This year Lithuanian neo-Nazis organized by Marius Kundrotas, Ričardas Čekutis and Julijus Panka with Lithuanian MP Kazimieras Uoka as their mascot marched in Kaunas on February 16 and through central Vilnius on March 11. February 16 is the old, pre-World War II national day of independence while March 11 is the date in 1990 when the Lithuanian Supreme Soviet voted to restore national independence and exit the Soviet Union.
Five hundred and ninety-five Lithuanian citizens today published their public letter to the president, the parliament and the government of Lithuania, and to the Vilnius City Council. The letter condemns the ‘march of the extreme right and the spread of hatred in public’. The document appears on the Demos website in English (an earlier Lithuanian version appeared on Peticijos.lt here).
From the internet site www.tautos-balsas.lt I learned that the march of Lithuanian nationalists would start today at 4 PM (1600 hours) at Cathedral Square in the very heart of Vilnius, where the city’s central boulevard, Gedimino Prospect, begins its ascent toward the nation’s Parliament at its other end.
Kazimieras Uoka, at right, a member of the Lithuanian parliament from the Conservative party in power, was one of the leaders of the massive neo-Nazi march on the capital’s main boulevard on the country’s Independence Day.
I was shocked to see that one of the march’s leaders was a member of parliament from the ruling Homeland Union faction of the Conservative alliance in power (whose prominent Jewish member actually signed the Prague Declaration in 2008!). MP Kazimieras Uoka was marching at the very front. In 2010 Uoka’s pro-neo-Nazi activities were in evidence more than once. He had taken out the permit for last year’s Nazi march (Leonidas Donskis’s comment on that here) and then in May, he jumped the barricades to disrupt the wholly peaceful Gay Pride parade in Vilnius.
COMMENT HERE AND HERE
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PLANS TO HONOR HOLOCAUST MASS MURDERER AND RE-INTER HIS REMAINS IN RIGA
The Vilnius city administration (municipality) said today that it had ‘no intention of responding to the statement’ issued by the Simon Wiesenthal Center on 17 February condemning its decision to provide a permit for yet another city-center Neo-Nazi parade in the capital on the occasion of its March 11th Independence Day.
The statement, issued by Dr Efraim Zuroff, director of the Wiesenthal Center’s Israel office quotes Dr Zuroff as follows:
Neo-Nazi marchers in Kaunas today, Lithuania’s February 16th Indendence Day celebration, carried a banner reading (in translation): ‘Today in the Street, Tomorrow in Parliament’. The reference was both to the general goal of the movement, and in reference to a neo-Nazi employed as an assistant to a prominent member of parliament (the Seimas), herself formerly the head of the antisemitic Genocide Center, who has announced his own candidacy in forthcoming municipal elections.
'Today on the Street, Tomorrow in Parliament' reads this sign displayed during the neo-Nazi march in Kaunas on 16 February 2011. Photo by N. Povilaitis (Lrytas.lt).
By apparent agreement with authorities, the marchers brandished swasticals rather than classical swastikas.
Report and images on Lrytas.lt.
There is a view that pro-fascist tendencies in Lithuania are nothing more than a bubble blown by the New Left, an informal intellectual and political movement (not a party), that it is a case of “Communist slander” aimed at peaceful and likeable patriots: those who simply love their Homeland, are proud of it and who—unlike the angry folks from the New Left who are “attacking” good people for no reason at all—do not seek enemies (and do not find them), degrade nobody and are a threat to nobody.
No, for them everyone is a friend. (How different they are from, for example, Nida Vasiliauskaitė, who, as they will tell you, “hates everyone” simply and purely at her own whim and out of bad will, or because she has been “paid” by all the comrades of “Brussels” and “Moscow” banded together. They emphasize that which unites, not that which divides…)
by Mihály Kálmán (Budapest)
Special to DefendingHistory.com
A demonstration was mounted Saturday, 4 December 2010 in Budapest, in support of Petras Stankeras, the recently resigned ‘specialist’ at Lithuania’s Interior Ministry who called the Holocaust ‘a legend’ and the Nuremberg Trials ‘a farce’ (details here). Protesters gathered in front of the Lithuanian Embassy in Budapest.
In May 2010 a Lithuanian court legalized public displays of swastikas, with nearly no reaction from foreign embassies or human rights groups. Reports here and here. Jewish community’s reaction here. See also the page on Antisemitism. On the term swasticals, see our report for 8 May 2010.
Gedimino Boulevard, Vilnius. This is the ‘Lithuanian swastika’ with the added lines meant to evoke the ‘Columns of Gediminas‘. Details and video of the parade here.
The Estonian president obfuscates the Holocaust during his Jerusalem visit by recombinating perpetrators and victims as ‘partners’. Here; 2.
Also: ADL’s Abe Foxman protests July 31 march in Estonia honoring Nazi SS. Here + JTA report.
A Latvian court approved & police nixed a Riga March celebrating Hitler’s 1941 Invasion. Still, the June 2010 event went ahead with a wreath-laying at Riga’s Liberty Monument to celebrate the Nazi army’s arrival and warm welcome. Here, 2, 3, 4.
