O P I N I O N
Lithuania’s major daily Lietuvos rytas today published a report on the just completed conference called “Legal Regulation of Communist Crimes” held at the European Parliament (full DH.com translation here).
EU
Red-Brown Campaigners Soften Rhetoric at Latest European Parliament Conference
Posted in 70 Years Declaration, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, EU, News & Views, Opinion
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Congratulating Algimantas Kasparavičius who Gets it Right: Trying to Manage History is a Big-Time Loser for Mature Foreign Policy
O P I N I O N
by Dovid Katz
It isn’t every Monday and Thursday (as the old Yiddish saying goes) that this journal publishes an opinion piece congratulating a contemporary historian in Lithuania who is a current mainstream player (rather than a pensioner, conceptual or actual exile, or someone painted up as a narrow ethnic-minority champion, anarchist, Soviet apologist, plain old personal maverick, or what-not). It is even more unusual for DefendingHistory.com to go out on a limb without even knowing said historian’s views on the issues that lie at the core of DH’s modest corner in the contemporary marketplace of ideas.
Let it be said at the outset that we sincerely hope that a vote of confidence and congratulations from DefendingHistory.com will not unduly (let alone fatally) harm the man’s future career prospects in the vaunted circles of Lithuania’s most powerful politicians, state institutions and history professors. But come to think of it, the improper leap-into-bed together of this untenable ménage-à-trois goes to the core of the conundrum.
Posted in 70 Years Declaration, Bold Citizens Speak Out, Double Games, Dovid Katz, EU, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Free Speech & Democracy, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
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Estonia’s 2012 “Valentine’s Day Law”
O P I N I O N
by Leena Hietanen and Petri Krohn
TALLINN―The rehabilitation of Nazi collaborators here in Estonia reached its climax on 14 February 2012, when the Estonian Parliament adopted a declaration sponsored by Defense Minister Mart Laar, in which all who took up arms against the Soviet Union were recognized as “freedom fighters.” The parliament’s statement included the following language, made to sound rather innocuous:
Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Double Games, Estonia, EU, Free Speech & Democracy, Leena Hietanen, News & Views
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Text of the Letter from MEP Leonidas Donskis on the Ambrazevičius-Brazaitis Festivities
MEP Leonidas Donskis’s letter, in reply to Krystyna Anna Steiger, author of the international petition against the VMU event, was released today by the MEP for immediate publication in DefendingHistory.com (more background here).
The full text is as follows:
Posted in Bold Citizens Speak Out, Collaborators Glorified, EU, Leonidas Donskis, Lithuania, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged Ambrazevicius (Brazaitis); VMU; VDU; Jewish + Lithuania, Leonidas Donskis
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Neo-Nazi Youth Organization is Admitted into National “Lithuanian Council of Youth Organizations” (a recipient of European Union “Structural Funds”)
The Union of Lithuanian Nationalist Youth (ULNY), one of the organizers of the annual neo-Nazi march in the center of Vilnius on the nation’s independence day, has been made a member of the Lithuanian Council of Youth Organizations, a body that is a recipient of European Union structural funds as well as Lithuanian government funding.
Media reports confirm that at the national conference last weekend, there were no votes against granting the ULNY full membership in the nationwide umbrella organization of accredited youth groups eligible for state funding. The vote was 19 in favor, zero against with seven abstentions.
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, EU, Human Rights, LGBTQ Equal Rights, News & Views
Tagged Holocaust in Lithuania
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Seventy Years Declaration Presented to European Parliament President at Strasbourg
On 14 March 2012 in Strasbourg, a delegation presented the Seventy Years Declaration to Martin Schulz, president of the European Parliament, who spoke about the imperative to guard the accurate memory of the Holocaust in European history and to remain vigilant against denial and renewed extremism.
The delegation included veteran German parliamentarian Gert Weisskirchen; European Parliament vice president Miguel Angel Martinez; Lithuanian MEP Justas Paleckis; and DefendingHistory.com editor Dovid Katz.
