The following statement was issued today by For LGBT Equality:
Vilnius Municipal Authorities Ban Upcoming Baltic Pride 2013 March for Equality
2013 06 27
Events
LGBT Equality Issues Statement after Baltic Pride March is Banned in Central Vilnius
Posted in Events, Human Rights, LGBTQ Equal Rights, News & Views
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June 23rd: Lithuanian Anti-Fascist Group Mounts Protest in Kaunas Against Glorification of 1941 LAF Killers
Courageous Antifa Lietuva banner reads: “Real heroes rescued people instead of killing them. Remember the victims of the Holocaust”
Milan Chersonski was there. His report on the event. His take: “Let the world know that not everyone in Lithuania tolerates the distortion of history.”
Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Events, Free Speech & Democracy, Kaunas, Legacy of 23 June 1941, Lithuania, News & Views, Politics of Memory
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Kaunas “Religious Heritage” Conference Considering Alternate Venue, as University with Shrine to 1941 Nazi Puppet PM is Object of Petition
— Summary of news to date:
Shrines for Nazis, in the EU?
International Petition Tops 750 Mark; Progress Seen, as Organizers of Kaunas “Religious Heritage” Conference Reported to Seek Alternatve Venue; Vytautas Magnus University Continues to Honor City’s 1941 Nazi Puppet Prime Minister who Presided over Initiation of the Lithuanian Holocaust
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Collaborators Glorified, Events, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory
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“ISTME” Conference Slated for Cracow in September is Funded under EU’s “Science and Technology”
Newest Word for Holocaust Revisionism in Eurospeak? “ISTME” (pronounced Is-it-me?) comes under “Science and Technology”
Is the EU Again being manipulated by “Double Genocide”? Are fine scholars again unwittingly instrumentalized for DG?
More red-equals-brown movement dissemination, now via “Science and Technology”? Orwellian concoctions to downgrade the Holocaust and stifle debate have included: “Reconciliation of European Histories”, “Platform of European Memory”, “principle of non-discrimination of victimhood” and now, under “European cooperation in science and technology” a possibly brand new “Euro-classic”: In Search of Transcultural Memory in Europe (ISTME)…
Posted in Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, EU, Events, Free Speech & Democracy, News & Views, Poland, Politics of Memory
Tagged COST - ISTME, Double Genocide Movement, In Search of Transcultural Memory in Europe (ISTME), Politics of Memory, Red-Brown movement
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A Lively Conference in Riga
[updated 12 June 2013]
Was a goodwill opportunity squandered when the director general of the Vilnius based “red-brown” commission used his lecture time (at the Riga conference on Holocaust commemoration in post-Communist countries) for personal remarks (with inaccurate comments about the editor of Defending History)?
MULTIMEDIA RECORD OF EVENTS: VIDEO OF RONALDAS RAČINSKAS’S (28 MAY) LECTURE (in Russian) IN RESPONSE TO DOVID KATZ’S (27 MAY) LECTURE (PDF OF HIS PP; VIDEO PROVIDED BY THE CONFERENCE; PARTIAL IPHONE VIDEO [BY JOE KOREN] ).
UPDATES:
Edward Jacobs in the Huffington Post (31 May 2013)
More materials (including videos of the entire conference) posted by conference organizers; videos also on YouTube (12 June 2013)
In the meantime there has been no apology to the Vilnius Holocaust Survivor the state-sponsored commission called a liar on its website (in 2013), or to its own founding member Yitzhak Arad. Resignations on principle from the commission and its associated committees include Sir Martin Gilbert, Prof. Gershon Greenberg, Prof. Konrad Kwiet, and Prof. Dov Levin. The state-sponsored “International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania” continues to flaunt the Prague Declaration on its website, in both Lithuanian and English.
SEE ALSO: Milan Chersonski’s Riga conference paper (27 May) “Rehabilitation of the Past as a Tool of Modern Politics” (authorized English translation). Milan Chersonski (Chersonskij) edited the Lithuanian Jewish Community’s quadrilingual (English-Lithuanian-Russian-Yiddish) newspaper Jerusalem of Lithuania from 1999 to the paper’s demise in 2010-2011. See our Milan Chersonski section. His publications in Defending History represent his own views.
