Opinion

Why Does the State Commemorate Murderers?

Posted on 25 April 2011 by Defending History

O P I N I O N
by Evaldas Balčiūnas
 

Probably every mature person living in Lithuania has heard about the mass murder of people at the beginning of World War II. During the first months of the war ― in a period of less than half a year ― more than 100,000 people were murdered, most of them Jews. 

“Evil deeds uncondemned often end up idolized.”

It is sad, but there are more than enough facts corroborating that Lithuanians — regular officers of the Lithuanian military — took part in the mass murders of civilians, women and children.

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Posted in Bold Citizens Speak Out, Collaborators Glorified, Debates on the Postwar "Forest Brothers", Evaldas Balčiūnas, Human Rights, Lithuania, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages | Comments Off on Why Does the State Commemorate Murderers?

Freedom of Speech is not ‘Pick and Choose’: On the Paleckis Trial in Vilnius

Posted on 14 April 2011 by Defending History

O P I N I O N

by  Dovid Katz

DefendingHistory.com disagrees with each and every word that Lithuanian politician Algirdas Paleckis has uttered about the events in Vilnius, Lithuania, of January 13th 1991 when courageous unarmed protesters for freedom and independence were mercilessly murdered by armed Soviet forces.

As students of Voltaire (though the famous quote is by his biographer Evelyn Beatrice Hall), we disapprove of all that Paleckis has said about January 1991 (and consider it to be sheer nonsense), but we will join the fight to the finish for his right to say it and not be subject to trial in a member-state of the European Union and NATO.

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Posted in Free Speech & Democracy, Human Rights, Media Watch, Opinion, US State Dept Manipulated? | Comments Off on Freedom of Speech is not ‘Pick and Choose’: On the Paleckis Trial in Vilnius

Has the Forward Association abandoned Elementary Ethics?

Posted on 3 April 2011 by Defending History

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.

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Lithuanian Fascists Checking Lists of Citizens who Oppose Fascism

Posted on 29 March 2011 by Defending History

O P I N I O N

by Geoff Vasil

Ričardas Čekutis, an organizer of the March 11th 2011 neo-Nazi march through central Vilnius and the head of public relations at Lithuania’s Genocide Research Center, an institution nominally tasked with (and paid for by the taxpayers) to promote genocide research and education, recently answered some criticism of himself and his ideas, a neo-fascist political party and neo-Nazi marches, questions that were posed by Darius Kuolys.

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Foreign Ministry cooking another one-sided ‘open forum’, this time in — Kaunas

Posted on 28 March 2011 by Defending History

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.

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Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Double Games, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Israel, News & Views, Opinion | Comments Off on Foreign Ministry cooking another one-sided ‘open forum’, this time in — Kaunas

How to hold an academic conference in a Soviet (and occasionally, in a post-Soviet) milieu

Posted on 27 March 2011 by Defending History

O P I N I O N

by Geoff Vasil

1. Line up the names of people who agree with you and are ideologically reliable or beholden to you for their ticket there and back. Best to use locals as far as possible with a big-wheel foreign invitee or two, provided they’re safe.

2. Do some stuff, make a program, maybe provide a tour to foreign academics, get them sauced. The program of events can be created on the fly, tailored to meet the needs of attracting the right set of people, using up funds allocated, etc. Be creative.

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Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Geoff Vasil, Human Rights, Humor (Of Sorts), Opinion | Comments Off on How to hold an academic conference in a Soviet (and occasionally, in a post-Soviet) milieu

Didier Bertin replies

Posted on 25 March 2011 by Defending History

O P I N I O N

by Didier Bertin

Reply to the letter of 14 March 2011 from the Chief of Staff of Viviane Reding by Didier Bertin (Society for the Promotion of the European Human Rights Model)

ENGLISH VERSION

PREFACE: We have started to exchange letters with Viviane Reding, Vice President of the European Commission and her Chief of Staff Martin Selmayr regarding our opposition in the name of European Values to the dangerous tendency to consider that the former Communist regimes committed crimes equivalent to those of Nazism and thus undermining the uniqueness of the Holocaust.

We have noted in your last letter that European Union has allocated resources to finance programs safeguarding the memory of the crimes committed by totalitarian regimes including Nazism. We thus understand that Nazism is now considered as a totalitarian regime among others and has lost its usual specificity of symbol of the highest degree of horror reached in our civilized word.

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Posted in Didier Bertin, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Opinion | Comments Off on Didier Bertin replies

Baltic Media: Covering the Fascist Marches, or Covering Them Up?

Posted on 19 March 2011 by Defending History

 

O P I N I O N

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.

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Posted in Celebrations of Fascism, Estonia, Geoff Vasil, Human Rights, Kaunas, Latvia, Neo-Nazi & Fascist Marches, News & Views, Opinion, Riga's Waffen SS Marches, Vilnius | Comments Off on Baltic Media: Covering the Fascist Marches, or Covering Them Up?

Reply to Rokas Grajauskas: Condemnation of Communism Does Not Require Submission to Double Genocide, Holocaust Obfuscation, or the Recent Deterioration in Civil Society and Free Speech in Lithuania

Posted on 7 March 2011 by Defending History

 

O P I N I O N

by Dovid Katz

NOTE: This reply to the Lithuanian Foreign Policy Review paper by Rokas Grajauskas first appeared on the website of LFPR (direct link here).

[UPDATE of 1 March 2013]: The journal refused to publish a reply, but after an intervention from Prof. MEP Leonidas Donskis it was uploaded on the journal’s website for a time, and then removed.]

◊

Rokas Grajauskas cites me in his recent article on these pages as invoking the notion Holocaust Obfuscation (a term I proposed at a London seminar in February 2008, then formally in 2009) to refer to “the efforts of the post-Communist countries to revive the memory of Stalin’s crimes.” Nothing could be further from the truth. The web journal I edit, DefendingHistory.com, although dedicated primarily to the battle against trivialization of the Holocaust and the concomitant racism and antisemitism of the new Far Right in Eastern Europe, contains a page on Soviet crimes, where I wholeheartedly embrace such Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly resolutions as 1096 (1996) and 1481 (2006), which wisely and rightly condemn Soviet crimes. It is vital that the full extent of these crimes be documented, the victims honored, the subject properly taught in international curricula, museums and memorializing institutions established, and justice pursued to the full extent of law. It is every bit as vital that Western commitment to Baltic security and independence remain unwavering, what with a huge unpredictable neighbor “with a certain past” (and unclear future) situated to the immediate east.

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Posted in Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Dovid Katz, EU, Free Speech & Democracy, Human Rights, Hungary, Lithuania, Opinion, Politics of Memory, US State Dept Manipulated? | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Reply to Rokas Grajauskas: Condemnation of Communism Does Not Require Submission to Double Genocide, Holocaust Obfuscation, or the Recent Deterioration in Civil Society and Free Speech in Lithuania

Fascism in National Cellophane

Posted on 16 February 2011 by Defending History

O P I N I O N

by Nida Vasiliauskaitė

There is a view that pro-fascist tendencies in Lithuania are nothing more than a bubble blown by the New Left, an informal intellectual and political movement (not a party), that it is a case of “Communist slander” aimed at peaceful and likeable patriots: those who simply love their Homeland, are proud of it and who—unlike the angry folks from the New Left  who are “attacking” good people for no reason at all—do not seek enemies (and do not find them), degrade nobody and are a threat to nobody.

No, for them everyone is a friend. (How different they are from, for example, Nida Vasiliauskaitė, who, as they will tell you,  “hates everyone” simply and purely at her own whim and out of bad will, or because she has been “paid” by all the comrades of  “Brussels” and  “Moscow”  banded together. They emphasize that which unites, not that which divides…)

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Posted in Bold Citizens Speak Out, Celebrations of Fascism, Human Rights, Nida Vasiliauskaitė, Opinion, Racism | Comments Off on Fascism in National Cellophane

Text of the Letter Delivered to the Lithuanian Ambassador in London on 7 February 2011

Posted on 7 February 2011 by Defending History

Text of the letter delivered to the Lithuanian ambassador in London Monday morning 7 February 2011 by the Right Honourable Denis MacShane MP. The letter was drafted by Danny Ben-Moshe and evolved with input from the other signatories. Signatories include Lord Janner of Braunstone, Rabbi Barry Marcus of Central Synagogue, and Professor Ada Rapoport-Albert, head of the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at University College London which hosted the main conference. PDF here. Background and further links to press coverage here.

H.E. Dr Oskaras Jusys

Ambassador
Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania
84 Gloucester Place
London W1U 6AU

7 February 2011

Dear Ambassador

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Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Antisemitism & Bias, Documents, Dov Levin (1925 - 2016), Efraim Zuroff, EU, Events, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, UCL Manipulated?, United Kingdom | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Text of the Letter Delivered to the Lithuanian Ambassador in London on 7 February 2011

Who Got Stupid, the European Parliament or Us?