European Commission report on the presentation of 70YD
Text of the Seventy Years Declaration
Media Links
Posted in EU, It Pays to Defend History: Success Over the Years..., News & Views
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Council of Europe’s Commission Against Racism and Intolerance Condemns Latvia’s Waffen SS Parades and Celebration of Hitler’s 1941 Invasion
The Council of Europe’s Commission against Racism and Intolerance today published online its 9 December report ECRI Report on Latvia (fourth monitoring cycle). In the 67 page report, the ECRI (European Commission against Racism and Intolerance) explicitly condemns the Waffen SS marches enabled and supported for many years by some of the highest echelons of Latvian government and society. There is also reference to the more recent case of celebrating the day of Hitler’s invasion in 1941.
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Celebrations of Fascism, Collaborators Glorified, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, EU, Human Rights, Latvia, Neo-Nazi & Fascist Marches, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Racism, Riga's Waffen SS Marches, United Nations
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Lithuanian Parliamentarian Vytenis Andriukaitis, Signatory of 70 Years Declaration, Replies to Foreign Minister, Cites ‘Moustache’ Remark and the Implications of ‘Double Genocide’
O P I N I O N
by Vytenis Povilas Andriukaitis
The following is an authorized translation from the Lithuanian text published on Delfi.lt on 9 February 2012. It is a reply to the foreign minister’s article published a week earlier (English translation here).
Honorable A. Ažubalis, Did You Pull Such an Understanding of History out of Thin Air?
by Vytenis Povilas Andriukaitis, member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Lithuanian Parliament
Honorable minister, looking at the headline of your public statement, I hoped at least that you would apologize for the position expressed earlier that “it is impossible to find any difference between Hitler and Stalin except in their moustaches (Hitler’s was smaller).” I agree with the position expressed by Dennis MacShane, member of the British House of Commons, that such jokes by foreign minister Audronius Ažubalis are inappropriate in discussing the mass murder of six million Jews.
SEE ALSO:
ANDRIUKAITIS SECTION
In your public statement, you again place two signed declarations in opposition to one another. One of them — the “only true one” — the “Declaration on European Conscience and Communism” signed in Prague in 2008, maintains that the precondition for a unified Europe is a unified view of history and the ability to condemn the last century’s crimes against humanity. The second, the Seventy Years Declaration — the declaration referred to as if it were a crime and condemned by you —was adopted marking the 70th anniversary of the Wannsee conference, a declaration which rejects attempts to trivialize the atrocities of the Jewish genocide.
Posted in 70 Years Declaration, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, EU, Free Speech & Democracy, History, Lithuania, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, United Kingdom, Vytenis Andriukaitis
Tagged Audronius Azubalis + Holocaust, Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism, The 70 Years Declaration, Vytenis Andriukaitis
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Seventy Years Declaration Joins the European Conversation
The Seventy Years Declaration
Solemnly commemorates the Holocaust and reaffirms human rights of all people. Opposes the Prague Declaration and ‘Double Genocide’ politics. Rejects glorification of the Waffen SS of Estonia and Latvia and the Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF).
Lithuania’s foreign minister’s “moustache response” came within minutes of SYD’s release.
———
TEXT AND LIST OF FOUNDING SIGNATORIES
PRESENTED TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT
UPDATE: DOCUMENTARY FILM RELEASED
SYD TEXT IN BELARUSIAN; ENGLISH; FRENCH; GERMAN; LITHUANIAN; POLISH; RUSSIAN; SPANISH; YIDDISH; LIST OF UK SIGNATORIES; LITHUANIAN FOREIGN MINISTER ATTACKS SIGNATORIES WITHIN MINUTES
MEDIA COVERAGE
———
Danny Ben-Moshe launches SYD in the Jerusalem Post. SYD published. Lithuanian Foreign Minister responds in minutes with infamous “moustache comparison” of Hitler and Stalin, later attacks Lithuanian parliamentarians who signed. UK MP Denis MacShane congratulates the Lithuanian Eight who signed. Vytenis Andriukaitis, signatory of nation’s Declaration of Independence, replies to FM. Roger Cohen in the New York Times. Gang-up on Lithuanian radio panel. AJ, Forward, Haaretz, JC.
