I attended the March of the Living today at Ponár (Polish Ponary, Lithuanian Paneriai), the mass killing site outside Vilnius, Lithuania. It is Yom Hashoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day. I had been to Ponár only once before, because a friend of mine was afraid she would get lost taking the city buses there and back.
O P I N I O N
В календаре памятных дат Государства Израиль есть День памяти Жертв нацизма и Героев сопротивления – Йом а-Шоа вэ а-Гвура. По европейскому календарю он приходится на 19 апреля – день начала восстания в Варшавском гетто в 1943г.. Почти месяц – дольше, чем польская армия, защищавшая страну от нацистов в 1939г., – истощенные голодом и болезнями, плохо вооруженные узники сражались против специально обученных нацистских формирований и их местных нацистских пособников.
The great strength of Professor Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands (Basic Books, 2010) is that it contextualizes the violent 1930s and 1940s in Eastern Europe.
FOR MORE SEE DEFENDING HISTORY’S PAGE ON RESPONSES TO TIMOTHY SNYDER
O P I N I O N
by Rachel Croucher
I have read and re-read the chapter entitled “Final Solution” in Timothy Snyder’s major new book, Bloodlands (Basic Books 2010), in an attempt to garner further insight into events surrounding the genocide of the Jews in Eastern Europe for a dissertation on contemporary Holocaust remembrance precisely in the countries of these so-called Bloodlands, and with emphasis upon Lithuania. I had hoped that the chapter would expand my knowledge on the specifics of and motivations for the disturbingly high levels of local participation in the actual mass-murdering (far beyond just collaboration) in these countries.
O P I N I O N
by Christopher Hale
There are a number of books about the ‘foreign divisions of the Third Reich’. Most seem to be written for military history buffs and those fascinated by uniforms and arcane details of military insignia. Some are downright sinister. The series of books written by Richard Landwehr, an American ‘historian’ associated with the far right, are overtly favourable and have titles like ‘Lions of Flanders’, ‘Steadfast Hussars’ and ‘Nordic Warriors’. His Wiki entry includes the following rationale:
DefendingHistory.com has announced the free availability of a frequently updated resource page that provides links for select major expressions of opposition to the 2008 Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism. The page is available here or by visiting:
O P I N I O N
by Gert Weisskirchen
In several places in Europe, particularly in the new-accession states, there are discernible efforts to ‘blackwash’ history.
Far-right forces are hard at work to obfuscate the Holocaust, in part by defaming the victims and in part by glorifying the local perpetrators and collaborators.
by Dovid Katz
Today was Day 1 of the Lithuanian parliament’s two-day ‘International Conference: The Beginning of the Soviet-German War in the Baltic States in 1941 — 29-30 June 2011, Vilnius’. It is being held as part of a series of events to mark the seventieth anniversary of the Nazi War against the Soviet Union, unleashed on 22 June 1941.
by Dovid Katz
The Lithuanian Holocaust broke out in the week of 22 June 1941, when the Nazis attacked the Soviet Union; it is the week when, in many locations, so-called ‘patriots’ and ‘rebels’ in large numbers began to humiliate, plunder, injure and slaughter Jewish neighbors before the first Germans ever arrived. At the conference held yesterday and today in the country’s parliament, this was the Elephant in the Room that reared its head now and again, no matter how hard the political and academic planners worked to ensure that it would disappear in a program dedicated to virtually every other conceivable aspect (translation of original program here; final printed English version of the program here).
SEE ALSO:
The plot thickens. These are the very ‘patriots’ and ‘rebels’ who are being honored this week by major state institutions, and to no small degree, at this very conference. As if their launch of the Holocaust, which went on under German rule, and with their continued massive voluntary participation, is either some kind of uncorroborated slander, or, as if this is some very tiny detail in an otherwise glorious campaign of rebellion against Soviet forces (with no mention that the USSR’s troops were actually fleeing the German invasion, not their ‘rebellion’).
O P I N I O N
by Milan Chersonski
Milan Chersonski in front of the Lithuanian Parliament (Seimas)
28 сентября 2010 года Сейм Литвы объявил, что 2011 год будет называться Годом памяти о сражениях за свободу и великих утрат. Это загадочное название какого-то юбилея прозвучало ровно неделю спустя после объявления того же 2011 года Годом памяти жертв геноцида евреев Литвы.
O P I N I O N
by Michael Maass
The text of Pastor Michael Maass’s talk at the Sabbath dinner in Plungyán (Plungė), Lithuania, on 15 July 2011, during preparations for the commemoration ceremony at the nearby mass murder site on 17 July 2011. See also Abel Levitt’s speech here, and the imaginary speech of a Lithuanian official here (with further links at end of page).
Text provided by Pastor Michael Maass.
Good evening. We are Michael and Fausta Maass, the directors of the Lithuanian branch of the International Christian Embassy, Jerusalem. You might say we are ambassadors from the Christian nation to the Jewish nation. We represent millions of Christians in over sixty countries who love Israel and the Jewish people. We are honored to be with you tonight.
We believe that friendship between Jews and Christians is vitally important, especially in light of recent developments in the world. The legitimacy of the nation of Israel is under attack from many sides. Antisemitism is rising to a level not seen since the Second World War.
by Abel Levitt
According to Jewish Law, and according to custom in other religions, a tombstone must be placed at a grave with the name of the deceased.
In the case of Mass Murder, like what happened in Lithuania during the period which we know as the Holocaust, this has not been done. The scale was too big, thousands of people killed in a single day as happened in Ponár, near Vilnius, or at the Ninth Fort near Kaunas. Only in Plungė (Plungyán), where 1800 people , men, women, and children were brutally killed in two frightening and bloody days, has this now, today, been done.
My dear friends, it is precisely because I am a proud official of the government of independent, democratic, Lithuania, and I love my country, that I am able to speak here today openly, on the seventieth anniversary of the murder of the Jews of Plungė — Plungyán, as they proudly called it in the Yiddish that rang through its streets for so many centuries.
O P I N I O N
by Milan Chersonski
Milan Chersonski at the Lithuanian Parliament. From 1979 to 1999 Chersonski directed the Yiddish Amateur Theater in Vilnius, Lithuania. He worked in various capacities at the quadrilingual (English-Lithuanian-Russian-Yiddish) newspaper Jerusalem of Lithuania, publication of The Jewish Community of Lithuania, from its founding in 1989 until the paper was closed in 2011. He was its editor-in-chief from 1999 to 2011. He is now a senior analyst at DefendingHistory.com and contributes to various publications.
On September 28th 2010, the Parliament of Lithuania announced that 2011 would be the Year of Commemoration of Battles for Freedom and Great Losses. This mysterious name of some sort of anniversary appeared exactly a week after the same year, 2011, was declared the Year of Commemorating the Genocide of Lithuanian Jews. The Jewish Community of Lithuania reacted without delay to the ‘dual track’, apartheidized commemorations.
Now which “battles for freedom” are they talking about in the resolution? What sort of great losses? The resolution does not say specifically. Yes, Lithuanians valiantly rebelled for freedom in 1794, and in 1831, as well as in 1863, and then there were serious demonstrations on behalf of freedom in 1904-1905, and then there were the battles from 1918 to 1920 for the independence and borders of the newly founded state.
But it is impossible to understand exactly which events and which dates they now had in mind from the text of Lithuanian parliamentary resolution no. XI-1038 of September 28th 2010. And this is probably no accident, as shown by the subsequent actions of the Lithuanian government and leading organizations here.
O P I N I O N
I have a concern which I am sure that the readers of DefendingHistory.com share. I am talking about the possibility of the Vilnius Jewish Library becoming a vehicle for certain elements of the Lithuanian government to continue to whitewash and obfuscate history and to cover up for the antisemitism currently rampant here.
Review of Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands. Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, Basic Books: New York 2010. This review first appeared in German in H-Soz-u-Kult (online version here; PDF here). This English version and publication in DefendingHistory.com are by authorization of the author and H-Soz-u-Kult, which has kindly supplied the following copyright notice: Copyright © 2011 by H-Net, Clio-online, and the author, all rights reserved. This work may be copied and redistributed for non-commercial, educational purposes, if permission is granted by the author and usage right holders. For permission please contact H-SOZ-U-KULT@H-NET.MSU.EDU.
Aleksander Gogun, a historian at Potsdam University and at Humboldt University
of Berlin, and Aleksander Vovk, are the joint authors of an article, originally published in 2005, that obfuscates the Holocaust and denies the anti-Jewish violence of the Ukrainian nationalists. The article, in Russian, Evrei v bor’be za nezavisimuiu Ukrainu (Jews in the Struggle for an Independent Ukraine), presented in academic format, continues to appear on the nationalist website titled OUN-UPA at http://oun-upa.org.ua.
The article, posted at http://lib.oun-upa.org.ua/gogun/pub07.html, gives the impression that Jews served and fought willingly and enthusiastically in the UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army, Ukraїns’ka Povstans’ka Armiia) for an independent Ukrainian state. From the very outset of their article the authors claim that there were no pogroms in Ukraine in 1941, that Ukrainian nationalists never had a negative attitude toward the Jews and that Ukrainians who served in the German police during World War II did not participate in the Holocaust. The authors call all these things “stereotypes of Soviet propaganda” and imply that they never existed or happened.
O P I N I O N by Milan Chersonski
Мне уже доводилось писать о парадоксальной ситуации: 21 сентября 2010 года Сейм Литовской Республики принял постановление объявить 2011 год Годом памяти жертв геноцида евреев Литвы. Ровно через неделю Сейм Литовской Республики объявил тот же 2011 год Годом памяти о сражениях за свободу и великих утрат. Объединение этих двух дат достойно войти в историю как попытка совместить два несовместимых явления – отмечать юбилей так называемого «восстания» Фронта литовцев-активистов и начало уничтожения евреев в Литве при их участии. «Восставшие» участники Фронта литовцев-активистов, не встретив серьезного сопротивления со стороны спешно покидавших Литву Красной армии и советской администрации, обратили свои взоры на главного их «врага» – веками живших в Литве евреев. Continue reading