Opinion
Red-Brown Commission Renewed: Box Coverage to 15 September 2012
Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Double Games, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, United States, US State Dept Manipulated?, Yad Vashem and Lithuania
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Deception Exposed: The New Documentary Film “Rewriting History”
F I L M
by Graeme Blundell
NOTE: This review appeared in today’s Australian. The original publication is available here and here.
This is one of those documentaries that is so compelling and so confronting it leaves you stunned, a little breathless.
It’s both a kind of contemporary international political thriller and a rigorously researched investigation into a piece of the past and the way it is remembered in the present. Or not remembered, when the truth of that past becomes politically problematic.
The film follows two slightly eccentric professors, the Australian Danny Ben-Moshe from the Centre for Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University and Dovid Katz who taught Yiddish at Vilnius University, the oldest in Lithuania, as they confront the Lithuanian government.
Posted in Arts, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Film, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged Centre for Citizenship and Globalization, Danny Ben-Moshe, Holocaust in Lithuania, Rewriting History
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Families of Holocaust Survivors in the US Release Public Letter on Renewal of Lithuanian Government’s Red-Brown Commission
The following is the text of the statement released today by the signatories enumerated below.
Welcome to Holocaust Halloween: The Political Obfuscation of the Holocaust in Lithuania by Lies, Masquerades, Tricks, and Treats
The Soviet occupation of Lithuania is a painful part of its history.
The mass murder of approximately 95% of Lithuania’s Jewish population (noted by historians as the highest percentage of any European country) during World War two is an abomination and blot on the history of Lithuania and its citizenry.
The two events are not equal. Historical sufferings are not identical.
Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Basheva Ran & Family, Lithuania, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, United States, US State Dept Manipulated?, Yad Vashem and Lithuania
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Joseph Melamed, Head of Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors’ Association, Releases Letter to Director of Yad Vashem
TEL AVIV—The office of the Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel today released the text of the Hebrew letter which the ALJ’s chairman, Tel Aviv attorney Joseph Melamed, sent today to Avner Shalev, the director of Yad Vashem. Images of the letter’s two pages follow (signed letter as PDF). English translation here.
See also the separate English statement which the ALJ released to the media earlier today, following the recent news about the Lithuanian government renewing a much enlarged red-brown commission with the ostensible participation of Yad Vashem.
Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Double Games, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, History, Israel, Joseph Melamed, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Yad Vashem and Lithuania
Tagged Association of Lithuanian Jews, Holocaust in Lithuania, International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occpational Regimes in Lithuania, Joseph Melamed, Yad Vashem + Lithuania
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Holocaust Survivors, Based in Tel Aviv, Issue Statement on Renewal of the Red-Brown Commission
TEL AVIV—The following public statement was received at 2:15 PM Tel Aviv time from the offices of the Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel at King David Boulevard 1. In addition, the ALJ today released the letter written by its chairman to the head of Yad Vashem (English translation here). Background.
Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Double Games, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, History, Human Rights, Israel, Joseph Melamed, Lithuania, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Yad Vashem and Lithuania
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Clemens Heni’s Facebook Reactions to the Red-Brown Commission’s Renewal
The following Facebook entry is reproduced here with permission of the author, Dr. Clemens Heni.
Clemens Heni shared a link.
31 August 2012
1) Dina Porat wrote a piece on the Lithuanian Holocaust years ago, https://defendinghistory.com/readinglist.
2) Her joining the Lithuanian commission makes the institutional / government betrayal coming from Jerusalem even worse: a top honest Holocaust scholar joins with distorters, obfuscationists in a commission that has a track record of throwing its honest Israeli members to the wolves (Arad!), and of using serious foreign scholars with an array of intrigue, complexity, and layered nuance that no foreigner could combat in the multimillion euro den of Holocaust Obfuscation’s European capital.
Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Clemens Heni, Double Games, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Israel, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
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Didier Bertin on Prague Declaration Europe
O P I N I O N
by Didier Bertin
An excerpt from Didier Bertin’s longer work dated 20 July 2012, Planetary Geopolitics and Economics Today, republished here with the author’s permission. The author heads the Society for the Promotion of a European Human Rights Model in France.
The Declarations of Prague of 3 June 2008 and of the European Parliament of 23 September 2008 and their consequences
The contents of the Declaration of Prague of 3 June 2008 and the European Parliament of 23 September 2008, whose target was to take stock of the suffering experienced by the peoples under communist regimes, finally took an ideological and partisan rightist turn.