Posted on 7 February 2011 by Defending History

O P I N I O N

by Leonidas Donskis

The European Parliament recently reacted by way of a resolution to a piece of draft legislation by a member of the parliament of the Republic of Lithuania, Petras Gražulis. If enacted, his legislation would have de jure expelled from public life homosexual citizens in the country. Since then, several comments  have already rung out in our public space in Lithuania, whose essence, despite differences in levels of nuance, is similar: that the European Parliament is allegedly interfering too minutely and grandly in the affairs of the Republic of Lithuania; that it is allegedly violating the principle of subsidiarity; that it is applying double standards because it was so careful in commenting upon the sins of France in the sphere of human rights but ruthlessly attacks the new member states, first and foremost Lithuania.

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Posted in EU, Free Speech & Democracy, Human Rights, Leonidas Donskis, LGBTQ Equal Rights, News & Views, Opinion | Comments Off on Who Got Stupid, the European Parliament or Us?

“This Campaign Makes Me Really Angry”

Posted on 4 February 2011 by Defending History

O P I N I O N

by Shimon Alperovich

The following is Rachel Croucher’s authorized translation of the interview with Lithuanian Jewish Community chairperson Dr. Shimon Alperovich published in German by Frank Brendle in Taz.de.

YEAR OF REMEMBRANCE: In the Lithuanian year of remembrance the Holocaust is under threat of being forgotten while surviving Jewish partisans have been the subject of a campaign for some years. Conversation with Simonas Alperavičius, President of the Jewish Community of Lithuania. INTERVIEW BY FRANK BRENDLE, 04.02.2011

Mr Alperavičius, the 70th anniversary of the Nazi occupation of Lithuania falls this year, as well as twenty years of independence from the Soviet Union. What will take priority?

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Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Collaborators Glorified, Double Games, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Rachel Croucher, Shimon Alperovich (1928 – 2014) | Comments Off on “This Campaign Makes Me Really Angry”

A Shameful Shoah Whitewash

Posted on 4 February 2011 by Defending History

O P I N I O N

by Efraim Zuroff

This comment appeared in today’s Jewish Chronicle (London) and is reposted here by the author’s permission.

◊
A financially-strapped small Eastern European country is spending tens of thousands of pounds to sponsor an extraordinarily large number of political and cultural events ― lectures, concerts, exhibitions and films ― in London next week. Why? That is the obvious question for the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry, several Lithuanian cultural institutions, and local UK partners.

Under the heading No Simple Stories; Jewish-Lithuanian relationships: facing difficult questions, the events are projected as an honest attempt to address the ostensibly complex history of Lithuania’s once very large Jewish community, which was irreparably decimated during the Holocaust — 96.4% of the 220,000 Jews who lived in Lithuania under the Nazi occupation were slaughtered, with the help of a large number of local collaborators.

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Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Double Games, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Efraim Zuroff, EU, Events, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, History, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, UCL Manipulated?, United Kingdom | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on A Shameful Shoah Whitewash

Lithuanian Jews, Holocaust Survivors, Specialists who Disagree with the Lithuanian Government — Shut Out of London Conference

Posted on 1 February 2011 by Defending History

O P I N I O N

by Dovid Katz

The Holocaust Survivor community is responding with a mixture of sadness and defiance to news that the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry, which actively coordinated the recent attempt (December 2010) to underpin ‘Double Genocide’ and downgrade the Holocaust in European Union law (see top story on home page), is now financing, in partnership with (naive?) parties in London, a starkly one-sided colloquium on ‘Jewish-Lithuanian Relations Between Coexistence and Violence’ on 6-7 Feb 2011 in London.

London Fog: Will the Conference be a ‘Graywash’?

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Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Events, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, News & Views, Opinion, Rothschild Foundation Europe (Hanadiv): Lithuanian Issues, UCL Manipulated?, United Kingdom | Comments Off on Lithuanian Jews, Holocaust Survivors, Specialists who Disagree with the Lithuanian Government — Shut Out of London Conference

A rather simple story: Lithuania, the Jews, and the Shoah

Posted on 26 January 2011 by Defending History

 

O P I N I O N

by Clemens Heni

An Open Letter to the Scholars Reading Papers at the 6-7 February UCL-Warburg Symposium in London

On February 6 and 7 of 2011, there will be a conference held in London, entitled “No simple stories: Jewish-Lithuanian relations between coexistence and violence”. Taking into account that some 95% of Lithuanian Jews were killed during the Holocaust — the highest percentage in all of Europe — this is quite a heartbreaking title, isn’t it?

