CounterPunch; Boruch Shubert in JP Updates; Sam Sokol in the Jerusalem Post.
Glorification of Nazi collaborators (and local perpetrators) by states and their elites is a serious issue in various countries, including Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, and Ukraine.
Posted in Canada, Collaborators Glorified, Documents, History, Israel, News & Views, Ukraine, United Nations, United States
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“Double Genocide” Language Accepted by the US Congress on 21 May 2014
The following is the text of Amendment 134, Section 1266 that passed the US House of Representatives’ military appropriations bill on 21 May 2014, as recorded in the Congressional Report (background and more coverage here).
Posted in Documents, Double Games, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, News & Views, Politics of Memory, United Nations, United States
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Translation of Donatas Glodenis’s Article on a Troubling Conviction for “Genocide” . . .
The following, for our readers’ interest, is a translation by Geoff Vasil of a recent article that appeared on Donatas Glodenis’s website. The translation appears here with the author’s permission.
Cases, Part IV. Vasiliauskas Convicted of Genocide without Foundation
by Donatas Glodenis
Posted in Bold Citizens Speak Out, Documents, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Lithuania, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
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Dan Stone’s “Goodbye to All That?” Has Discussion on Battle of the Declarations
Dan Stone’s new book, Goodbye to All That? A History of Europe Since 1945 (Oxford University Press, March 2014) has some discussion on the “Battle of the Declarations” in Europe: the Prague Declaration (“PD” of 2008) and the Seventy Years Declaration (“SYD” of 2012).
Each of the declarations has its own website: the PD at praguedeclaration.eu; SYD at: seventyyearsdeclaration.org. The SYD was produced as an initiative of Defending History, which has its (openly partisan) section on the Seventy Years Declaration, its text in European languages, and a page of critiques of the Prague Declaration. The SYD’s launch was greeted by the then Lithuanian foreign minister’s “moustache comparison” and his attack on the eight Lithuanian parliamentarians who had signed it. The 2012 documentary film Rewriting History focuses on the origins of the Seventy Years Declaration.
The following is a brief excerpt from Dan Stone’s Goodbye to All That? from page 281:
Posted in 70 Years Declaration, Books, Documents, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, History, News & Views, Politics of Memory
Tagged Dan Stone, Double Genocide, Goodbye to All That A History of Europe Since 1945, Lithuanian Activist Front, Prague Declaration, Seventy Years Declaration, Waffen SS in Latvia and Estonia
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British Board of Deputies Includes Effort Against Prague Declaration in New 2014 Manifesto
LONDON—In its just published A Jewish Manifesto: The 2014 European Elections, the British Board of Deputies has included a statement rejecting the attempts of recent years to downgrade the Holocaust. Section 3.3, entitled “Holocaust Revisionism” appears on page 10 of the online version of the Jewish Manifesto.
The Manifesto notes the “alarm among many Jewish communities” caused by the 2008 Prague Declaration, the de-facto central document of the Double Genocide movement, and calls on MEPs to “challenge their European colleagues on these narratives that seek to downplay or minimize the Holocaust.” The Prague Declaration sports the word “same” five times referring to Nazi and Soviet crimes, effectively claiming there were two equal genocide-causing regimes and thereby writing the Holocaust out of history as unique event, without denying a single death.
Posted in 70 Years Declaration, Documents, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, EU, It Pays to Defend History: Success Over the Years..., News & Views, Politics of Memory, Prague "Platform", United Kingdom
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British MEP Richard Howitt, European Parliament Spokesperson on Human Rights, Issues Statement on Riga Waffen SS March
Richard Howitt, British Labour Member of the European Parliament, and spokesperson for the European Parliament Human Rights Sub-Committee today issued the following text of his statement which will be read out in Riga this Sunday March 16th.
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Celebrations of Fascism, Collaborators Glorified, Documents, EU, Events, Human Rights, Latvia, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Racism, Riga's Waffen SS Marches, United Kingdom
Tagged Holocaust in Latvia, Human Rights in the Baltics, Richard Howitt, UK Conservatives + Latvia, Waffen SS march in Riga
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Israeli Association of 2nd and 3rd Generation Survivors Calls for Action from Israel and Other Democracies
JERUSALEM—On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, observed today internationally, Dorot Hahemshech, Israel’s largest association of children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, issued a call to both the Israeli government and other democracies to renew and intensify the efforts to bring to justice Nazi war criminals and collaborators while it is still possible. The leaders of the NGO also commented on the growing phenomenon of distorting the history of the Holocaust in a number of countries, particularly in the context of the Double Genocide movement rampant in Eastern Europe.
