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VILNIUS—Ronaldas Račinskas, executive director of the Lithuanian-government financed “International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania,” widely known for brevity as the “Red-Brown Commission,” has revealed — on camera, to the producers of the documentary film Liza Ruft — his thoughts about the “war crimes investigation” into Fania Brantsovsky. The video clip of his statement was released today on Youtube.
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Good afternoon. Sincerest thanks to everyone who made today possible, above all to dear Rūta Vanagaitė for successfully bringing together folks from many sides of today’s issues here in Vilnius for the first time in the twenty-first century, in the fine spirit of openness and tolerance that is particularly important, now, when politics and current events can easily deflate freedom of opinion on history, the progress of civil discourse, and the dignity of education.
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For some reason held on 26 January, a day before International Holocaust Remembrance Day, three events were announced together in a flyer posted by the Jewish Community of Lithuania and disseminated by other interested organizations in Vilnius.
The State Department’s idea of American moral leadership?
Text of the Resolution
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Mainstream Western Media Mostly Ignores the News (but see: Sunday Times)
In a widely disseminated press release today, the Yivo Institute for Jewish Research announced the launch of a fundraising campaign for US $5,250,000 for the “Yivo Vilna Project.” We are told that it is for “a seven-year international project to preserve, digitize and reunite virtually Yivo’s prewar archives located in New York City and Vilnius, Lithuania, through a dedicated web portal” that will create “the largest collection of Yiddish language materials in the world.”
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The following links represent a selection only. Sincere gratitude to Professor Michael Shafir for his assistance in tracking relevant media.
The latest “Double Genocide” conference sponsored (naively?) by the European Union has just ended in Prague. The two-day event (12-13 June 2014) has a convoluted history (see earlier DH reports: 15 Jan. 2014; 24 Jan. 2014; 26 Feb. 2014; 27 Feb. 2014; 7 March 2014; 20 March 2014; 23 March 2014; 20 May 2014).
TEL AVIV— Daniel Galay, director of Leyvik House in central Tel Aviv, one of Israel’s major Yiddish culture institutions, issued the following statement today on the Leyvik House website (copy), and on its Facebook page (see also Efraim Zuroff’s Facebook comment). For background see our earlier report.
Appeal to the World Jewish Congress
Tel Aviv, 12 June 2014
Like all lovers of Yiddish language and culture, we at Leyvik House in Tel Aviv, home to the Union of Yiddish Writers and Journalists in Israel, were happy to see the recent announcement that the World Jewish Congress would be facilitating a new Yiddish center in Vilnius, Lithuania.
A recent report, also available as PDF, suggests sudden and deep involvement of the World Jewish Congress in the Lithuanian government’s repeatedly documented use of Yiddish, Judaic studies and even Holocaust studies as means to advance — or cover for — state-sponsored Double Genocide revisionism with respect to the essential narrative of the Holocaust. The report has proven to be disturbing for the wider Holocaust survivor community and its supporters.
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).
Hundreds of Holocaust survivors in the UK were invited to the 5 May 2014 Prime Minister’s Holocaust Commission Survivors’ Consultation Event. Greetings from Prime Minister David Cameron and Prince Charles were distributed at the Wembley Park event to the survivors and their families.
One of the participants, 91 year old Ernst Lowenberg had participated in a friendly protest outside the Lithuanian embassy in London in December 2012, where he handed the consul a copy of an international petition (that is still underway online).
Back in Dec. 2012, Ernst Lowenberg (center) handed the Lithuanian consul in London a petition. Report here. PHOTO: MARK DAVIDSON
He has been closely following the efforts to obfuscate the Holocaust emanating from some East European governments that are investing heavily in exporting the “Double Genocide” revisionist model of Holocaust history.
Mr. Lowenberg followed up today with a letter to Prime Minister David Cameron, which he released for publication in Defending History. In the letter, he asks the British government to help preserve the memory of the Holocaust by rejecting the current revisionist campaign and supporting the Seventy Years Declaration (SYD) of 2012, which was signed by fifteen British parliamentarians from across the political spectrum (DH section on the SYD).
Mr. Lowenberg’s letter follows.
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:
