News & Views
Happy 91st Birthday to Dr. Rachel Margolis
Posted in Dr. Rokhl (Rachel) Margolis (1921-2015), Israel, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory
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Swedish Historian Stands up to Ukrainian Ultranationalists’ “Conquest of Canada”
1: Ultranationalists sponsor a North American lecture tour for a Lviv-based museum director. Harvard University (18 Oct) and a meeting with Canada’s prime minister (19 Oct) included
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Posted in Canada, Collaborators Glorified, Media Watch, News & Views, Per Anders Rudling, Politics of Memory, Sweden, Ukraine
Tagged Per Anders Rudling
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Canadian Prime Minister Manipulated into Praising Holocaust-Distorting Museum in Ukraine
In the course of remarks criticizing the current Ukrainian government for its human rights abuses, made in Gatineau, Quebec, Canada’s prime minister Stephen Harper added words of praise for a visiting director of a Holocaust-distorting museum in Ukraine who was on a Canada lecture tour last week, and for the museum itself. The museum, in Lviv, Ukraine, glorifies and sanitizes some of the local Holocaust perpetrators and collaborators. An account of the prime minister’s remarks appeared in a 19 October 2012 report in the Toronto Sun.
There is no suggestion that the Canadian prime minister agrees with the Ukrainian Holocaust revisionists, or would wish to compliment those glorifying the local perpetrators. Instead, the episode is seen as yet another instance of a well-oiled lobby being able to confuse, combine and confound issues in dealings with Western personalities and institutions that stand far from these issues. Attempts to make heroes of the local Holocaust perpetrators and collaborators, in the spirit of antisemitic East European (ultra)nationalism, have also been documented this year in Estonia, Hungary, Latvia and Lithuania.
Posted in Canada, Collaborators Glorified, Museums, News & Views, Ukraine
Tagged Holocaust Revisionism, Lonsky Street Museum, Lontsky Street Museum, Per Anders Rudling, Ruslan Zabily, Stephen Harper
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Open Letter in Support of Per Anders Rudling
O P I N I O N
Recently, Dr. Per Anders Rudling of Lund University in Sweden has articulated his criticism of a highly problematic lecture tour in North America, which features Ruslan Zabily, the director of the Lontsky Street Prison Memorial Museum in Lviv, Ukraine. Mr. Zabily, whose academic credentials are slim, is given a forum as a speaker at several prestigious universities. His role in nationalist history activism in Ukraine and his links and contributions to organizations that diminish the violence, ethnic and political, of Ukrainian World War Two nationalism are not problematized.
This is not the place to reiterate Dr. Rudling’s precise and fair criticism in detail. Full documentation can be found at:
Posted in Canada, News & Views, Opinion, Per Anders Rudling, Politics of Memory, Sweden, Ukraine
Tagged Holocaust in Ukraine, Per Anders Rudling, Ruslan Zabily
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Tel Aviv’s Leivick House Releases 2009 Video of Ambassador Chen Ivri Apter at Margolis Event
Israel’s Ambassador Chen Ivri Apter presenting Dr. Rachel Margolis with a certificate of merit at Leivick House in Tel Aviv. Dr. Margolis is seen wearing the medals won for her bravery fighting against the Nazis in the forests of Lithuania during the Holocaust. Her entire family perished.
Leivick House, one of Israel’s (and the world’s) last Yiddish-in-Yiddish cultural institutions, has released a video clip of the June 2009 visit to its Dov Hoz Street headquarters in central Tel Aviv by Israel’s then ambassador to Latvia and Lithuania, the late Chen Ivri Apter, at an event to honor Dr. Rachel Margolis. It is posted on YouTube (partial English translation here). The event itself was reported in DefendingHistory and the Leivick House website, among other venues.
Dr. Margolis, due to celebrate her 91st birthday next week, is a Vilna Ghetto survivor and anti-Nazi resistance hero who has been targeted by Lithuanian prosecutors, in effect according to some for “the crime of surviving.” Tributes to Dr. Margolis have come from around the world, including former UK prime minister Gordon Brown in 2011.
Ambassador Ivri Apter died last month at the age of 54 after a long battle with cancer that friends always said he never allowed to cloud his love of life and the day ahead.
His short speech at Leivick House is thought likely to go down in history for its courage and forthrightness at a time when his nation’s foreign policy was noticeably starting to tilt in a contrary direction. The Tel Aviv event was organized jointly by DefendingHistory.com and Leivick House.
Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Dr. Rokhl (Rachel) Margolis (1921-2015), Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Israel, It Pays to Defend History: Success Over the Years..., Lithuania, News & Views, Yiddish Affairs
Tagged Chen Ivri Apter, Double Genocide, Fania Brantsovsky, Holocaust in Lithuania, Rachel Margolis, Yitzhak Arad
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The Disquieting 2010-2012 Record of the American Embassy in Vilnius, Lithuania
- April 2010: The Wiesenthal Center’s Dr. Efraim Zuroff comments (in the Guardian) on the American ambassador’s assurance that “The United States and Lithuania are partners in the fight against antisemitism and in efforts to address the legacy of the Holocaust” bereft of any mention of the “slight problems,” e.g. state-sanctioned neo-Nazi marches on independence day, attempted prosecution of Holocaust survivors, glorification of Nazi perpetrators, disturbing comments by top officials and a general decline into the acceptability of antisemitism.
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Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Double Games, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Human Rights, LGBTQ Equal Rights, News & Views, Politics of Memory, The Great SLS About-Face, United States, US State Dept Manipulated?
Tagged Ambassador Anne Derse, Efraim Zuroff, Geoff Vasil, Holocaust in Lithuania, Jonathan M. Berger, Lithuania, Marc Tracy, Markas Zingeris, United States embassy in Vilnius
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Lithuanian President’s Decree on “Red-Brown Commission” is Re-issued with “New Sentence”
Baltic News Service (BNS) has just released yet more convoluted news on the renewal of the “red-brown commission” by, it appears, yet another revised presidential decree. Full text of the BNS report follows below.
Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Double Games, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Yad Vashem and Lithuania
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Yivo and the Lithuanian Government: Box coverage to 16 October 2012
New York: Yivo’s Lithuanian Circus—Blow to Holocaust Survivors and their Families—Coming to Town on Tuesday
Milan Chersonski (Vilnius)
Allan Nadler (Drew University)
Faye Ran (New York)
Efraim Zuroff (Jerusalem)
From surrendering books to surrendering history: “sad and mad” Yivo saga continues. When it all started…
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, In the Era of Yivo's 100th, News & Views, Politics of Memory
Tagged Dr. Jonathan Brent
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Former Director of Yivo Speaks Out on Current Policies Concerning Lithuania
The comments on Dr. Efraim Zuroff’s 14 Oct. 2012 op-ed in The Times of Israel on Yivo’s current policies regarding Lithuanian issues include one (dated 15 Oct.) from Yivo’s former director, Professor Allan Nadler of Drew University. His comment:
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, In the Era of Yivo's 100th, News & Views, Politics of Memory
Tagged Dr. Jonathan Brent (Yivo)
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US Documentary Film Maker Releases Correspondence with Yad Vashem on Alliance with Lithuanian “Red-Brown Commission”
The American documentary film maker Richard Bloom, who has produced a number of documentaries on the Holocaust, today released for publication his recent correspondence with Yad Vashem. He said his decision was taken after he failed to receive substantive replies to his recent queries about Yad Vashem rejoining the Lithuanian government’s “red-brown commission.”
Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Arts, Film, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Yad Vashem and Lithuania
Tagged International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania, Richard Bloom, The Litvak Connection, Yad Vashem
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Major New History Paper on the Ukrainian Waffen SS
A major new paper on the history and nationalist mythology of the Ukrainian Waffen SS, by Dr. Per Anders Rudling of Lund University, Sweden, has appeared in the Journal of Slavic Military Studies. Its title is “‘They Defended Ukraine’: The 14. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS (Galizische Nr. 1) Revisited.”