The progressive parties could have reacted with their own statement rejecting the ideological and revisionist considerations, which focus both on an anti-communist hatred and contempt for Nazi victims and their liberators.
Posted in Didier Bertin, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, France, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, United Nations
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When I Received a Response from the Genocide Center in Vilnius
O P I N I O N
by Evaldas Balčiūnas
When I wrote about three glorified Lithuanian Freedom Army colonels who had in fact been implicated in the Holocaust, I did not realize quite how deep-rooted the shameful worship of Nazi-era war criminals has become here in Lithuania. I used to think that a few mistakes had been made due to patriotic excesses. A year has passed since that article, and I no longer feel that this is just some irksome problem “still encountered now and then”…
Posted in Antanas Baltūsis-Žvejas, Collaborators Glorified, Evaldas Balčiūnas, Free Speech & Democracy, History, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages
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The Case that Broke the Heart of a Nazi-Hunter
O P I N I O N
by Efraim Zuroff
The following is a transcription of the text that appeared in today’s edition of The Australian.
At the end of next week, I will have spent 32 years as a “Nazi-hunter,” trying to facilitate the prosecution of those individuals who in the service of Nazi Germany or in alliance with its regime, engaged in the persecution and/or murder of innocent civilians categorized as “enemies” of the Third Reich. During that period, I have dealt with many dozens of cases of all sorts of criminals from many different nationalities and walks of life, from mass murderers to individuals who were charged with the murder of a single person.
Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Efraim Zuroff, History, Human Rights, Hungary, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
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It’s Not Just About the New Tuskulėnai “Peace Park” in Vilnius
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 translation from the Russian original.
Photo: Milan Chersonski at this desk at the Jewish Community of Lithuania (image © 2012 Jurgita Kunigiškytė). Milan Chersonski section.
Can you imagine a European Union / NATO government investing millions in setting up a “Peace Park” in its beautiful capital city, in memory of people buried at the site of the park, when hundreds of them were Nazi collaborators who eagerly supported the annihilation of the Jewish population of their country?
Earlier this month, VilNews.com prominently published an article by Vincas Karnila, presented as the Introduction to a series called “The Mass Graves in Tuskulėnai.” It is a panegyric to the employees of the Museum of Genocide in Vilnius and the Center for the Study of Genocide and Resistance for their tireless efforts to establish the Tuskulėnai Peace Park. Readers are informed that six articles will follow. [Update: Subsequent articles in Karnila’s series can be found in www.VilNews.com.]
We know from official sources that Soviet KGB victims were buried at Tuskulėnai from 1944 to 1947.
Karnila tells us:
Posted in "Tuskulėnai Peace Park", Arts, Bold Citizens Speak Out, Collaborators Glorified, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Exotic Jewish Tourism, History, Lithuania, Milan Chersonski (1937-2021), Museums, Opinion, Politics of Memory, VilNews.com, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages
Tagged Genocide Center of Lithuania, Tuskulenai Peace Park, VilNews.com, Vincas Karnila
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Wiesenthal Center Protests Australia’s Failure to Extradite Suspected Nazi War Criminal
FROM THE SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTER:
The Simon Wiesenthal Center harshly criticized this morning’s decision by the Australian High Court to block the extradition to Hungary for war crimes of suspected Nazi collaborator Charles (Karoly) Zentai.
“Today is a sad day for Australia, and for justice, but most of all for the Nazis’ victims, their families and those who empathize with their suffering. Our sympathies today are with the Balazs family, whose brother Peter was the victim of Zentai and his accomplices, and who tried to see justice achieved in this case, but were thwarted by the Australian authorities.”
— Efraim Zuroff
Posted in Australia, Efraim Zuroff, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
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НЕ ТОЛЬКО О ТУСКУЛЕНАЙСКОМ ПАРКЕ ПОКОЯ
МНЕНИЕ
Милан Херсонский
Можно ли представить себе правительство европейской страны, члена ЕС и
НАТО, которое в своей прекрасной столице инвестирует миллионы на
создание «Парка тишины» в память о похороненых там людях, если сотни
из них были пособниками нацистов и активно участвовали в уничтожении
еврейского населения своей страны?
Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, In Russian, Media Watch, Milan Chersonski (1937-2021), News & Views, Opinion, VilNews.com
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Ernst Nolte’s Grandson
O P I N I O N
by Clemens Heni
This edited and condensed extract is from the author’s forthcoming book (in press) and appears here with Dr. Heni’s permission. Clemens Heni is founding director of the Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (BICSA).
In June of 1986 the German historian Ernst Nolte (born 1923) started the so-called Historians’ Dispute (Historikerstreit) by publishing an article in the leading conservative daily of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.[i]
Nolte has to be seen as just one of the voices, though a leading one in point of fact, in the nationalist wing in the Federal Republic under Helmut Kohl, who had become chancellor in 1982, with “national identity” as a core element of his politics. The national wave had already begun in the 1970s with the infamous “Hitler wave” films, and with the emergence of the New Right and its German agitator Henning Eichberg and authors such as Martin Walser in 1979.
Posted in Clemens Heni, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Germany, History, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged BICSA, Bloodlands, Clemens Heni, Timothy Snyder
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Crying Over Dead Jews
O P I N I O N
by Geoff Vasil
Lithuania’s Jewish community isn’t immune from the broader issues facing Jewish existence in Eastern Europe and there are the same problems of Jewish identity that crop up in Russia, Bulgaria, Poland and elsewhere. And just as there are Christian Evangelicals and others who support the policies of the right-wing in the State of Israel elsewhere in Europe, there are those same voices among Lithuanian politicians and public figures.
What is perhaps different in Lithuania than elsewhere in Eastern Europe is that this Gentile support for Zionist ideals doesn’t translate into support for the surviving local Jewish community or contribute to a profounder and more sympathetic understanding of the Holocaust.
UPDATE OF 5 AUGUST 2012: This essay was republished with permission in the Algemeiner Journal; in 15min.lt (where it seems to have been taken down, but is still listed in Search); in Jewish Ideas Daily (where it was chosen as one of the editor’s picks for 1 August 2012).
Visitors to Vilnius will see any number of plaques dedicated to famous Jewish residents of Vilnius and several dedicated to the Holocaust. Those who look a little deeper under the surface might find there are a number of agencies, organizations and institutions operating in Vilnius which seemingly are aimed at promoting Jewish history, language and culture. In fact, both the plaques and monuments, and the majority of these “Jewish” organizations, serve as little more than window-dressing and display show-cases the Lithuanian government rolls out as exhibits evidencing Lithuanian sincerity in addressing the incomparable atrocity of the Holocaust.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Christian-Jewish Issues, Double Games, Geoff Vasil, Humor (Of Sorts), Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Israel, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Symbology, What Do Fake Litvak Games Look Like?
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Efraim Zuroff Responds to Tablet Magazine Essay on Timothy Snyder
O P I N I O N
by Efraim Zuroff
- The following comment first appeared in the discussion following David Mikics’s Tablet magazine article on Timothy Snyder (“The Diplomat of Shoah History. Does Yale historian Timothy Snyder absolve Eastern Europe of special complicity in the Holocaust?”). It is reproduced here with Dr. Zuroff’s permission. For further background, see the links below.
Unfortunately, this excellent article by David Mikics focuses almost exclusively on Poland, which for historical reasons is not the place where Snyder’s Bloodlands totally fails to present a historical account of the reality of the Holocaust. A far better place would be the Baltics in general, and Lithuania in particular. In these countries, three important phenomena took place:
Posted in Books, Efraim Zuroff, History, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged Bloodlands, Bloodlands + Lithuania, David Mikics + Tablet, Efraim Zuroff, Timothy Snyder
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Why was a Lithuanian Holocaust Perpetrator who also Murdered Belarusians Given State Honors? Open Letter to the Lithuanian Ambassador to Belarus
O P I N I O N
by Evaldas Balčiūnas
I was surprised to learn that Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaitė appointed you ambassador to Belarus. She said Belarus is an important partner for Lithuania with many ties between our countries, and that cooperation should be on an equal footing, constructive and mutually beneficial. I invite you to think about whether you really are able to do this job, or whether you won’t make international relations worse because of certain matters of the past.
Let me remind you of one such thing. On 31 October 2002, you and then-president Valdas Adamkus signed presidential decree no. 1965 posthumously promoting Juozas Krikštaponis (Krištaponis) to the rank of colonel. The decree mistakenly gave his first name as Jonas, a mistake corrected in presidential decree 1K-849 issued by President Adamkus on 5 January 2007.