RELATED:
Critiques of the commission
DH section on the commission
Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Collaborators Glorified, Events, Holocaust Policies of Mr. Ronaldas Račinskas and the State-Sponsored "International Commission" (ICECNSORL), Latvia, Lithuania, News & Views, Politics of Memory
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Red-Brown “Platform” Runs Another Double Genocide Conference — in Warsaw…
Another EU Supported Lopsided “Double Genocide” Conference, This Time — in Warsaw (14-15 May 2013), Courtesy of the Red-Brown “Platform”
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Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, EU, Events, History, Museums, Poland, Prague "Platform"
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Lithuanian Government’s 2013 Vilna Ghetto PR Jamboree
Vilna Ghetto is Back in Focus
But Will “Vilna Ghetto Fest” Include Public Apologies to Defamed Vilna (and Kovno) Ghetto Anti-Nazi Jewish Partisan Heroes? Invitations to Come Join the Party?
UPDATES:
1. The Secret “Big-Bucks Vilna Ghetto Disneyland Theme Park” Project (minus the Jewish community, minus apologies to the Partisans of Vilna, minus removals of memorials to local Holocaust perpetrators).
2. Renewed International Petition.
3. Ghetto survivors who joined the anti-Nazi resistance have been criminalized.
4. Government delegation in South Africa trying to pry Disneyland “investment” from unsuspecting South African Jews.
SEVEN SIMPLE SOLUTIONS
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Double Games, Dr. Rokhl (Rachel) Margolis (1921-2015), Events, Exotic Jewish Tourism, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, South Africa
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Swastikas From Latvia in Center of Šiauliai (Shavl), Lithuania, as Police Look On
Since 2010, when a Lithuanian court proclaimed public swastikas legal and included in its ruling the “historical wisdom” that it only a harmless ancient Baltic symbol, swastikas have proliferated at public events sponsored by the far right, with police looking on listlessly. Most painfully for the dwindling numbers of Holocaust survivors here and abroad, swastikas and other fascist symbols, along with glorification of local Holocaust collaborators, have figured in sanctioned independence day marches in Kaunas on February 16th each year, and in the capital city Vilnius, each March 11th.
In 2012, the United Nations’ Human Rights Committee commented publicly.
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Bloomington-Borns Program Manipulated?, Events, In the Era of Yivo's 100th, Latvia, News & Views, Swastikas in Lithuania, Symbology
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“Rewriting History” on the Road in the USA
Rewriting History: New Documentary Film on the Shocking New Holocaust Revisionism in Eastern Europe
REVIEWS OF REWRITING HISTORY
Film’s website ◊ Sign the Seventy Years Declaration ◊ Donate HERE
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April 28th 2013 in LA
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Posted in Arts, Danny Ben-Moshe, Events, Film, Lithuania, News & Views, Politics of Memory, United States
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Lithuanian Authorities Continue to Play Games with this Summer’s Baltic Pride, Bringing Potential Ridicule to Launch of EU Presidency
The following news report appeared today in For LGBT Equality:
Forthcoming EU Presidency Capital Persistent in Banning Baltic Pride March on Central Avenue
On 24 April 2013 Vilnius authorities appealed to the Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania, indicating that, despite the judgment by the first instance court, the municipal authorities have the right to propose a location for a public assembly other than that demanded by the organizers. “The law does not provide an organizer with the right to choose the location for a gathering unconditionally,” the municipality claims in its statement.
Posted in EU, Events, LGBTQ Equal Rights, News & Views
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“Mixed” Court Ruling Leaves Uncertainty on Venue for Baltic Pride 2013 Parade in Vilnius
.LGL released the following statement in For LGBT Equality earlier today
The Lithuanian Gay League (LGL) today partially won its appeal against the decision of the Vilnius City Municipality to disallow the upcoming Baltic Pride march to be held on Gedimino Prospect, the main street of Vilnius. The Vilnius Regional Administrative Court ruled that the decision of the municipality was not legal.
