VILNIUS. One of the staples of diplomatic life here is the annual Hungarian National Day reception hosted by the Hungarian Embassy in Vilnius. Under the leadership of the previous ambassador to Lithuania, HE Péter Horváth Noszkó, his nation’s embassy became a locus of inter-community and inter-cultural dialogue that helped further civil society in the Lithuanian capital. He thereby raised his country’s profile to that of an open forum par excellence, where all — not least minority groups — could find a place here in this corner of the European Table.
News & Views
Hungarian National Day Event in Vilnius Celebrates Lithuanian ‘Forest Brother’; Two Local Fascists Invited
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Celebrations of Fascism, Collaborators Glorified, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Events, Hungary, News & Views, Politics of Memory
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Lithuania Cannot Appease Both World Jewry and Far-Right Extremists
O P I N I O N
by Olga Zabludoff
I commend Didier Bertin’s knowledgeable and sensitive observations in his article “Lithuania and the Memory of the Holocaust.” My comments here are more in the form of a PS to Mr. Bertin’s words. My take-off point is his reference to the term “Double Genocide,” a government-endorsed concept that has been bandied about in Lithuanian political circles in recent times. But more about this later. Mr. Bertin borrows the term for application in a different dual context: the original genocide of the Jewish people and the current movement on the part of the Lithuanian government to neutralize if not to obliterate the remembrance of the Holocaust.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, "Red-Brown Commission", Antisemitism & Bias, Collaborators Glorified, Double Games, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Olga Zabludoff, Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged Didier Bertin, Double Genocide, Holocaust in Lithuania, Lithuanian-Jewish relations, Olga Zabludoff
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Believe It or Not
Vilnius Prosecutors Launch Campaign against Another Holocaust Survivor, 86, this time via — Interpol!
Joe Melamed in his Tel Aviv office
At Lithuanian prosecutors’ demand, Israeli Interpol liaison officers speak with Mr. Melamed about the ‘accusations’
Report in Haaretz by Yossi Melman;
DefendingHistory.com reports here and here;
Geoff Vasil in the Jewish Chronicle
Yad Vashem withdraws invitations to visiting minster and resident ambassador for Vilna Ghetto commemoration; Coverage in Haaretz by Yossi Melman; Associated Press (→ CBS News, Fox,MSNBC, Washington Post, YahooNews etc); JTA (→WJC, JJ, Juedische.at, etc); Mishpacha
Three British MPs file Early Day Motion 2161 to protest the Lithuanian government’s action
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Joseph Melamed, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory
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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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Glorifiers of Pro-Hitler Fascist Groups March in Lviv
by Frank Brendle (Berlin)
Activists in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv wearing uniforms of the former Ukrainian Insurgent Army (known as UPA, from its Ukrainian language initials) marched in a large scale event in the city center today.
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Bandera, Celebrations of Fascism, Collaborators Glorified, Frank Brendle, Human Rights, Neo-Nazi & Fascist Marches, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Ukraine
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Holocaust Survivor Community in Shock as Yet Another Survivor Pursued by Lithuanian Prosecutors (and Interpol!), This Time for “Libel”
Vilnius Prosecutors Launch Campaign against Another Holocaust Survivor, 86, this time via — Interpol!
At Lithuanian prosecutors’ demand, Israeli Interpol liaison officers speak with Mr. Melamed about the ‘accusations’
Report in Haaretz by Yossi Melman;
DefendingHistory.com reports here and here;
Geoff Vasil in the Jewish Chronicle
Yad Vashem withdraws invitations to visiting minster and resident ambassador for Vilna Ghetto commemoration; Coverage inHaaretz by Yossi Melman; Associated Press (→ CBS News, Fox,MSNBC,Washington Post, YahooNews etc);JTA (→WJC, JJ, Juedische.at, etc);Mishpacha
Three British MPs file Early Day Motion 2161 to protest the Lithuanian government’s action
◊
ISRAEL’S GOVERNMENT MAINTAINS PUBLIC SILENCE
Posted in Joseph Melamed, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, United Kingdom
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Lithuanian Foreign Ministry Makes New Red-Brown Pronouncement, Omitting ‘Detail’: The Holocaust; Prime Minister Agrees, Citing Red-Brown Equation
A BNS (Baltic News Service) report released today quotes the foreign ministry as saying for the record today that ‘The attitude of the Russian institutions that by condemning some crimes against humanity (the Stalinist crimes), other crimes, i.e. the crimes of Nazism, are being rehabilitated, shall be regarded as very odd’.
The nation’s prime minister, Andrius Kubilius, weighed in more ardently. In an Lrytas.lt report (which credits ELTA), he is quoted as saying: ‘Thanks to Lithuania’s active policy it is being understood better and more clearly throughout the EU that Stalin’s crimes against humanity need to be judged in the same way Hitler’s crimes against humanity are judged. And not just Stalin’s [crimes], but [those] of the entire Soviet period […].’
Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, News & Views, Politics of Memory
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Nationalists’ Roundtable Discussion Invites Jewish Community Chairman to ‘Speak about Lithuania’
O P I N I O N
by Geoff Vasil
Medieval Lithuania was a colonial power in Europe stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea. After the sixteenth-century union with Poland and the eighteenth-century partitions by other European powers that reduced Poland to nothing, Lithuania reemerged as a modern state in the aftermath of World War I based largely on the ethnic boundaries of the Lithuanian population. Then there was the contested region around the capital, Vilnius, the majority of whose population identified themselves as Poles (or Jews, or Belarusians, and others).
Posted in Geoff Vasil, News & Views, Opinion
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Dr. Shimon Alperovich, chairman of Lithuania’s Jewish Community, Interviewed on Balsas.lt
O P I N I O N
Translation from Balsas.lt, Interview of the Week, 26 September — 2 October 2011. PDF of the original available here.
Antisemitism Still Felt in Lithuania
September 23rd is the Day of Remembrance of the Genocide of Lithuanian Jews.
The victims of the Vilna Ghetto liquidated in 1943 are honored on this day.
[Interview by] Julija Kiško
During the war the Nazis essentially exterminated the Jewish community of Lithuania and the unique culture they created. Chairman of the Lithuanian Jewish Community Simon Alperovich shares his thoughts on the past and present.
Assessing the Holocaust
What hasn’t the Lithuanian Government, in your opinion, yet done in assessing the Holocaust and its aftermath? Balsas.lt Week asked S. Alperovich.
Posted in Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, News & Views, Opinion, Shimon Alperovich (1928 – 2014)
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Source Provides Purported Letter from Prosecutor to Dr. Rachel Margolis
A usually knowledgeable source has today made available to DefendingHistory.com what purports to be a letter from a prosecutor in Lithuania to Dr. Rachel Margolis in Rechovot dating from spring of 2011. According to the source, who asked not to be identified by name, it is this letter that has been the basis of claims by the current Lithuanian government, and its foreign apologists on Jewish issues, that the case is ‘closed’.
Posted in Dr. Rokhl (Rachel) Margolis (1921-2015), News & Views, Opinion
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Yivo Director’s Statement on Lithuanian Foreign Minister’s 2010 Antisemitic Comments, Plus Some Facts
“Fact: The anti-Semitic comment allegedly made by Foreign Minister Ažubalis and quoted by Efraim Zuroff (Simon Wiesenthal Center, Israel) as fact was hearsay.”
14 October 2010: Respected journalist Vytautas Bruveris publishes his report (“Lithuanian Foreign Affairs Strategist Sees Jewish Conspiracy”) in Lietuvos rytas, on the foreign minister’s comments made to a meeting of his entire political faction (Homeland Union / Christian Democrats), now the country’s ruling party, in a meeting in the country’s parliament. PDF here. Full English translation here.
14 October 2010: Immediate response of the Jewish Community of Lithuania after the convening of a special meeting of the community’s Board of Directors in which twenty-one board members participated. Authorized English text here.
14 October 2010: DefendingHistory.com report here.
15 October 2010: Alfa.lt reports, citing in detail the press release issued by the foreign minister in reply. His remarks, made to his entire party faction, could not easily be denied, so the reports are attacked by the ministry’s press release as ‘hearsay’, the foreign ministry line since then, faithfully produced verbatim on 13 September 2011 by the obliging head of Yivo in New York City (see quote and link at top of this page).
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Antisemitism & Bias, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Human Rights, In the Era of Yivo's 100th, News & Views, Yiddish Affairs
Tagged Dr. Jonathan Brent (Yivo)
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Box Coverage to 30 September 2011 on the July 2011 Ponár Desecration
Still no official comment in worst-ever desecration of Vilna’s mass murder site Ponár. First full image of the larger monument’s desecration released in Sept. 2011.
Continue reading
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, News & Views, Ponár (Ponary, Paneriai)
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Head of History Institute, Speaking at ‘Bloodlands’ Event at the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry, Excoriates Holocaust Survivors who Joined the Anti-Nazi Partisans
Delfi.lt journalist Eglė Samoškaitė reported today on this week’s book event for the Lithuanian language edition of Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands, held at the Foreign Ministry and with the participation of some leading historians and heads of institutions in the country. A full English translation of Ms. Samoškaitė’s article is available here.
Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Books, Celebrations of Fascism, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Lithuania, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages
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Lithuanian Foreign Minister Inserts Red-Brown Discourse into Austrian Extradition Case
Lithuanian Foreign Minister Audronius Ažubalis was today quoted by BNS as inserting red-brown discourse into his latest commentary on the dispute over the alleged Soviet war crimes perpetrator not extradited to Lithuania from Austria last summer.