Posted in Bold Citizens Speak Out, Collaborators Glorified, Debates on the Postwar "Forest Brothers", Evaldas Balčiūnas, History, Human Rights, Lithuania, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged Jewish + Lithuania
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Landsbergis. Then and Now.
O P I N I O N
Vytautas Landsbergis is one of the giants of the late twentieth century. Along with Poland’s Lech Wałęsa and then-Czechoslovakia’s Václav Havel, Landsbergis led his people from foreign domination to freedom and democracy. Nothing these gentlemen might later on have said or done to their own legacies, particularly in the subsequent century, can detract from their singular achievements in contributing to the downfall of the Soviet Union and the freedom of the subjugated nations on its western periphery.
Posted in Double Games, Dovid Katz, Human Rights, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Legacy of 23 June 1941, LGBTQ Equal Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Roma
Tagged Ambrazevicius Brazaitis, Jewish + Lithuania, Maceva, SLS (Summer Literary Seminars), Vytautas Landsbergis
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Trilingual Memorial Plaque Unveiled on Zhager Town Square
O N – S I T E R E P O R T / O P I N I O N
by Dovid Katz
ZHAGER, northern Lithuania. Over a hundred people gathered here today on the historic town square to unveil a trilingual plaque memorializing the erstwhile Jewish population of thousands in the town, today Žagarė. The event was incorporated into the annual Cherry Festival and suitably entitled “You can’t fudge the history.”
SEE ALSO THE REPORTS BY ROD FREEDMAN AND SARA MANOBLA
THE QUESTION: IS IT THE ONLY TOWN-CENTER IN ALL THE LAND WITH CLEAR AND TRUE WORDS ON THE TRUE FATE OF THE JEWISH POPULATION?
The text — in English, Lithuanian and Yiddish — summarizes the unvarnished history, with prominent reference to local Lithuanian collaboration (though historians will quibble with the use of “some” in place of “many” among other points). It is placed right in the center of town, rather than at a mass grave site deep in the forest; that might well be a first in modern Lithuanian history.
Posted in Commemorations for Destroyed Communities, Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Dovid Katz, Events, Exotic Jewish Tourism, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, South Africa, The Great SLS About-Face, Vilnius Jewish Public Library, Zháger (Žagarė)
Tagged Azubalis, Cliff Marks, Holocaust in Lithuania, Jewish + Lithuania, Lithuanian shtetl, Litvak, Roger Cohen, Valdas Balciunas, Zagare, Zhager, Zhager (Zagare)
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The Steve Felder – Olga Zabludoff Debate (in SAJR, May-July 2012)
1: Lithuania – a Past Not Forgotten
by Steve Felder
Given the Lithuanian heritage of the overwhelming majority of South African Jews, it is somewhat surprising that seemingly few have visited modern-day Lithuania. Bucking the trend, I visited during March with a small yet prominent delegation of Jewish business executives, on a “mission” arranged by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), the largest Jewish humanitarian and welfare organization in the world.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Citizenship, Collaborators Glorified, Double Games, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, News & Views, Olga Zabludoff, Opinion, South Africa
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The Holocaust? It Happens to Everyone…
O P I N I O N
by Algis Davidavičius
The following is a translation by Geoff Vasil, approved by the author, of the original Lithuanian text that appeared on Anarchija.lt. The original title translates: “Notes of a Half-Russian (3) [or, via word play: Inscriptions from the Cellar]: The Holocaust? It Happens to Everyone.”
Algis Davidavičius
Lately I can barely think about Lithuania, my own society, without seeing the image of the “chronic patient” with all of his “diseases.” A society which is healthy, where the absolute majority of people making it up feel warm encouragement to fulfill themselves constructively and actively, to find a meaningful place in that society for their own lives…
Where is this society? How would it look? Or is this only last year’s Marxist dream? What is “health?”
Most likely all societies are sick in their own way, but I live in my society, or with it (to speak more precisely). If I may be frank, I am not really concerned with the health or opportunities of Israeli society as I am part of Lithuania’s. What the hell is going on with us?
Posted in Algis Davidavičius, Antisemitism & Bias, Bold Citizens Speak Out, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Lithuania, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged Algis (Algirdas) Davidavicius, Holocaust in Lithuania, Jewish + Lithuania
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