VILNIUS — Observers of the sometimes eerie human rights scene here thought they had seen it all, or most of it, but an elected parliamentarian’s latest stunt was seen as a new setback for Lithuania’s image even by conservatives on social issues.
Opinion
Lithuanian MP’s Gay-Bashing Hits New Low of Adolescent Unseemliness and Social Immaturity
Posted in Free Speech & Democracy, Human Rights, LGBTQ Equal Rights, News & Views, Opinion
Tagged Gay Rights in Lithuania, human rights in Lithuania, LGBT rights in Lithuania, Lithuanian Gay League (LGL)
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“Baltic Times” Does It Again: A Page of Hate Calling for Expulsion of a Million Legal Residents in Latvia
O P I N I O N / M E D I A W A T C H
Last May, this journal reported on a full page of racial hate directed at Latvia’s “Russians” (a cover term for Russian-speakers of a multitude of backgrounds). It had appeared in the Baltic Times, under cover of the responsibility-shirking label “Advertisement.” Heaven help us all if the word advertisement can in European Union and NATO countries cover for spreads of hate and incitement to violation of human rights. In this case, the demand is for the veritable expulsion of a million peaceful, legal residents of a member state of these international alliances, both of which are based on the shared commitment to uphold the human rights of all.
Rather than repeat the commentary offered at the page’s earlier appearance, we refer back to it here on the occasion of its reappearance in this month’s Baltic Times (dated 31 October — 27 November 2013), that occupies all of page 5 in the main news (!) section.
Posted in Human Rights, Latvia, Media Watch, News & Views, Opinion, Racism, Russian Speakers' Personal Status
Tagged Baltic Times, human rights (Latvia), Russian speakers in Latvia
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If Israel Can Honor the USSR’s Unquestionable Role in Bringing Down Hitler, Why Can’t France and the European Union?
O P I N I O N
by Didier Bertin
From the very beginning, the source of our problems is to be found in an inaccurate narrative of World War II that is rather widespread here in France. This can be explained in part by France’s position as a de facto ally of the Axis at first, starting from the time of Petain’s surrender to Hitler’s forces in 1940. It was rather late in the war that a substantial segment of society in the country per se (as opposed to the heroic resisters who had joined the Allies outside surrendered France’s borders) became a stalwart ally of the United States and Great Britain, at a time when that was by a confluence of circumstances most convenient for all three countries.
Posted in Didier Bertin, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, France, History, Israel, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged Didier Bertin, Double Genocide, Role of Red Army in defeating Hitler and Nazi Germany
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Antisemitism Denial — An English Intellectual Speciality
A German translation of this article appeared in Die Presse (Vienna) on 7 November 2013. The original English text appears here with the author’s permission. Dr. Denis MacShane, a former British MP and Foreign Office minister writes widely on European politics. His Globalising Hatred: The New Antisemitism (Weidenfeld and Nicolson) appeared in 2008. See also Defending History’s Denis MacShane section.
O P I N I O N
by Denis MacShane
England has the most provincial intellectual class in Europe. Very few professors (unless they are foreign language teachers or specialists in say French or Italian history) will speak and read a foreign language fluently. They do not pick up Le Monde, Der Spiegel or El Pais and wait, sometime for years, for a translation of a key work published in a European language to appear in London.
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Denis MacShane, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, United Kingdom
Tagged antisemitism in the UK, Balfour Declaration, Cambon Declaration, Denis MacShane, Double Genocide
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Chersonski Replies to Aleksandravičius on the 2012 Kaunas Reburial of the 1941 Nazi Puppet Prime Minister
O P I N I O N
by Milan Chersonski
Milan Chersonski (Chersonskij) was for a dozen years (1999-2011) editor-in-chief of Jerusalem of Lithuania, the official quadrilingual (English-Lithuanian-Russian-Yiddish) newspaper of the Jewish Community of Lithuania. He was previously (1979-1999) director of the Yiddish Folk Theater of Lithuania. The views he expresses in Defending History are his own. Photo: Milan Chersonski (image © Jurgita Kunigiškytė). Milan Chersonski section.
Real Heroes and Supposed Heroes
Who Protested and Why?
In May 2012 solemn funeral events were held in Kaunas: the ashes of the interim prime minister of the Provisional Government of Lithuania (hereinafter PG) Juozas Ambrazevičius-Brazaitis were transferred from the state of Connecticut in the United States, where he was buried in 1974, to Kaunas, the former temporary capital of Lithuania. There the ashes were reburied.
Posted in Bold Citizens Speak Out, Collaborators Glorified, History, Lithuania, Media Watch, Milan Chersonski (1937-2021), News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Yiddish Affairs
Tagged 1941 Provisional Government of Lithuania, Egidijus Aleksandravicius, Egidijus Aleksandravicius + Holocaust, Egidijus Aleksandravicius + Sugihara Foundation, Holocaust in Lithuania, Juozas Ambrazevicius Brazaitis, Lithuania Activist Front (LAF), Milan Chersonski, Milan Chersonskij, Valdas Bartusavičius, Vytautas Magnus University
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Dr. Efraim Zuroff’s Speech at the Annual Memorial for Lithuanian Holocaust Victims
O P I N I O N
by Efraim Zuroff
Authorized English translation of Dr. Zuroff’s speech at the annual commemoration event held by the Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel, received from the Israel Office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Hebrew original is here.
Good evening,
Attorney Yosef Melamed asked me to update you regarding the recent events which have taken place since the last memorial event a year ago, concerning the attempts by the Lithuanian government to distort the history of the Holocaust and to minimize or deny the participation of many Lithuanians in the murder of Jews, not only in Lithuania but also beyond its borders.
Posted in Commemorations for Destroyed Communities, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Efraim Zuroff, Events, Israel, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged Alfredas Rukšėnas, Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel, Efraim Zuroff, Emanuel Zingeris, Genocide Center Vilnius, Holocaust in Lithuania, Joseph Melamed, Milan Chersonski, Pinchos Fridberg, Rachel Kostanian
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Riga, Roots and Reflections
M E M O I R S / O P I N I O N
by Monica Lowenberg
In 2011, I made my first journey to Riga, the capital city of Latvia.
A few months before, I had been tracked down by two distant cousins on a genealogy site, quite out of the blue. I remember the strange feeling I had when one of them asked me if I felt “Latvian.” Latvian? German Christian, German Jewish, British, yes — but Latvian Jewish? No.
Posted in Latvia, Memoirs, Monica Lowenberg, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Riga's Waffen SS Marches, United Kingdom
Tagged Holocaust in Latvia, Holocaust in the Baltics, Monica Lowenberg, Paul Lovenbergs, Riga Ghetto
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Efraim Zuroff’s Speech at the 28 October 2013 Annual Memorial Program of the Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel [in Hebrew]
דבריו של ד″ר אפרים זורוף באזכרה השנתית לקורבנות השואה בליטא
כ″ה חשון תשע″ד 28/10/2013
ערב טוב לכולם,
עו″ד יוסף מלמד בקש ממני לעדכן אותכם לגבי האירועים שהתרחשו מאז האזכרה האחרונה לפני שנה בנסיונות של ממשלת ליטא לעוות את ההסטוריה של השואה, וכמו כן גם למזער או להעלים את השתתפותם של ליטאים כל כך רבים ברצח יהודים בליטא, אבל גם מחוץ לגבולותיה.
Posted in Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Efraim Zuroff, Israel, Lithuania, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel, Efraim Zuroff + Lithuania, Holocaust in Lithuania, October 28th Holocaust memorial (Kaunas/Kovno Great Action)
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The “Humanity” of the Rewriters of History
O P I N I O N
by Evaldas Balčiūnas
An abstract, sometimes called a summary, is a short explanation of the salient parts of an article or book. Abstracts are useful for surveying a large body of literature on a given topic, and aid in selecting specific works for a fuller reading. This selection very much depends on the honesty of the person doing the selecting.
I am interested in Holocaust research. I use the internet and search engines, and often they point to the webpage of the Lithuanian government sponsored Genocide and Resistance Research Center of Lithuania, known for short as the Genocide Center. Its own website has many summaries for this topic. These abstracts often have a strange tone.
Posted in Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Evaldas Balčiūnas, Lithuania, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages
Tagged Evaldas Balciunas, Genocide and Resistance Research Center of Lithuania, Genocide Centre in Vilnius, Kražiai (Krozh), Nemakščiai (Namoksht, Nemoksht), Vidukle
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Questions and Answers on the Holocaust-Gulag “Competitive Martyrology”
O P I N I O N
by Michael Shafir (Cluj-Napoca, Romania)
1. Approximately when did the drive to equate the Holocaust and the sufferings endured by people under Communist regimes start?