The abstract reads as follows:
Posted in Canada, History, News & Views, Sweden, Ukraine
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Simon Wiesenthal Center Laments Yivo’s Betrayals of Jewish Causes for the Sake of Lithuanian State PR
O P I N I O N
by Efraim Zuroff
reprinted with the author’s permission from today’s Times of Israel
This week, one of the more shameful events in Lithuanian-Jewish relations since the Baltic republic regained independence in 1991 will be hosted in New York by the once-venerable Yivo Institute. Under the heading “Reclaiming the Jewish Narrative in Lithuania Today,” the Yiddish research institute will host Markas Zingeris, whom it describes as a “Lithuanian-Jewish poet and writer,” to speak about relations between Jews and Lithuanians since the fall of Communism.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Collaborators Glorified, Double Games, Efraim Zuroff, Events, Human Rights, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, In the Era of Yivo's 100th, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, The Great SLS About-Face, United States, US State Dept Manipulated?, Yiddish Affairs
Tagged Dr. Jonathan Brent, Efraim Zuroff, Holocaust in Lithuania, International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Regimes, Markas Zingeris, Yivo, Yivo and Lithuania
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Ukrainian Ultranationalists Sponsor Lecture Tour Across North American Universities
O P I N I O N
by Per Anders Rudling
Last week, a Canada-wide lecture tour by Ruslan Zabily was announced. He is the former director of the Center for the Study of the Liberation Movement and the current director of the Lonsky Street Prison National Memorial Museum (for short: the Lonsky Museum) in Lviv, Ukraine.
AT THE LONSKY MUSEUM: JEWISH HOLOCAUST VICTIMS PHOTOSHOPPED OUT. A woman has just recognized a loved one among the victims of the NKVD killings in 1941. In the background of the original photo one also sees groups of Jewish victims of the massacre which followed within days of the NKVD murders (Jews were forced to carry and rebury these victims). Thousands of Jews were killed as Soviet crimes were blamed on them and used to incite antisemitic violence and murder. In this photoshopped version on display at the Lonsky Museum, the nationalists’ Jewish civilian victims are literally covered by the circular insertions of Soviet crime statistics, implicitly ethniziced as Ukrainian suffering.
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The original image, before photoshopping at the Lonsky…
The lecture tour includes some of the most prestigious universities in Canada — the universities of Alberta, Toronto, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Ottawa — as well as Harvard University’s Ukrainian Studies Institute in the United States. The lectures in Alberta and Toronto are facilitated by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies; the Peter Jacyk Program for the Study of Ukraine; the Centre for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies; the Harvard Institute of Ukrainian Studies and its Chair of Ukrainian Studies.
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Bandera, Canada, Collaborators Glorified, Events, Free Speech & Democracy, Museums, News & Views, Opinion, Per Anders Rudling, Politics of Memory, Ukraine
Tagged Askold Lozynskyj, Harvard University Ukrainian Studies Institute, Lonsky Museum in Lviv (Ukraine), Per Anders Rudling, Ruslan Zabily, Stepan Bandera, Ukrainian ultranationalism in Cnada
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Efraim Zuroff Comments on Facebook on Next Tuesday’s Zingeris Event at Yivo in New York City
Efraim Zuroff, the Holocaust historian, Nazi-hunter and author, today posted the following message on his Facebook page. It is reproduced here with the permission of Dr. Zuroff, who is director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center Israel office and its Operation Last Chance. For more on the alleged US embassy (Vilnius) blackballing of Dr. Zuroff from an international 2011 summer program in Vilnius see here. Background to the Yivo event: see Milan Chersonski’s article.
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This is a call for action to those in the NYC area. This coming Tuesday, October 16 at 7 PM, YIVO is hosting an evening at the Center for Jewish History at 15 West 16th St. entitled “Reclaiming The Jewish Narrative in Lithuania Today.” The problem is that the featured guests are all supporters of the Lithuanian government’s efforts to promote the canard of equivalency between Communist and Nazi crimes and are minimizing the huge role of Lithuanians in the mass murder of Lithuanian Jews. Anyone able to go and confront Markas Zingeris, the Lithuanian PM’s advisor on genocide, and former US ambassador to Lithuania Anne Derse whose embassy blackballed my participation in a seminar on Lithuanian Jewish history at the request of the Lithuanian authorities, will be doing a big mitzva!!!
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Efraim Zuroff, Events, Free Speech & Democracy, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged Anne Derse, Center for Jewish History, Efraim Zuroff, Markas Zingeris, Yivo, Yivo Lithuania
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Summary Coverage on Monument in Bauska to Honor Waffen SS (updated to 12 Oct 2012)
REPORT. HEAD OF JEWISH COMMUNITIES ISSUES PROTEST. SWC COMMENTS. FATE OF EFFORTS TO ERECT A MEMORIAL TO THE TOWN’S ANNIHILATED JEWISH POPULATION.