The organizers of Baltic Pride and the municipality must now restart the process of negotiating the location for the Baltic Pride march.
Posted in Events, Human Rights, LGBTQ Equal Rights, News & Views
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Arthur Dobrin’s Open Letter to Ed Hirsch
O P I N I O N
by Arthur Dobrin
I am writing to you because it has come to my attention that you are to be the judge in the Avrom Sutzkever Poetry Translation Prize. Many years ago I came across a book of Sutzkever and have used several lines from his poems in a book of mine on bereavement. I was deeply touched by his work and wanted to share it with others.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Events, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Lithuania, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Sutzkever Prize in Lithuania, United States
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Upside-Down World? Neo-Nazi March Assisted by Police on Central Boulevard, While Authorities Try to Banish Baltic Pride Across the River….
O P I N I O N
Officially speaking, the annual neo-Nazi march on Lithuania’s independence day earlier this month, complete with swastikas, sieg heils and white power jackets, had been “moved” by the municipality from Vilnius’s central boulevard, Gedimino, to the rather less prestigious location across the river in Shnípishok (Šnipiškės), and the move was confirmed by the courts. But it was all a fiction. On the day, the police facilitated the neo-Nazis’ march up Gedimino as usual without the slightest hint of disapproval, let alone transfer to one of the bridges leading across the river. See our report, and the eyewitness accounts by Anna Shepherd and Geoff Vasil.
Posted in Celebrations of Fascism, EU, Events, Human Rights, LGBTQ Equal Rights, News & Views, Opinion, Swastikas in Lithuania
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Yad Vashem Awards Three Rescuers (Posthumously) in Žagarė (Zháger), Northern Lithuania
E Y E W I T N E S S R E P O R T
by Evaldas Balčiūnas
Žagarė (known in Yiddish as Zháger), Lithuania, always brings a warm feeling. It is a small, multicultural town. While Jews long accounted for half the population, unfortunately they are only a memory now. Germans, Latvians, Roma and Lithuanians continue to live here. There was room enough for everyone up until 1941.
I had the opportunity today to visit Žagarė to honor those who sought to insure that Žagarė would continue to have enough space for everyone. I traveled to a ceremony to honor Edvardas Levinskas (1893-1975), Terese Levinskienė (1903-1949) and Lilija Vilandaitė (1900-1948), posthumous recipients of the Righteous Among the Nations, or Righteous Gentile, award, conferred by Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.
Posted in Commemorations for Destroyed Communities, Evaldas Balčiūnas, Events, Lithuania, News & Views, Zháger (Žagarė)
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Summary Coverage of Neo-Nazi March in Central Vilnius on March 11th 2013
March 11th 2013 Independence Day:
City Mounted Wholesome Family Event on Main Boulevard, but it was Followed by a Massive Neo-Nazi March; There were Few Protesters
NATION’S PARLIAMENT HONORS THE NEO-NAZI MARCH ORGANIZERS
EYEWITNESS REPORTS: ANNA SHEPHERD AND GEOFF VASIL
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Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Celebrations of Fascism, Events, Human Rights, Neo-Nazi & Fascist Marches, News & Views, Swastikas in Lithuania, Vilnius
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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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Cameron’s Latvian Liaison, One Woman’s Petition and One SS March
O P I N I O N
by Monica Lowenberg
If you walked through a busy EU city today and came across Eichmann Allee, Hitler Strasse or even Goebbels Gasse you would initially think that someone was pulling your leg or you would start to raise, and rightly so, serious questions regarding the ruling government that would allow such blatant glorification of mass murderers to take place. You can therefore imagine how I felt, the daughter of a German Jewish refugee whose paternal Latvian Jewish family had all been brutally murdered in the Libau massacres of 1941 and Riga ghetto, to discover in 2011, that each and every 16 March, since 1998, SS veterans are glorified in the capital city of Riga in Latvia an EU and NATO country since 2004.
My name is Monica Lowenberg; I was born on a cold winter’s day in 1964, in ear shot of Bow Bells.