The following is a translation from the original Hebrew text.
Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Documents, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Israel, News & Views
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Žilvinas Butkus (Vilnius) and the Association of Lithuanian Jews (Tel Aviv) Release August 2009 Document
D O C U M E N T S
Editor’s note: By agreement of Žilvinas Butkus, author of the following 12 August 2009 email, and its recipient, the Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel, the document is now published. Note that the draft law appended at the end of the document was adapted by the parliament and signed by the parliament in revised form in June 2010. The bill’s framers had made it clear that promoting Double Genocide in Europe lay close to the heart of this legislative initiative.
August 12, 2009
Hello!
Posted in Bold Citizens Speak Out, Collaborators Glorified, Documents, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Free Speech & Democracy, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion
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Wiesenthal Center’s Israel Office Releases 2007 Correspondence with LA Board Chief of Vilnius Yiddish Institute
Editor’s note: The Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israel office today released for the record the following September 2007 email exchange with the director of the Los Angeles based “Friends of the Vilnius Yiddish Institute” (VYI).
Posted in Documents, Efraim Zuroff, News & Views, Opinion, Richard Maullin, United States, Vilnius Yiddish Institute, Yiddish Affairs
Tagged Darius Udrys, Efraim Zuroff, Grant Gochin, Holocaust in Lithuania, Richard Maullin, Simon Wiesenthal Center, Steven Spielberg + Hoocaust in Lithuania, Vilnius Yiddish Institute
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Monica Lowenberg Releases Text of Letter to British ORT on Latest Lithuanian Embassy Sponsored “Litvak Do” in London
O P I N I O N
by Monica Lowenberg
Monica Lowenberg’s office has released for publication the following public letter sent to British ORT.
British ORT, FAO The Chief Executive, Mr. Dan Green
25 November 2013
Dear Mr. Green,
It is with deep regret that my 90 year old father, Ernest Lowenberg, former Berlin ORT pupil and I write to you today.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Collaborators Glorified, Documents, Double Games, EU, Events, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Monica Lowenberg, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, United Kingdom, World Jewish Congress (WJC) and ORT
Tagged British ORT, Egidijus Aleksandravicius, Lionidas Donskis, Lithuanian Embassy in London, Litvaks, Monica Lowenberg, University College London (UCL), Vytautas Magnus University, Westminster Synagogue
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Yehiel Zilberman’s Memoirs (excerpt)
M E M O I R S
by Yehiel Zilberman
Translated from Russian by Olga Gorelik
This is a chapter from the memoirs written by Yehiel Zilberman, translated from Russian by Olga Gorelik (© Yehiel Zilberman & Olga Gorelik). The chapter appears in Defending History by permission of the copyright holders, with thanks to the good offices of Victor Shifrin (Los Angeles).
Yehiel (Yekhíel) Zilberman was born in Lithuania in 1922. In 1940 he graduated from the H. N. Bialik Hebrew High School in Shavl (Šiauliai) and was admitted to the Institute of Commerce in the same city. In June of 1941, one year after Lithuania fell under Soviet rule, Yehiel along with his parents and brother Moshe (Mikhail) was exiled to the Altai Region in Russia where he lived until 1945. In 1949 he graduated with Honors from Gorky Industrial Institute and became a chemical engineer. Yehiel worked in both manufacturing and scientific research. In 1954 he received his PhD from the Moscow Institute of Chemical Technology. In 1965 Dr. Zilberman received the title of Professor. From 1970 to 1990 he taught at Gorky Polytechnic Institute.
Dr. Yehiel Zilberman has been resident in Haifa, Israel, since 1990.
Posted in Documents, History, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Memoirs, News & Views
Tagged Holocaust in Lithuania, Holocaust memoirs, Yehiel Zilberman
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English Translation of the Lithuanian Text on the Vilna Ghetto Provided by the Office of the Chief Archivist of Lithuania…
The following is an English translation, by Geoff Vasil, from the original Lithuanian text that appears on the website of the Office of the Chief Archivist of Lithuania concerning the Vilna Ghetto, on the occasion of the seventieth anniversary of its liquidation on September 23, 1943.