SEE ALSO:
LATVIA SECTION
MONICA LOWENBERG’S INTERNATIONAL PETITION & BLOG ON THE WAFFEN SS PARADES IN RIGA; MAINSTREAM UK LINKS WITH LATVIAN FAR RIGHT
Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Latvia, News & Views
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Canadian Missile Lands in Sweden
The following is the letter dated 5 October signed by a number of leading figures of Ukrainian nationalist groups in Canada and sent to the vice-chancellor of Lund University in Sweden complaining about the opinions voiced by postdoctoral fellow Per Anders Rudling, a prominent young historian. [Updates: Dr. Rudling’s DefendingHistory.com article on the subject is here; an open letter from scholars supporting him is here.]
Posted in Canada, Documents, News & Views, Per Anders Rudling, Politics of Memory, Sweden, Ukraine
Tagged Per Anders Rudling
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Is this Really What You Want To Do, Mr. Executive Director of Yivo?
O P I N I O N
by Milan Chersonski
Milan Chersonski (Chersonskij), longtime editor (1999-2011) of Jerusalem of Lithuania, quadrilingual (English-Lithuanian-Russian-Yiddish) newspaper of the Jewish Community of Lithuania, was previously (1979-1999) director of the Yiddish Folk Theater of Lithuania, which in Soviet times was the USSR’s only Yiddish amateur theater company. The views he expresses in DefendingHistory are his own. This is an authorized English version (updated by the author) by Ludmilla Makedonskaya (Los Angeles). Russian original.
Photo: Milan Chersonski at this desk at the Jewish Community of Lithuania (image © 2012 Jurgita Kunigiškytė). Milan Chersonski section.
Dear Mr. Jonathan Brent,
A little over a year ago, on 12 September 2011, I wrote my first open letter to you. I wrote that it is inappropriate to hold an event commemorating the Jews of Vilna who were victims of genocide together with the minister of foreign affairs of the Republic of Lithuania Audronis Ažubalis on the premises of Yivo. If you did not then find time to read my letter, you can find it now online.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Bold Citizens Speak Out, Double Games, In the Era of Yivo's 100th, Litvak Affairs, Milan Chersonski (1937-2021), News & Views, Opinion, Yiddish Affairs
Tagged Anbassador Anne E. Derse, Anne Derse + Lithuania + Jewish issues, Emanuelis Zingeris, Jerusalem of Lithuania, Jewish Community of Lithuania, Jonathan Brent, Markas Zingeris, Milan Chersonski, YIVO + far right Lithuanian politics, Yivo + Jonathan Brent + Zingeris + Anne Derse, YIVO Fall 2012 program of events, YIVO lecture series at the CJH
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Samples of the Work of a Holocaust-Twisting, Antisemitic, Homophobic Envelope Designer
The following are among the envelopes designed by Antanas Šakalys who continues to be honored by his (other) works being exhibited at both Vilnius University and the Central Post Office in the Lithuanian capital. Details and further links.
These samples are categorized as follows:
1. Holocaust Distortion/Inversion (blaming of victims, honoring of perpetrators, defamation of historians).
2. Antisemitism.
3. Homophobia and Assault on Equal Rights.
4. Defamation of Lithuanian personalities who call for tolerance.
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Holocaust Distortion/Inversion (blaming of victims, honoring of perpetrators, defamation of historians)
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Bloomington-Borns Program Manipulated?, Collaborators Glorified, Documents, Human Rights, LGBTQ Equal Rights, Lithuania, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Russian Speakers' Personal Status
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Updates on the Šakalys Scandal: Central Post Office Website Still Features Biased Envelope-Maker
As of today, both Vilnius University and the Central Post Office are still featuring the “historic envelope art” of designer Antanas Šakalys, though neither of the prestigious venues publicly includes any samples of his antisemitic, Holocaust-distorting and homophobic output.
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Bloomington-Borns Program Manipulated?, LGBTQ Equal Rights, News & Views
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Lithuanian Translation of the 25 September 2012 Letter from Congressmen Sherman, Wachman, Berman to the Prime Minister of Lithuania
The following is a translation into Lithuanian of the letter signed by US congressmen Brad Sherman, Henry Wachman and Howard Berman on 25 September 2012. English original is here. Published Russian translation. Both translations were provided by Jacob Piliansky (Vilnius).
- JAV Kongresas
- Vašingtonas
- Rugsėjo 25, 2012
Gerbiamasis, Ministre Pirmininke Kubiliau
Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Lithuania, News & Views, Politics of Memory, September 23rd Commemorations, United States
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