On January 20, 2012, I set up a petition to stop the 16th March marches in Riga, ninety years to the day from the date of birth of my uncle Paul Theodor Loewenberg who at age 19 was sent to the Riga Ghetto on 4 October 1941. The petition is as much an act of commemoration of the victims of Nazism as it is a tribute to the European parliamentarians, including a number from Latvia, who wisely and courageously signed on the 20 January last year 2012, the Seventy Years Declaration, commemorating Wannsee, a declaration which specifically rejects glorification of Latvia’s Waffen SS, along with Estonia’s Waffen SS and the Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF) in Lithuania.
Posted in Aleksandrs Feigmanis, Celebrations of Fascism, EU, Events, Latvia, Monica Lowenberg, Neo-Nazi & Fascist Marches, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Riga's Waffen SS Marches, United Kingdom
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Strength Through Joy “Hitler Youth” Events Sponsored by the City of Vilnius on March 11, 2013
E Y E W I T N E S S R E P O R T / O P I N I O N
by Geoff Vasil
This March 11, the day in 1990 when the Supreme Soviet of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic declared Lithuania sovereign and separate from the Soviet Union, was celebrated in Vilnius in the usual manner: neo-Nazis, skinheads, their young and naive followers and a gaggle of elderly politicians—both serving MPs and has-beens—assembled and marched up the main boulevard chanting nationalist and anti-minority slogans, scaring children and generally making the streets unsafe for normal activities.
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Celebrations of Fascism, Events, Exotic Jewish Tourism, Geoff Vasil, Human Rights, Media Watch, Neo-Nazi & Fascist Marches, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Vilnius
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3,000 Neo-Nazi Marchers on Gedimino Boulevard in Central Vilnius on 2013 Independence Day
E Y E W I T N E S S R E P O R T / O P I N I O N
by Anna Shepherd
Photos by Anna Shepherd; they may be reproduced with accreditation to Defending History (this page) and to Ms. Shepherd.
An unsanctioned neo-Nazi march took place today on Gedimino Boulevard, the main avenue of central Vilnius, as Lithuania celebrated its 1990 declaration of independence from the Soviet Union. It had an estimated three thousand participants, the largest number ever.
Vilnius authorities had this year issued a permit for the nationalists’ march to take place on Upės Street, a venue across the river, further from the city center. Instead of the neo-Nazi march that has occurred each year since 2008, this year Gedimino was supposed to be host of “Laisves Vejas” (Wind of Freedom), a celebration of freedom and independence including music, dance, poetry and other wholesome performances.
Posted in Anna Shepherd, Antisemitism & Bias, Celebrations of Fascism, Events, Human Rights, Neo-Nazi & Fascist Marches, News & Views, Opinion, Swastikas in Lithuania, Vilnius
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Ellen Cassedy, Author of Lithuanian Gov. ‘Manipulated Book’ is Confronted by Protesters in London
O P I N I O N / E Y E W I T N E S S A C C O U N T
by Emily Sheinbaum
On a rainy London evening, Thursday the 7th of March, six protesters met at University College London (UCL), for Cassedy had come to town. Her public talk initially scheduled to take place in the Garwood lecture theatre was unexpectedly changed to the Medawar Lankester lecture theatre two days prior. People on the Hebrew department’s Institute of Jewish Studies email list were notified of the change in venue but the details were, curiously enough, not updated on UCL’s website.
Nevertheless, despite such last-minute logistical alterations, protesters against Cassedy’s book tour that is underway “in association” with the Lithuanian government met at 6:30 PM in the narrow corridor leading to the Lankester theatre. By a small table they strategically positioned themselves ready to warmly greet the 45 odd attendees who politely walked past and eagerly took handouts concerning the Lithuanian government’s recent actions since 2006, Ms. Cassedy’s association with the government, petitions, letters and book reviews.
Reviews of Ms. Cassedy’s book by Dovid Katz; Allan Nadler; Olga Zabludoff; Efraim Zuroff
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, "Tuskulėnai Peace Park", Events, It Pays to Defend History: Success Over the Years..., News & Views, Opinion, UCL Manipulated?, Yiddish Affairs
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