British parliamentarian tells Lithuanian signatories of the 70 Years Declaration:
DefendingHistory.com congratulates the Lithuanian parliamentarians among the founding 70 signatories of the Seventy Years Declaration for their courage, integrity, love of all their country’s peoples, and genuine commitment to European values:
Vytenis Povilas Andriukaitis, MP
Posted in 70 Years Declaration, EU
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German Politicians Repudiate EU’s Rep in Afghanistan, who Calls Hitler’s Rule ‘Respite from Communism’
by Frank Brendle (Berlin)
The German Government has repudiated the trivialization of Nazi regime by the ambassador of the European Union in Afghanistan, Vygaudas Ušackas, a former foreign minister of Lithuania. In a 6 December Wall Street Journal article, Ušackas called Nazi rule in Lithuania “a few years’ respite from the Communists.” An apology was called for by Dr. Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israel Office, and a debate ensued.
Posted in EU, Frank Brendle, News & Views, Politics of Memory
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The Seventy Years Declaration
The Seventy Years Declaration
on the Anniversary of the Final Solution Conference at Wannsee
On this the 70th anniversary of the formal adoption by the Nazi leadership of the “Final Solution of the Jewish Problem” we the undersigned
Posted in 70 Years Declaration, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Dovid Katz, EU, History, Human Rights, It Pays to Defend History: Success Over the Years..., Lithuania, News & Views, Politics of Memory
Tagged 70th anniversary of the Wannsee Conference, definition of genocide, Double Genocide, Holocaust in European Parliament, Last Monday in Tel Aviv, Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF), Opposing Holocaust obfuscation & distortion, Prague Declaration, Seventy Years Declaration, SYD, Waffen SS (Estonia), Waffen SS (Latvia), Wannsee Conference
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Jerusalem-Kabul Exchange of Ideas: Dr. Efraim Zuroff, head of Wiesenthal Center’s Israel Office, Replies to EU’s Ambassador to Afghanistan, Vygaudas Ušackas
THE DEBATE (IN REVERSE CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER)
Background on DefendingHistory.com:
2 January 2012 report
13 January 2012, from Efraim Zuroff (Jerusalem):
EXCERPT FROM OP-ED IN HAARETZ. FULL TEXT HERE.
Posted in Collaborators Glorified, EU, Israel, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
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EU Ambassador to Afghanistan Writes in the Wall Street Journal that Nazi Rule in Lithuania was “A Few Years’ Respite from the Communists”
The Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israel Office today released a statement in which its director, Holocaust historian Dr. Efraim Zuroff, calls for an apology from the European Union’s ambassador to Afghanistan, Vygaudas Ušackas, for insensitive and misleading remarks on the Lithuanian Holocaust in a 6 December 2011 Wall Street Journal article. A letter of protest by Jack Zwanziger of Chicago appeared in the WSJ on 14 December 2011.
- UPDATE:
- Jerusalem-Kabul debate
Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Double Games, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, EU, Lithuania, Media Watch, News & Views, Politics of Memory
Tagged Efraim Zuroff, Holocaust Obfuscation, Holocaust Trivialization, Lithuanian Foreign Minister + Holocaust, Lithuanian government + Holocaust, Simon Wiesenthal Center Israel Office, Vygaudas Ušackas
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Václav Havel and the Prague Declaration
O P I N I O N
by Efraim Zuroff
I hate to spoil the Havel and the Jews festival in the wake of his demise, but I feel that it is important to point out a terrible mistake Havel made which directly relates to Jewish affairs. I am referring to his signing the Prague Declaration of June 3, 2008 (along with 39 other East European politicians and intellectuals), which basically equates Communist crimes with those of the Nazis, warns that “Europe will not be united unless it is able to unite its history [and] recognize Communism and Nazism as a common legacy”and seeks to deny the Holocaust its deserved status as a unique case of genocide.