It is very difficult to pinpoint an exact date. In the West, a number of Sovietologists have long driven attention to the fact that the horrible crimes perpetuated by Stalin and his henchmen in East Central Europe deserved the attention and the opprobrium that Nazism met with after the Second World War. Due to Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s famous book Gulag, these crimes soon began to be referred to under the synthetic name of that book. The collapse of the Communist regimes in the region in 1989 and the implosion of the Soviet Union in 1991 intensified that drive, which also found an impulse in the once popular (but later criticized) “totalitarian model.” That model was now revived, finding support particularly in the eastern part of Europe that had suffered under Soviet domination. Western historians were (and still are) quite divided over this issue. For example, Robert Conquest, who produced several important books on Stalinist crimes, was reluctant to place the Holocaust and the Gulag on the same footing. On the other hand, Stéphane Courtois, who edited and contributed to the Black Book of Communism, not only embraced the comparison, but insisted on
Posted in Croatia, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, History, Michael Shafir (1944-2022), News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, United Nations
Tagged Double Genocide, Holocaust Denial, Holocaust Obfuscation, Michael Shafir, Nazi and Soviet crimes, Prague Declaration (2008)
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A Musical Tribute to the Rumbula Victims
M U S I C / O P I N I O N
by Roland Binet (Braine-l’Alleud, Belgium)
SOUND TRACKS OF THE AUTHOR’S COMPOSITIONS:
Rumbula
Threnody
Posted in Arts, Latvia, Litvak Affairs, Music, News & Views, Opinion, Roland Binet
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Three Baltic Governments Sponsor “Round Table” at London U on 5 November: Will Nazi Collaborators be Glorified?
O P I N I O N
by Dovid Katz
It is both right and laudable that University College London, the School of Slavonic and East European Studies and other partners are organizing a “Round Table Discussion: Anti-Soviet Resistance in the Baltic States” in central London, scheduled for 5 November 2013, 2 to 6:30 PM, with free admission for all (free tickets here; Facebook page here).
Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Debates on the Postwar "Forest Brothers", Human Rights, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, UCL Manipulated?, United Kingdom
Tagged anti-fascist + London, far right history revisionism London, Latvia Estonia + Holocaust history, Lithuania, SSEES, UCL
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Simon Malkes Speaks at the Lithuanian Parliament
The following is the text provided by the office of Simon Malkes (Paris) of the speech he delivered at a conference held at the Lithuanian parliament on 22 September 2013, as part of the series of events of the Fourth International Litvak Congress in Vilnius, Lithuania. Mr. Malkes, a Vilna native and survivor of the Vilna Ghetto, is president of the ORT school network.
Simon Malkes (right) speaks to an old friend on Gedimino Boulevard in central Vilnius, after his speech at a session of the Fourth International Litvak Congress held at the Lithuanian Parliament (Seimas).
My name is Simon Malkes. I am a French citizen, living in Paris since 1952. I am a rare survivor, among the less than one percent of Vilna Jewry. I survived thanks to the German officer Karl Plagge who managed the HKP automobile works camp in Vilnius between 1941 and 1944. In 2005, I succeeded to obtain from Yad Vashem in Jerusalem the Righteous Among the Nations title, posthumously, for Karl Plagge.
Posted in France, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Simon Malkes
Tagged Fourth Litvak Congress, Jewish property + citizenship in Lithuania, Simon Malkes, Vilna Ghetto
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English Translation of the Lithuanian Text on the Vilna Ghetto Provided by the Office of the Chief Archivist of Lithuania…
The following is an English translation, by Geoff Vasil, from the original Lithuanian text that appears on the website of the Office of the Chief Archivist of Lithuania concerning the Vilna Ghetto, on the occasion of the seventieth anniversary of its liquidation on September 23, 1943.
In an important article that appeared in Lithuanian in Bernardinai.lt, and in English in the Lithuania Tribune, author Sergejus Kanovičius pointed out the remarkable disparity of tone between the Lithuanian version on the Chief Archivist’s website (that appears below in English translation), and the English version provided on the Chief Archivist’s website…
Posted in Documents, Double Games, History, Lithuania, Media Watch, News & Views, Opinion, Poland, Politics of Memory
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Keep the Local History Out of Mind?
REVIEW OF KEEP ME IN MIND
by Geoff Vasil
The Contemporary Art Center’s reading room in Vilnius is hosting an unusual-for-Lithuania Holocaust event called Keep Me in Mind. Briefly, visitors are invited to wander among different tables where good-looking and polite people await them with small boxes and sheaves of papers. When you sit down the narrator at the table tells the story of an individual Holocaust survivor, from childhood to the present. Almost all of the survivors seem to now live in Haifa, Israel. One survivor, Benjamin Ginzburg, came from Vilnius.
Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Arts, Geoff Vasil, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged "Keep me in Mind", Geoff Vasil, Holocaust in Lithuania, Holocaust Politics
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Learning from the King
O P I N I O N
by Danny Ben-Moshe (Melbourne)
As I watch the news of tourists excluded from national parks in America, as Federal Government is shutdown, I recall my visit to Washington DC’s famous National Mall, when I was recently in the city for a screening of Rewriting History.
I viewed several memorials of inspiring individuals: Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt. People who said no to hate and tried to foster positive political change. Physically I was in the American capital, but in the midst of Rewriting History screenings, my head was in an East European space, and this was the prism through which I saw many of the city’s magnificent exhibits. One memorial resonated with me more than any other: The Martin Luther King Memorial.
Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Danny Ben-Moshe, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
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Getting It Right: Three Memoirs Tell It Like It Is
B O O K S
by Olga Zabludoff
Ponary Diary 1941-1943: A Bystander’s Account of a Mass Murder, by Kazimierz Sakowicz; edited by Yitzhak Arad. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005
Ruta’s Closet, by Keith Morgan with Ruth Kron Sigal. London: Unity Press (an imprint of Unicorn Press Ltd), 2013
Malice, Murder, and Manipulation: One Man’s Quest for Truth, by Grant Arthur Gochin. Los Angeles, 2013
The concept “Holocaust memoir” encompasses many subgenres in time and place. This review will cover the interlocking treatments by three very different types of witnesses:
Posted in Books, Lithuania, News & Views, Olga Zabludoff, Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged and Manipulation, Grant Arthur Gochin, Kazimierz Sakowicz, Keith Morgan, Malice, Mujrder, Olga Zabludoff, Ponaryh Diary, Ruta's Closet, Ruth Kron Sigal
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Inclusion and Occlusion
O P I N I O N
A REVIEW OF THE PRAGUE PLATFORM’S TRAVELLING EXHIBITION “TOTALITARIANISM IN EUROPE” PAID FOR BY THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION (CURRENTLY ON SHOW AT TUSKULĖNAI PARK IN VILNIUS, LITHUANIA)
by Geoff Vasil
At the edge of downtown Vilnius, along the river Neris where the buildings suddenly turn old and worn and bushes, trees and grass take on unmanicured forms, across the bridge whose entree is gated by the Danish and British embassies to Lithuania, there is a strange park nestled in between some very empty Soviet-looking and much older buildings.
Posted in "Tuskulėnai Peace Park", Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, EU, Geoff Vasil, History, Museums, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Prague "Platform"
Tagged Double Genocide, Geoff Vasil, Prague Declaration of 2008, Prague Platform on European Conscience and Communism, Tuskulenai Peace Park (Vilnius)
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An Old Jew From Vilna Writes a Letter to Moshe Rabeinu
O P I N I O N
by Pinchos Fridberg
Some facts
In 1998 the “International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes in Lithuania” was established by Lithuanian presidential decree.
The commission is directed in tandem by Emanuelis Zingeris and Ronaldas Račinskas. The former is the commission’s chairman and a Conservative MP in the Lithuanian Seimas, while the latter is the commission’s executive director. The Lithuanian Jewish Community has no representation on the commission.
Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Bold Citizens Speak Out, Humor (Of Sorts), Lithuania, News & Views, Opinion, Pinchos Fridberg, Politics of Memory, Yiddish Affairs
Tagged Emanuelis Zingeris, Holocaust in Lithuania, International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania, Pinchos Fridberg
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An Inalienable Right to be Schizophrenic?
O P I N I O N / E Y E W I T N E S S R E P O R T
by Geoff Vasil
On Friday, September 13, 2013, the Baltos Lankos publishing firm in Vilnius held a discussion at their main book sales outlet in Vilnius to present a book edited by Professor Jurgita Verbickienė about the Jews of Lithuania.
The discussion on this doubly auspicious day—eve of Yom Kippur and Friday the 13th—began with Verbickienė presenting a short sketch of the book and two other participants in the discussion, Zigmas Vitkus and Simonas Gurevičius. The latter is the executive director of the Lithuanian Jewish Community. The topic was how Lithuanians view Jews.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Books, Events, Geoff Vasil, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged Jurgita Verbickiene, Lietuvos zydai, Zeppelinus
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