Professors Saulius Sužiedėlis (Millersville University, Pennsylvania) and Šarūnas Liekis (Vilnius Yiddish Institute, Vilnius University, Vytautas Magnus University, etc), two excellent historians with impressive track records, have again been engaged by the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry to present a Holocaust program abroad for foreign consumption.
News & Views
Foreign Ministry’s Crack-Team Holocaust-event Professors Heading for Warsaw
Catherine Chatterley leads Opposition to Holocaust Obfuscation campaign in Canada
In a bold op-ed published in the Winnipeg Free Press on 2 April, Dr. Catherine Chatterley has spoken out against attempts by some elements in Canada’s Ukrainian-heritage community to derail a planned Holocaust exhibit at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) on the grounds, broadly speaking, that such an exhibit would unduly emphasize Jewish suffering and cause to be underrepresented Ukrainian suffering in Stalin’s murderous state-caused famine in Ukraine in the early 1930s.
The campaign has been accompanied by the printing and wide distribution in Canada of offensively and antisemitically manipulated versions of an illustration that had appeared in a 1947 Ukrainian edition of George Orwell’s classic Animal Farm.
Has LRG Media (UK) been Compromised?
The prestigious British-based LRG Media, a multimedia company with an impressive record of achievements and awards, has apparently been targeted by certain elements in Lithuanian government circles as the latest ‘Naive Useful Foreign Entity’ to help make respectable internationally the state-sponsored campaigns for Double Genocide, Holocaust Obfuscation, and selective toleration of current antisemitism.
Lithuanian government’s ‘Jewish Affairs Advisor’ calls TV interview of DH.com editor ‘Goebbels-worthy’
Arkady Vinokur (Arkadijus Vinokuras), official Advisor on Jewish Affairs to the prime minister of Lithuania, published an article in today’s Lietuvos rytas expressing the view that a television interview given by this journal’s editor is ‘worthy of Goebbels’.
Has the Forward Association abandoned Elementary Ethics?
O P I N I O N
by Dovid Katz
On February 25th, the Yiddish Forverts in New York published a defamatory ad-hominem attack on this journal’s editor.
The article was signed by ‘Jacob London (Oxford)’, the pseudonym of Sovetish Heymland veteran Gennady Estraikh who was secretary to the Soviet magazine’s editor Aaron Vergelis for many years. Now, a resident of New York, he is listed as the paper’s editor for its ‘European Bureau’. It is quite shocking for many readers that the paper’s editor-in-chief, Boris Sandler, himself a Sovetish Heymland veteran, allows for the paper’s abuse for fake-name, fake-place vicious attack on colleagues in the field of Yiddish Studies.
Kevin Hamilton, Canada’s Chargé d’affaires in Vilnius, Stands Up Against Far-Right Slander

Kevin Hamilton, Canada's Chargé d'affaires in Vilnius
Kevin Hamilton, Canada’s chargé d’affaires at its embassy in Vilnius, published a bold letter today in the daily Respublika, in response to a typically homophobic article in the popular newspaper. The original article (published 25 March), in the spirit of contemporary East European far-right discourse, tried to intentionally confuse Equal Rights for sexual minorities with pedophilia, and to give the impression that Canada supports the latter too.
Moreover, the force of his letter compelled Respublika to issue a rare (if rather half-hearted) retraction, printed in the form of a reply underneath his letter. For a sampling of Respublika’s homophobia and antisemitism, see an image of their 2009 front page caricature of The Jew and The Gay holding up the world (here), and, the way in which the editor handled criticism of that effort (here).
Delfi.lt publishes (pseudonymous) defense of neo-Nazi youth
Delfi.lt, Lithuania’s principal internet news portal, publishes on its website pseudonymously signed long comments in the format of proper news and opinion pieces. Such items, sometimes bereft of any actual author’s name (and responsibility), are thereby given the higher status of signed articles that carry the aura of an editor’s hand or editorial approval, in contrast to the free-for-all characteristic of numbered comments or talkbacks added at the end of a proper article. In other words, such items ascend to higher respectability, irrespective of Delfi.lt’s disclaimer confirming that opinion pieces represent only the writer’s views.
Foreign Ministry cooking another one-sided ‘open forum’, this time in — Kaunas
O P I N I O N
by Dovid Katz
Yet again, Lithuania’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs is misinvesting assets in cooking up one-sided events that are designed to pose as open and honest forums for a variety of opinions, treating audiences as if they were idiots who will not notice something is amiss.
Genocide Center Official defends neo-Nazi march
A high official of the Genocide Research Center, Ričardas Čekutis, today published an article defending the recent neo-Nazi march in central Vilnius. Lithuania’s major daily, Lietuvos rytas, had identified him ten days ago as one of the key participants and organizers of the 1000-strong March 11th 2011 neo-Nazi march that proceeded through the center of Vilnius on the country’s Independence Day, with the participation of a member of parliament, and a permit from the municipality of Vilnius. The Jewish Community of Lithuania has protested the march on its own website (English translation here).