Posted in Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Efraim Zuroff, EU, Events, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged Efraim Zuroff, Have + Prague Declaration, Havel + Jewish + Prague Declaration, Havel + Jews, Prague Declaration, Simon Wiesenthal Center, Vaclav Havel
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How the Zingeris-Račinskas Red-Brown Commission “Gently” Pushed Along the Conversion of Holocaust Studies into Double Genocide Studies
O P I N I O N
by Rachel Croucher (Melbourne)
Although not seeking to deny the Holocaust, the ultimate consequence of the movement to redefine genocide is the equalization of National Socialist and Soviet crimes. The characterization of Soviet crimes as genocide is a misrepresentation that hinders authentic remembrance of the Holocaust in Lithuania by helping to obscure the extent and nature of Lithuanian complicity in the killings of the local Jewish population.
The idea that the crimes of Hitler and successive Soviet regimes are in fact equal has been a growing force behind public discourse on the Holocaust since the formulation of the national Holocaust and Genocide Education Program at the sixth meeting of The International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania in June 2002.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, "Red-Brown Commission", Australia, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, EU, Free Speech & Democracy, History, Holocaust Policies of Mr. Ronaldas Račinskas and the State-Sponsored "International Commission" (ICECNSORL), Opinion, Politics of Memory, Rachel Croucher
Tagged Double Genocide, Emanuelis Zingeris, Holocaust Obfuscation, International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Regimes in Lithuania, Rachel Croucher, Red-Brown Commission, Red-Brown Equation, Ronaldas Racinskas
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A Strange Hearing at the European Parliament, and a Big Fish called Montero
E Y E W I T N E S S R E P O R T / O P I N I O N
by Dovid Katz
Today’s “EPP Hearing on the Commission’s Report: The Memory of the Crimes Committed by Totalitarian Regimes in Europe” (PDF) at the European Parliament in Brussels was a polished and triumphal affair that has reconfirmed — if reconfirmation is necessary — how right MEP Edward McMillan-Scott was in 2009 when he refused to accede to his then party, the British Conservatives, entering the political European Parliament tent of the far-right ECR (European Conservatives and Reformists), when the latter chose as leader a politician with a record of antisemitism and Holocaust Obfuscation, one for whom “Jewish apologies for communism” was a condition for recognition of the facts of the Holocaust.
Posted in Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, EU, Events, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Prague "Platform"
Tagged Carlos Montero, Double Genocide, Totalitarian Regimes in Europe
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Society for the European Human Rights Model Publishes its Letter to CJH’s Academic Council
The Society for the Promotion of the European Human Rights Model, based in France, today published its public letter to the Academic Advisory Council of the Center for Jewish History, of which the Yivo Institute for Jewish Research is a constituent component.
Posted in Didier Bertin, EU, Events, France, Human Rights, In the Era of Yivo's 100th, News & Views
Tagged Academic Advisory Council CJH, Academic Advisory Council Yivo, Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel, Center for Jewish History, CJH, Didier Bertin, Jonathan Brent, Joseph Melamed, Society for the Promotion of the European Human Rights Model, Yivo, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
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‘Prague Process’ Crowd, with Lithuanian Jewish politician for cover (as usual), now proceeding with plans to ‘overhaul European history textbooks’ for Double Genocide and Holocaust Obfuscation
The Prague Declaration proponents in European Parliamentary circles, having renamed their movement the ‘Prague Process’, are triumphantly reporting on their latest initiative to bring to fruition yet another of the movement’s stated objectives: to overhaul all the history textbooks in Europe to reflect the supposed ‘equality’ of Nazi and Soviet crimes, in other words to continue with the far right’s revision-of-history project to downgrade the Holocaust in the course of Double Genocide ideology.
