Annual Glorification of Latvia’s Hitler-Serving Waffen SS; International Petition
Opinion: R. BRODSKY; LATVIA’S UK AMBASSADOR; MONICA LOWENBERG
JOËL RUBINFELD’S NEWSLETTER ON EVENTS OF MARCH 16TH
Reports: AP; Delfi; Fox; J. Kaža; Jewish News — JNS.org; Reuters; RIA; RT (video; 2); Times of Israel; Washington Post; YNet; Video of wreath laying; Yahoo. Gallery of images. More media. WWN media list.
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MARINA SOLODKIN’S DEATH AND HER LAST PUBLIC STATEMENT
Vilnius
March 2013 Independence Day:
City Mounted Wholesome Family Event on Main Boulevard, but it was Followed by a Massive Neo-Nazi March; There were Few Protesters
NATION’S PARLIAMENT HONORS THE NEO-NAZI MARCH ORGANIZERS
EYEWITNESS REPORTS: ANNA SHEPHERD AND GEOFF VASIL
“MORAL CAPITULATION” FROM PRESIDENT, PRIME MINISTER AND THE MAYOR ON NEO-NAZIS’ ANNUAL TAKEOVER OF CAPITAL’S CENTER ON NATION’S INDEPENDENCE DAY; NO COMMENT ON LEGALIZED SWASTIKAS
President says: “You call them nationalists, I would speak of nationally conscious youth” but Lithuanian Social Democratic Party (LSDP) issues statement opposing the marches (the statement)
White Power jacket alongside skull & crossbones with swastika. Photo: V. Kopūstas / Delfi.lt
Nazi Sieg Heils (under skull & crossbones with swastika flag) on the capital’s main boulevard on independence day. Photo: Anna Shepherd
After winning in court, city informed of fascists’ call for “unsanctioned march” starting Monday 3 PM at Vilnius Cathedral Square. Some media try to spin a win for mayor’s office; PM speaks out; Extra police promised; Police warn marchers; Poll shows most Lithuanians oppose far right’s marches; Efraim Zuroff comments in the Jerusalem Post.
Court on 4 March had accepted the city’s arguments for shifting neo-Nazis from central boulevard (Gedimino) to across the river (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok). Nationalist group then demanded the (once Jewish) Old Town instead but city refused. In the end, police caved in to neo-Nazis’ illegal takeover of Gedimino.
Neo-Nazi movement dominates the capital’s center on March 11th Independence Day since 2008 when ‘Juden raus’ and anti-Russian, anti-Polish chants inaugurated the takeover. Eyewitness reports of 2011 and 2012. Protest petitions: Washington & London. One of the annual organizers, at right (with “White Power” scarf this year), was long-time “chief public relations specialist” (!) at the Genocide Research Center. . .
JEWISH COMMUNITY BOLDLY ANNOUNCED ITS OWN CELEBRATION OF LITHUANIAN INDEPENDENCE DAY AT THE CHORAL SYNAGOGUE
Kaunas
Authorities Authorized the Neo-Nazi March in Central Kaunas (Kovno) on Feb 2013 National Holiday
Celebrating the Holocaust? Lead banner glorified 1941 Nazi puppet PM in the city whose 30,000 Jewish citizens were massacred. Genocide started on his watch…
February 16th’s “main hero” (at right of front banner) was the 1941 Nazi puppet prime minister. White armbands and the “flaming swastika” were all over central Kaunas (Kovno) as the authorities gave the city center on the nation’s cherished independence day to the neo-Nazis to effectively express delight in the Holocaust. photo: DefendingHistory.com (16 Feb 2013)
Eyewitness reports by: Evaldas Balčiūnas; Dovid Katz, (2); Geoff Vasil; Efraim Zuroff. Statement by Holocaust survivors in Israel. Writer in Balsas.lt calls for Zuroff and Katz to “be given up to be torn apart” while another in Atgimimas/Delfi.lt/Lithuania Tribune says the Jews want antisemitism as part of their financial trickery…
LEAD KAUNAS BANNER FEATURED PICTURE OF THE 1941 NAZI PUPPET PRIME MINISTER JUOZAS AMBRAZEVIČIUS (BRAZAITIS) WHO PERSONALLY SIGNED ORDERS FOR A CONCENTRATION/MASS MURDER CAMP AND REMOVAL TO A GHETTO OF THE ENTIRE JEWISH POPULATION OF KAUNAS.
IN MAY 2012, HE WAS REBURIED WITH FULL HONORS AND GLORIFIED BY STATE INSTITUTIONS, CAUSING MAJOR EMBARRASSMENT IN THE EU AND NATO. VYTAUTAS MAGNUS UNIVERSITY IN KAUNAS CONTINUES TO HONOR THE COLLABORATOR.
But on their websites, the march’s advocates feel rather less inhibited about expressing their further thoughts and fantasies (supposedly mitigated by the lower caption: “Kaunas, February 16th 2013 — If to believe the tales of anti-fascists and Jewish activists”)
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More from the neo-Nazi imagination in Lithuania: their websites featured this photoshopped image of Defending History’s editor on a motorcycle (he has not yet been on one….) in early 2013. Our reader Dr. J. Breeze, UK, found the apparent source in a Hagrid image.
Efraim Zuroff’s Vilnius Press Conference on the Eve of State-Sanctioned City-Center Neo-Nazi Marches
on 3 pro-Nazi events: Kaunas 16 Feb; Vilnius 11 March; Riga 16 March
Nazi marches condemned at Feb 15th news conference in Vilnius, but new Prime Minister praised for speaking out against racist manifestations before the event; Now calls are upon the PM and president to cancel the next (March 11th) Neo-Nazi parade in the capital on the nation’s second (1990-based) Independence Day.
MEDIA COVERAGE (part): 15min.lt; Balsas.lt; Bernardinai.lt; BNS; Delfi.ee; Delfi.lt; Diena.lt; Faktai.lt; Infodiena.lt; Info.lt; Kaunodiena.lt; Lankeliene.eu; Lietuvoszynios.lt; Lrt.lt; Lrytas.lt; Lrytas.lt (2); Lzinios.lt; Ru.delfi.lt; SWC; Tv.lrytas.lt.
MEANTIME, HEAD OF BALTIC NEWS SERVICE (BNS) ATTACKS DR. ZUROFF & HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR & LITHUANIAN JEWISH COMMUNITY MEMBER PROF. PINCHOS FRIDBERG, WHO HAS RESPONDED.
Prof. Fridberg (at right) with Dr. Zuroff at the BNS press conference:
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Dr. Zuroff at right, at end of press conference, with Milan Chersonski, editor (1998-2011) of the Jewish community’s quadrilingual newspaper Jerusalem of Lithaunia…
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and — Efraim Zuroff (right) and Dovid Katz monitoring the march the next day in icy Kaunas (Kovno)…
Seventy Years Declaration Starts 2nd Year
First Anniversary: Seventy Years Declaration (SYD) Goes Multilingual, amid Mounting Success in Exposing Revisionist “Double Genocide” Campaign; First Reviews of the New Documentary Film “Rewriting History”
HISTORY DEFENDED! Never again will Prague-Declaration Double-Genocide politics, projects, Genocide Center double-talk, and “Judaic/Yiddish/Holocaust” stunts successfully cover for supposed consensus “unified history” of the new Europe. Reports on most recent red-brown fiasco in Vilnius.
BOLD LITHUANIAN CITIZENS CONTINUE TO SPEAK UP WITH COURAGE AND INTEGRITY
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HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS SPEAK OUT:
Yitzhak Arad in Tel Aviv
Pinchos Fridberg in Vilnius
Josef Griliches & Assistance to Lithuanian Jews, Inc. in NY
Joe Melamed & the Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel
Basheva Ran & others in the US
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From the ‘photoshop art’ of 2013: image of the editor of DefendingHistory.com that appeared in 2013 on a number of far-right websites in Lithuania. Are they really so afraid of a former Yiddish teacher?
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2013: Call on US State Dept to Reject Politics of Holocaust Denial and Appeasement of Eastern Europe’s New Far Right
Shock of 2012: When a NATO-EU Ally Reburied and Glorified its 1941 Nazi Puppet Prime Minister who Signed Orders for Kovno Ghetto
Instead of politely protesting, the US Embassy in Vilnius financed a camouflage symposium on Holocaust issues to deflect attention from the week’s event. Framed to honor T. Snyder’s book Bloodlands, it also featured the head of YIVO.
One of the invited speakers later told the press that glorifying the Nazi puppet PM shows the world the “drama of Lithuanian history” and said that people are afraid of “the Jews” clobbering them with “a club”… His university (Vytautas Magnus in Kaunas) continues to honor the 1941 Nazi puppet PM. International petition is underway.
BUT 3 US CONGRESSMEN BOLDLY STOOD UP
NEW SECTION: DISTURBING RECORD OF THE STATE DEPARTMENT SINCE 2009
US CITIZENS: PLEASE WRITE TO ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES
ISSUES INCLUDE PLANNED NAZI MARCHES IN CENTER OF KAUNAS (16 FEB 2013), VILNIUS (11 MAR 2013) AND RIGA (16 MAR 2013); PUBLIC MEMORIALS FOR NAZI MURDERERS AND COLLABORATORS; APOLOGIES TO ACCUSED HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS; SEVENTY YEARS DECLARATION; DEMOCRACY AND FREE SPEECH
THESE ARE AMERICAN & WESTERN VALUES:
Honoring the struggle against Hitler led by the UK, the US and their allies (including Jewish partisans in the forests of Eastern Europe)
Objecting to attempts to conflate perpetrators and victims into the mush of obfuscation
Rejecting attempts to glorify the Nazis and their local collaborators
Speaking out robustly against neo-Nazism, racism, antisemitism, homophobia
Refusing to collaborate in bogus “Jewish” projects (and sham “Holocaust symposiums”) intended to cover for Double Genocide policies
Standing up for free speech and the right to dissent