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Algirdas Paleckis’s critique of legal neo-Nazi parades, legalized swastikas and military personnel participating in Nazi activities — at the November 2011 conference on tolerance in Vilnius: video; translation; report.
[Updated 8 February 2012] On January 15th, the Lietuvos rytas website (Lrytas.lt) published a massive article by veteran Holocaust denier Petras Stankeras, who was forced out of his Interior Ministry post in November 2010 after writing in a popular weekly that the murder of six million Jews is a ‘legend’. The new article features a flattering vintage framed photo of Hitler and is written in the form of an objective historic survey of the book’s history. It was a republication of an article by Stankeras that had earlier appeared in the elite magazine Kultūros barai.
Background on DefendingHistory.com:
2 January 2012 report
13 January 2012, from Efraim Zuroff (Jerusalem):
EXCERPT FROM OP-ED IN HAARETZ. FULL TEXT HERE.
Andrius Navickas, a religious studies expert and editor-in-chief of the Bernardinai.lt website, published a rather strange editorial at the end of 2011 taken from a speech he gave over Lithuanian Radio.
At a recent Waffen SS celebration in Estonia
In the face of mounting Western concern, the Estonian Ministry of Defense issued a statement on 5 January 2012 refuting a 27 (/28) December 2011 Delfi news portal story that reported on Russian Federation criticism, among other things, of the Baltic states’ policies of honoring their countries’ Nazi collaborator forces and militias.
The Defense Ministry’s refutation declares that “the government of the Republic of Estonia has not drafted nor will it draft something as absurd as a bill that would allow for honors to be given to Nazi collaborators.”
The following letter to the editor from attorney Joseph Melamed, chairman of the Assoiation of Lithuanian Jews in Israel, appeared today in VilNews.com.
Dear Editor,
The recent article by Dr. Irena Veisaite agreeing with the antisemitic establishment’s evaluation of the life’s work of Dr. Efraim Zuroff, Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israel office and a leading historian of the Lithuanian Holocaust, has been a cause of great dismay to us, the world’s last active organization of Lithuanian Holocaust survivors and their descendants.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israel Office today released a statement in which its director, Holocaust historian Dr. Efraim Zuroff, calls for an apology from the European Union’s ambassador to Afghanistan, Vygaudas Ušackas, for insensitive and misleading remarks on the Lithuanian Holocaust in a 6 December 2011 Wall Street Journal article. A letter of protest by Jack Zwanziger of Chicago appeared in the WSJ on 14 December 2011.
- UPDATE:
- Jerusalem-Kabul debate
For 2012
“As long as I am prime minister of this great nation, there will be no neo-Nazi marches, no parades or events glorifying Nazi collaborators, no racist marches offensive to any citizens of our country of whatever background or belief, in the center of our cherished capital city, least of all on our national independence day or other holidays, when we celebrate independence, freedom, equality of all people, respect between all our communities, democracy and hope for our future. I will not stand idly by as our country’s proud name is defamed in the four corners of the earth by those who espouse fascism, racism, antisemitism, xenophobia, homophobia and other forms of hatred. Period.”
From back in 2011
Some of the shameful city center pro-Nazi events that went ahead in 2011 in Baltic capitals with legal permits (and support of some political elites):
Riga
Vilnius
Tallinn