“No simple stories” — really? For those Lithuanians involved, killing Jews was quite simple, even before the Germans arrived.

“No simple stories.”

Really?

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Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Clemens Heni, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, History, Lithuania, Opinion, Politics of Memory, UCL Manipulated?, United Kingdom, Yitzhak Arad | Comments Off on A rather simple story: Lithuania, the Jews, and the Shoah

Polish Ambassador to Lithuania HE Janusz Skolimowski Speaks Out Boldly on Latest Holocaust Denial

Posted on 20 January 2011 by Defending History

VILNIUS—The following is the text of HE Polish ambassador Janusz Skolimowski’s 26 November letter in Veidas, which the ambassador copied to Lithuania’s Minister of the Interior. This authorized English translation was kindly provided to Defending History by the Embassy of Poland here. The letter followed one by seven other ambassadors regarding the same events in Lithuania.

 

From: Ambassador of the Republic of Poland in Vilnius
To: Editor-in-Chief of the weekly magazine “Veidas”

For the attention of: Mr. Raimundas Palaitis, Minister of the Interior of the Republic of Lithuania

Concerns: Article of Petras Stankeras dated November 14th, 2010:
“The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg — the biggest legal farce in history”

Dear Mr. Editor-in-Chief,

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Lithuania and Tolerance

Posted on 10 January 2011 by Defending History

O P I N I O N

by Geoff Vasil

2010 was an astonishing year for human rights in Lithuania. Toward the beginning of 2010 there were public demonstrations in the capital by self-designated patriotic youth, decked out in various paramilitary costumes, in plain clothes bearing variations on swastikas and wearing white arm bands. These Lithuanian neo-Nazis marched across the main streets and squares in Vilnius on independence day (March 11th), made a showing to protest against a silent march of people from the main square to a cemetery to honor the dead on Soviet Victory Day (May 9th), and most spectacularly managed to outnumber 10 to 1 Lithuania’s first gay pride march (May 8th) with a violent mob throwing objects, hurtling insults and proudly waving flags with pseudo-swastikas behind police lines. The gay pride march almost didn’t happen, as it hadn’t many years in a row, because of bureaucratic impedance from the Vilnius municipality over issuing a permit and from law enforcement and the parliament. The neo-Nazi marches, on the other hand, had support from within parliament, MPs who personally asked for, and got, permits from the city for a march. Several MPs also came to the anti-gay pride protest with bullhorns, stormed police barriers and generally foamed at the mouth, caught on camera.

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Posted in Free Speech & Democracy, Geoff Vasil, Human Rights, LGBTQ Equal Rights, News & Views, Opinion | Comments Off on Lithuania and Tolerance

When Past is Not Even Past

Posted on 4 January 2011 by Defending History

O P I N I O N

by Mikhail Iossel

This comment is a response to the statement recently published by the Lithuanian Human Rights Association (LHRA).

What’s genuinely sad, with regard to the pathetic document in question — among other things of similar revealing character, to be sure — is the realization that none of those self-sufficient, accomplished, educated, and supposedly respectable people, the LHRA leadership, are likely to exist in a vacuum. They are surrounded by the concentric circles of friends, colleagues, students… fellow human-rights (!) activists — presumably, at least to some significant extent, sharing their views on those vile and treacherous, kinless-cosmopolite Jews’ international conspiracy to humiliate Lithuania by, you know, constantly guilt-tripping and browbeating the poor little innocent freedom-loving country into remembering and finishing the unpleasant business of accounting for this one, admittedly unfortunate, event of past long gone.

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When a ‘Human Rights Association’ accepts and repeats the antisemitic canards in town

Posted on 3 January 2011 by Defending History

O P I N I O N

by Dovid Katz

ORIGINAL DOCUMENT HERE

“Also, it has been started to require the sentence of the citizens of the Jewish nationality ― Yitzhak Arad, Fania Brantsovsky and Rachel Margolis, as these citizens (former Soviet guerrillas) have organized the massive slaughter of civilians in Kaniūkai Village, Lithuania (killing 38 civilians) on 29 January 1944. Attention should be paid to the fact that the very Y. Arad has departed to Israel.”  — from the statement just published by the Lithuanian Human Rights Association (LHRA), signed by ten of its leading experts and approved by its committee.

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Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Antisemitism & Bias, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Dovid Katz, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Free Speech & Democracy, Human Rights, Israel, News & Views, Opinion, Užgavėnės, UŽGAVĖNĖS (SHROVETIDE) | Comments Off on When a ‘Human Rights Association’ accepts and repeats the antisemitic canards in town