As ever, the group is able at critical moments to wheel out Lithuania’s right-wing Jewish MP, Emanuelis Zingeris, himself a signatory of the Prague Declaration, who publicly resigned from his country’s Jewish community many years ago, but continues to run the ‘Jewish track’ of a complicated double-game policy that has led, in 2011, to the absurdity of a year to remember the Holocaust as well as a year to commemorate some of its local perpetrators who are glorified as ‘anti-Soviet heroes’ (see here, here and here).
Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, EU, Free Speech & Democracy, Human Rights, News & Views, Politics of Memory
Tagged Double Genocide, Emanuelis Zingeris, Holocaust Obfuscation, Prague Declaration (2008), Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism, Prague Process, Red-Brown overhaul of European textbooks
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Reply to Rokas Grajauskas: Condemnation of Communism Does Not Require Submission to Double Genocide, Holocaust Obfuscation, or the Recent Deterioration in Civil Society and Free Speech in Lithuania
O P I N I O N
by Dovid Katz
NOTE: This reply to the Lithuanian Foreign Policy Review paper by Rokas Grajauskas first appeared on the website of LFPR (direct link here).
[UPDATE of 1 March 2013]: The journal refused to publish a reply, but after an intervention from Prof. MEP Leonidas Donskis it was uploaded on the journal’s website for a time, and then removed.]
◊
Rokas Grajauskas cites me in his recent article on these pages as invoking the notion Holocaust Obfuscation (a term I proposed at a London seminar in February 2008, then formally in 2009) to refer to “the efforts of the post-Communist countries to revive the memory of Stalin’s crimes.” Nothing could be further from the truth. The web journal I edit, DefendingHistory.com, although dedicated primarily to the battle against trivialization of the Holocaust and the concomitant racism and antisemitism of the new Far Right in Eastern Europe, contains a page on Soviet crimes, where I wholeheartedly embrace such Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly resolutions as 1096 (1996) and 1481 (2006), which wisely and rightly condemn Soviet crimes. It is vital that the full extent of these crimes be documented, the victims honored, the subject properly taught in international curricula, museums and memorializing institutions established, and justice pursued to the full extent of law. It is every bit as vital that Western commitment to Baltic security and independence remain unwavering, what with a huge unpredictable neighbor “with a certain past” (and unclear future) situated to the immediate east.
Posted in Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Dovid Katz, EU, Free Speech & Democracy, Human Rights, Hungary, Lithuania, Opinion, Politics of Memory, US State Dept Manipulated?
Tagged Double Genocide, Double Genocide + Communism, Dovid Katz Lithuanian Foreign Policy Review, Holocaust Obfuscation, Leonidas Donskis, Lithuanian Foreign Policy Review, origin of the term Holocaust Obfuscation, Prague Declaration, Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism, Prague Process, Rokas Grajauskas, Rokas Grajauskas + Jewish issues
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Text of the Letter Delivered to the Lithuanian Ambassador in London on 7 February 2011
Text of the letter delivered to the Lithuanian ambassador in London Monday morning 7 February 2011 by the Right Honourable Denis MacShane MP. The letter was drafted by Danny Ben-Moshe and evolved with input from the other signatories. Signatories include Lord Janner of Braunstone, Rabbi Barry Marcus of Central Synagogue, and Professor Ada Rapoport-Albert, head of the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at University College London which hosted the main conference. PDF here. Background and further links to press coverage here.
H.E. Dr Oskaras Jusys
Ambassador
Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania
84 Gloucester Place
London W1U 6AU
7 February 2011
Dear Ambassador
Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Antisemitism & Bias, Documents, Dov Levin (1925 - 2016), Efraim Zuroff, EU, Events, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, UCL Manipulated?, United Kingdom
Tagged Ada Rapoport-Albert, Clemens Heni, Danny Ben-Moshe, Danny Stone, Dov Levin, Dovid Katz, Efraim Zuroff, Harry Shukman, Lord Janner of Braunstone, Michael Freedland, Mikail Iossel, Saul Issroff, Uri Chanoch
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