Also: Far-right racist parties team up. Here.
A Lithuanian court in Klaipeda approved the public display of swastikas on the grounds that they are ‘Lithuania’s historical heritage rather than symbols of Nazi Germany’. An ultranationalist ‘expert’ transported from Vilnius was easily able to persuade the court, which did not bother to ask a contrasting view of the Holocaust Survivor community, or the Jewish Community of Lithuania, in a European country with one of the highest proportions of Holocaust genocide on the continent. This sad distinction resulted from massive local participation. Image from 16 Feb Klaipeda demonstration courtesy DMN atKaunodiena.lt.
BNS report on the court’s 19 May decision here. So much for the parliament’s 2008 ban on ‘Nazi and Soviet symbols’ which only caused pain to aged veterans of the anti-Nazi war effort, and which was ultimately part of the machinations in support of the Double Genocide movement in the European Parliament, in cooperation with the movement’s local power structures.
The United States Embassy has remained silent on the legalization of public swastikas.
A Lithuanian court in Klaipeda approved the public display of swastikas on the grounds that they are ‘Lithuania’s historical heritage rather than symbols of Nazi Germany’. An ‘expert’ transported from Vilnius was easily able to persuade the court, which did not bother to ask a contrasting view of the Holocaust Survivor community, or the Jewish Community of Lithuania, in a European country with the highest proportion of Holocaust genocide on the continent. This sad distinction resulted from massive local collaboration and actual participation.
Media coverage: BNS report on the court’s 19 May decision here. Delfi report. JTA report on the court’s decision and Dr. Efraim Zuroff’s reaction. Photo by J. Markevicius on Delfi.
BNS summary here. Video here. The state prosecution service that continues to ‘investigate for war crimes’ Holocaust survivors who joined the anti-Nazi resistance, and passes over neo-Nazi marches in utter silence, tried hard (but failed) to stop the May 8th Baltic Pride Tolerance march in Vilnius.
After being refused entry into the actual Baltic Pride marchers’ area, on grounds that we did not have individual permits, we were directed to the plaza between the Reval Lietuva Hotel and the CUP department store where we were told the march’s concluding point could be observed. There, police eagerly directed visitors and sympathisers into an ‘observation area’ just below on a grassy hillside. It soon became evident that while limiting the formal numbers of Baltic Pride participants, the police were shepherding visitors into an area occupied by neo-fascists and bolstering their apparent numbers.
The mass circulation daily Respublika publishes an unflattering photo of the Norwegian ambassador on p. 2 along with its report of the protest delivered to the Norwegian Embassy by a group of participants in the recent neo-Nazi parade. The protesters demonstrated outside the Norwegian embassy in Vilnius on 26 March with flags including the modified swastika flaunted during the parade. Online version of the Respublika report. English translation.
In response to Ambassador Gil’s concerns, Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius issued a statement that is, in the opinion of this website, extraordinary for an EU/NATO head of government. Declaring his country to be more tolerant than Norway or Denmark, and proclaiming that ‘you couldn’t say it’s either nationalistic or homophobic’, the PM goes on say: ‘There are skinheads and neo-Nazis in every country, and they sometimes take a walk or chant something’. He proceeds to brush away as irrelevant the legalization of the neo-Nazi march via a permit obtained by a member of parliament from his own ruling party. As usual, there is no mention of the continuing prosecutorial defamation campaign against surviving Jewish veterans of the anti-Nazi partisan resistance. BNS report here.
The fragile but proud Jewish Community of Lithuania issued a statement including the feeling that by issuing a permit for the march, the Vilnius city administration used the 20th anniversary of Lithuanian independence to ‘trample on and offend’ the remnant Jewish community in the country. BNS report.
The fragile but proud Jewish community of Lithuania was again shaken to its core by a Neo-Nazi march in broad daylight through sections of downtown Vilnius on Lithuania’s March 11 Independence Day (see below at March 2008). Once again, the marchers, this time numbering around 500, were diligently escorted by police. Marking the twentieth anniversary of the country’s bold breakaway from Soviet tyranny and its inspiring transition to a modern democracy — a magnificent achievement celebrated by all the country’s communities — it is a cherished day all around. Its tainting by another police-escorted Neo-Nazi parade was all the more painful, especially for aged Holocaust Survivors.
11 March 2010. Elderly Jewish survivors were shaken to the core by this latest Neo-Nazi march in downtown Vilnius on Lithuania’s March 11 Independence Day. The march was sanctioned by the city municipality. The permit was requested by a member of parliament from the governing party. And in a final flourish of inflicted pain, the approved route included the territory of the dismantled Old Vilna Jewish cemetery. All this marred the twentieth anniversary of the country’s bold breakaway from Soviet tyranny and its inspiring transition to a modern democracy, a magnificent achievement celebrated by all the country’s communities. More photos and reports: Balsas.lt. Delfi.lt. Video by Lietuvos rytas.