In an important article that appeared in Lithuanian in Bernardinai.lt, and in English in the Lithuania Tribune, author Sergejus Kanovičius pointed out the remarkable disparity of tone between the Lithuanian version on the Chief Archivist’s website (that appears below in English translation), and the English version provided on the Chief Archivist’s website…
Posted in Documents, Double Games, History, Lithuania, Media Watch, News & Views, Opinion, Poland, Politics of Memory
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EHU Center for German Studies: “Colloquium Vilnense 2013” is Short on “The Second Opinion” when it comes to The Holocaust
O P I N I O N
by Dovid Katz
Colleagues at the prestigious European Humanities University in Vilnius (EHU, also known as the Belarusian Humanities University, in exile here in Vilnius) have passed on the public poster for this year’s series of seminars under the title Colloquium vilnense 2013, running from May to November 2013. The A3 size poster is reproduced (much reduced) at the bottom of this page in two halves.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Documents, Double Games, Dovid Katz, EU, Events, Free Speech & Democracy, Germany, Lithuania, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Vilnius Yiddish Institute, Yiddish Affairs
Tagged Belarusian Humanities University (Vilnius), Colloquium vilnense, Colloquium vilnense + Jewish issues, Colloquium vilnense + Yiddish, EHU (European Humanities University), EHU Center for German Studies (Vilnius), European Humanities University + Yiddish, Holocaust Denial and Obfuscation, Holocaust in Lithuania, Holocaust Obfuscation, Vilnius Yiddish Institute
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Holocaust Survivors from Lithuania Issue Statement on Sutzkever Prize in Vilnius
On the 15 July 2013 centenary of the birth of the illustrious Yiddish poet of Vilna, Abraham Sutzkever (1913–2010), the last active association of Holocaust survivors from Lithuania released the statement below (also available as PDF). It urges organizers, participants, judges and prize winners to avoid being instrumentalized as cover-up props for Holocaust obfuscation. It proposes that they simply issue public statements calling for written public apologies from the Lithuanian government to the defamed Jewish partisans who knew Sutzkever well from the forests of Lithuania and dozens of years of contact in survivor circles. See the related debate on this year’s Sutzkever Prize.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Documents, Double Games, Events, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Joseph Melamed, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Sutzkever Prize in Lithuania, Yiddish Affairs
Tagged Abraham Sutzkever, Fania Brantsovsky, Joseph Melamed, Rachel Margolis, SLS Jewish Lithuania Sutzkever Prize, Sutzkever Prize in Lithuania, Yitzhak Arad
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Digitized Text of the First and Second Stalecker Reports
DOCUMENTS | HISTORY | LITHUANIA
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by Rafael Katz
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The following, for the use of historians and researchers, are the digitized texts of both the First Stalecker Report and the Second Stalecker Report. For background see the compiler’s 2015 article on the subject in Defending History.
Posted in Documents, History, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views
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Lithuania’s Social Democratic Party Issues Statement Against Neo-Nazi March
Lithuania’s Social Democratic Party (LSDP), now in power, issued a statement on 14 March concerning the March 11th neo-Nazi march on the central boulevard of the nation’s capital city, Vilnius. The following is an English translation of the statement, which contrasts somewhat in tone with that of the prime minister who is from the same party.
Nationalists Violating Principles of Democracy Can No Longer Use Democracy as Cover
14 March 2013
The unsanctioned march by nationalists that took place on Gedimino prospektas on the March 11th holiday tore away the veil of democracy from those who call themselves “patriotic youth.” Citizens who support democracy must pay heed to decisions made by democratic institutions, and ignoring such needs to be interpreted as anti-constitutional behavior.
Posted in Celebrations of Fascism, Documents, Events, Free Speech & Democracy, Neo-Nazi & Fascist Marches, News & Views, Vilnius
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Latvian Ambassador to the UK Comments on March 16th Waffen SS March in Riga
LONDON—Latvia’s ambassador to the UK has responded to a UK Conservative Party MP’s question about the Waffen SS events held in the center of Latvia’s capital, Riga, on March 16th each year. The office of UK Parliament MP David Amess, who represents Southend West, released the response dated 1 March 2013, which he received from the Latvian ambassador to the UK, HE Eduards Stiprais. It is reproduced in full below (as PDF here), courtesy of the office of Monica Lowenberg in London, whose petition and media guide have brought the Latvian SS marches to increased international scrutiny.
MONICA LOWENBERG’S REPLY TO THE LATVIAN AMBASSADOR IN 2012
See also Monica Lowenberg’s 2012 exchange of ideas with the Latvian ambassador to the UK. More in Defending History’s Latvia section.
Ambassador Stiprais’s letter to MP Amess:
Posted in Celebrations of Fascism, Collaborators Glorified, Documents, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, History, Latvia, Monica Lowenberg, Neo-Nazi & Fascist Marches, News & Views, Riga's Waffen SS Marches, United Kingdom
Tagged Davis Amess MP, March 16th in Latvia, Waffen SS in Latvia
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