Baltic Media: Covering the Fascist Marches, or Covering Them Up?
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by Geoff Vasil
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.
595 Bold Lithuanian Citizens Condemn 2011 Neo-Nazi Independence Day March in Central Vilnius
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).
Neo-Nazis March in Central Vilnius on Lithuania’s Independence Day (with government permission and police escorts)
- EYEWITNESS REPORT
- by Sebastian Pammer
- PHOTOS BY SEBASTIAN PAMMER
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.
Two Conferences in Late March: Red-Brown Brigades and — on Antisemitism. . .
According to a 17 January 2011 report on The Baltic Course, the foreign ministers of the Czech Republic and of Lithuania agreed to ‘continue cooperating with an aim to properly evaluate at the EU level the crimes of totalitarian regimes’ (Obfuspeak for the red-brown movement in the European Parliament) as well as ‘the agenda of Lithuania’s chairmanship [of the OSCE] and plans for the conference on antisemitism, which is co-organized by Lithuania and the Czech Republic in Prague’.
‘Today on the Street, Tomorrow in Parliament’ is neo-Nazi Rallying Cry in Kaunas
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.
London Fog: Lithuanian Foreign Ministry invests in a London ‘Graywash’
Letter of Protest signed by Lord Janner, MP MacShane, Professor Dov Levin, Rabbi Barry Marcus & 17 Others
———
DIGNIFIED MORNING PROTEST
Member of the UK Parliament, human rights champion and author RH Denis MacShane (right), led a good-natured moment of protest Monday morning, 7 February in London at the Lithuanian Embassy, 84 Gloucester Place, London W1.
MP MacShane presented a letter of protest to the embassy, drafted and organized by Professor Danny Ben-Moshe (center), who flew in from Melbourne to be at the event. At left is Danny Stone, director of the All-Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism. The letter was signed by 21 people, including academics, political figures, those involved with the fight against antisemitism, representatives of Litvak organizations, and Lithuanian Holocaust survivors. The ambassador declined a written request to meet to discuss the letter.
PRESS: REPORT IN THE JERUSALEM POST ♦ IN THE ECONOMIST (REPLY HERE) ♦ ALFA.LT (8 Feb) ♦ BNS ♦ CLEMENS HENI (DH) ♦ DOVID KATZ (DH) ♦ LRYTAS.LT ♦ JONNY PAUL (JP) ♦ SIMON ROCKER I (JC) ♦SIMON ROCKER II (JC) ♦ SIMON ROCKER III (JC) ♦ NITZA SPIRO (JN) ♦ EFRAIM ZUROFF (JC)
Winner of Lithuanian Government’s “Gold Star” Makes Accusations against Government’s Critics
O P I N I O N
REPRINT FROM “David’s Blog” at: http://davidpaulbooks.wordpress.com/2011/02/10/99/.
As duly noted by the blog’s editor, the author, Professor E. Zimroth, is the recipient of the government’s Lithuanian Millennium Star, awarded to her by the foreign minister in a ceremony at the Lithuanian consulate in New York. That foreign minister’s subsequent comments on the period of Nazi rule in his country are available here.
Professor Zimroth is one of a number of Western Jewish dignitaries honored by the Lithuanian government. The public letter referred to by the author is available here.
Vilnius ‘Yiddish Studies Professor’ tells ‘Economist’ that Litvaks who Speak Out for Lithuanian Jewry are ‘Taliban’

Litvak Taliban?
Dispatched to London by the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry, the state-approved director of the Vilnius Yiddish(-less) Institute bemoaned feeling himself ‘between two Talibans’, referring to the antisemitic establishment in Lithuania on the one hand, and to a polite letter of Litvak protest on the other. The comment was reported in today’s Economist, in an article by Edward Lucas, which also reports that the VYI director, Sarunas Liekis, described himself as ‘a Yiddish-studies professor from Vilnius’ [the article as PDF].
The ‘Taliban’ letter was signed among others, by Lord Janner; British MP Denis MacShane; head of the last active Litvak organization in the world, Joe Melamed; the master historian of the Lithuanian Holocaust Prof. Dov Levin; Rabbi Barry Marcus, leader of London’s Central Synagogue. Text of the ‘Taliban’ letter here. Signatories here.
‘Holocaust Obfuscation’ as Specific Term enters the Diplomatic Lexicon
A report on the website of the Board of Deputies of British Jews reveals that Holocaust Obfuscation is gaining ground rapidly as a highly specific term for the phenomenon of ‘denying without denying’ in the context of the far right’s Double Genocide revisionism prevalent in post-Soviet Eastern Europe and especially the Baltics. The Board’s summary of a meeting held with the Lithuanian ambassador to London, HE Dr Oskaras Jusys noted that:
