DOCUMENTS: Petition (with links; with select signatures) ◊ Petitioner’s dossier. UPDATES: Petition’s first effect ◊ Jewish Chronicle ◊ London Jewish News ◊ UCL Hebrew Dept lets Holocaust survivors down ◊ Disinformation campaign ◊ Monica Lowenberg looks back at the events (24 Dec. 2012). LETTERS: Alumnus writes to provost (& to ambassador) ◊ Ruth Barnett ◊ Hans Coppi  (English) ◊ (Rachel Margolis’s cousin) Budd Margolis ◊ Gert Weisskirchen

PROTEST AT LITHUANIAN EMBASSY IN LONDON

VIDEO FROM THE EVENT: 1, 2, and 3

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CONSUL RECEIVES PETITION FROM SURVIVOR ERNST LOEWENBERG AND MONICA LOWENBERG

PHOTOS BY MARK DAVIDSON

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Dr. Lionel Kopelowitz, Former President of Jewish Board of Deputies, Defies UCL’s Ban and Reads Out Petition at Opening Session

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Questions Linger: Can politicians in Vilnius manipulate groomed-and-glorified Western academics to nix free speech in London at embassy-financed conferences?

Why wouldn’t organizers of a Lithuanian government financed conference at London’s UCL allow 2nd generation Holocaust survivor Monica Lowenberg five minutes to read the petition (signed by 300)? UCL’s Hebrew Studies Dept rejected her plea. But why did they so fear (fee-paying) conference-goers knowing about the petition?

Is history for sale? Professor Antony Polonsky of Brandeis, star of this month’s UCL/Lithuanian embassy conference in London, is one of the greatest living scholars of Poland and Polish Jewish history, whose vast contributions to those subjects are secure for posterity. But his knighthood this year from the Lithuanian president was explicitly for PR efforts for the Lithuanian government’s controversial Jewish and Holocaust policies. His efforts have arguably  undermined aspects of the history of the Baltic Holocaust and the dignity of survivors and those who joined the anti-Nazi resistance.

Just several months ago, the exact same Lithuanian state apparatus that is sponsoring the London conference invested heavily in repatriating the remains, amidst glittering ceremonies and high honors, of the country’s 1941 Nazi puppet prime minister who personally signed the Nazi orders for the Jews of Kaunas (Kovno) to be herded into a ghetto (for extermination) within four weeks.  Is it troubling when the honor guard that glorifies the remains of a major 1941 Nazi collaborator is the same one dishing out medals to professors of America’s Brandeis University?

MONICA LOWENBERG’S PETITION

THIS YEAR’S HONORS FOR THE 1941 NAZI PUPPET PRIME MINISTER

Second (cooked?) “Jewish conference” at a London university

Back in 2011: London Fog Part 1