The foreign minister is cited as follows:
Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, News & Views, Politics of Memory
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Lithuanian Foreign Ministry’s Two Versions: for a Jewish Audience (Not for Publication) and for ‘General’ (Proudly on Website)
O P I N I O N
The most recent of journalist Paul Berger’s four meticulously balanced reports in the Forward on Yivo-Lithuania issues (I, II, III, IV) appeared on the paper’s website today. Abraham Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and often considered the leading contemporary human rights champion in the struggle against antisemitism and other forms of prejudice, was among those asked by the reporter to comment upon the text of the Lithuanian foreign minister’s address, read out by a local consulate official, to the 22 September audience at a Lithuanian government sponsored concert at Yivo in New York to mark the ‘Vilna Ghetto Experience’. This journal’s editor was also among those asked to comment for the record, and we were asked by the Forward not to publish the text on DefendingHistory.com, a request naturally honored.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Double Games, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, In the Era of Yivo's 100th, Media Watch, News & Views, Opinion
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First Full Photo of July 2011 Ponár Desecration
Despite efforts by officials to suppress the photographs of the July 2011 desecration at the Ponár (Paneriai) mass murder site outside Vilnius, a cellphone image was released today to DefendingHistory.com by a former employee of the Tolerance Center who reported that he felt obliged by conscience to release the image. The Tolerance Center is the headquarters of the state Jewish museum which in addition to three addresses in Vilnius, runs the small museum at the Ponár site, where the desecration took place. This is the image of the paint attack on the main monument:
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Lithuania, News & Views, Ponár (Ponary, Paneriai)
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Was Rachel Margolis Honored (or Mentioned) at the “Vilna Ghetto Experience” Yivo Event Sponsored by the Lithuanian Government?
The Yivo concert mounted in memory of the Vilna Ghetto was held on 22 September, a date near the September 23rd anniversary of its liquidation (in 1943). Survivors questioned find it unconscionable that the Yivo evening could not also be utilized as a forum for polite, constructive and appropriate protest at the Lithuanian government’s targeting precisely of Vilna Ghetto survivors (among other Holocaust survivors) for kangaroo ‘war crimes investigations’ that have drawn international protest.
Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Commemorations for Destroyed Communities, Dr. Rokhl (Rachel) Margolis (1921-2015), Events, In the Era of Yivo's 100th, News & Views, Opinion
Tagged Dr. Jonathan Brent (Yivo), Rachel Margolis, Yivo
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What Happened when Holocaust Survivor Joseph Melamed Did Exactly what Historian A. Liekis Suggested?
O P I N I O N
by Geoff Vasil
The following is a reprint, with the author’s permission, of his article in London’s Jewish Chronicle this week.
Wreaths Laid, but Doubt Hangs in the Air
Today is Lithuanian Holocaust Day. This is the day the Vilna Ghetto was “liquidated” in 1943, but is not generally known among Lithuanians. It does not even appear on the Wikipedia list of Lithuanian holidays, although Molotov-Ribbentrop Day, August 23, does. September 23 usually receives a few minutes on the evening news — after it’s over.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, "Red-Brown Commission", Celebrations of Fascism, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Events, Geoff Vasil, Joseph Melamed, Lithuania, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged A. Liekis + Holocaust in Lithuania, Geoff Vasil, Joseph Melamed, Joseph Melamed + Holocaust in Lithuania, Liekis + list of perpetrators, Ponar (Paneriai
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Lithuanian Foreign Ministry Gloats, as Yivo’s Position Continues to Confuse
At 10:27 AM Vilnius time today, BNS (Baltic News Service) released the triumphant news from the country’s foreign ministry that ‘A Yivo room is planned at the National Library of Martynas Mažvydas in Vilnius shortly’. As one foreign diplomat put it, off the record, several hours later at today’s commemoration event for the liquidation of the Vilna Ghetto, ‘The operative word there is shortly’ — signifying a done deal.
There was symbolic significance to the announcement’s timing, coming on the 23 September anniversary of the liquidation of the Vilna Ghetto.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Books, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, In the Era of Yivo's 100th, News & Views
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Yivo: Rolling Coverage to 23 September 2011
Lithuanian Foreign Ministry Triumphantly Announces Its Yivo Coup — A Capitulation on ‘(Looted) Books and (Hijacked) Brand’ Sought for Two Decades — on 23 September, Day of Commemoration for the Vilna Ghetto
But confusion reigns after Yivo director tells Jewish press in New York that surrender of books and brand is not yet final
DETAILS HERE
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, In the Era of Yivo's 100th, News & Views, September 23rd Commemorations, United States, Yiddish Affairs
Tagged Dr. Jonathan Brent (Yivo)
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