Js Kopstein I was there. It was actually an excellent discussion. Lots of disagreement, lots of back and forth. Whatever the motives of the Lithuanian government, you really can’t characterize the event as one sided.

Dovid Katz Thanks, and good to know. We’re hoping to get a tape of the segment where Sara Ginaite, a survivor, eyewitness and terrific scholar, spoke up; we learned of the event from a number of people who were also there and felt morally compelled to write to DefendingHistory.com (though no signed articles yet, we’re hoping for one!).

In academic terms “one-sided” needn’t refer to results which are often multi-sided because of good discussions; by one-sided I meant that the invited specialists (invited as actual speakers, as part of the program) on the suibject of the Lithuanian Holocaust (at a conference on THAT precise topic) are members of the government’s (try this one on for Orwellian semantic stature and enunciation in a single breath): “The International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania.” 
The question for the organizers is: Did they invite one specialist who is a critic of the Commission and unaffiliated with the Lithuanian government? Did the Commission’s current “actual issues” come up in these discussions? If they did not, it means that some of these important issues may have de facto been covered up by excellent discussions on more general (or other) topics. That is a frequent result when university-affiliated conference organizers invite specialists who are all working for government x which has a vested interest in setting the agenda and deciding which issues are important.

For some of the Commission’s “issues” that are of deep concern to many who are interested in the Holocaust and its current legacies in Eastern Europe, please see:
(a) https://defendinghistory.com/an-appeal-to-conscience…/59751;

(b) https://defendinghistory.com/red-brown…/critiques;

(c) And would you believe that the Commission whose members travel the world making such a good impression of open discussion continue to call a beloved Vilna Holocaust survivor a liar on their website (because he corrected a miststatement) —http://www.komisija.lt/en/naujiena.php?id=1361200737

Was the audience informed that Sir Martin Gilbert and Yitzhak Arad had resigned on principle from the Commission which supplied the academic specialists in Toronto? That the Commission supports the Prague Declaration which is the bible of Double Genocide? That the government that pays for its members to fly around the planet continues to name streets and lecture halls for Holocaust perpetrators? (e.g.https://defendinghistory.com/memorials-to-holocaust…)
That the defamed Jewish partisan survivors (including the Commission’s own former member Yitzhak Arad, just check his Wikipedia bio) go down in history as suspected war criminals in the absence of apologies from the same government that sends such polished performers to naive Jewish audiences in the West. For an excellent perspective on the Commission’s actual purpose, please have a look at Yitzhak Arad’s own take: 
https://defendinghistory.com/yitzhak-arad-on-the…/46252

All good wishes from Vilnius, DK

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Dovid Katz Thanks for raising these important points.

(1) Hundreds of eyewitness accounts confirm murders of Jewish civilians in dozens of Lithuanian towns before arrival (or assumption of power) by German Nazi forces. That evidence is now being systematically undermined by the state-sponsored Commission, and one of the reasons for its “success” is that many conferences do not include specialists critical of the Commission or of the current efforts to undermine the dozens of years of work of top scholars. But turning from results to motive: the LAF and Provisional Government are being turned into “heroes of history” (“anti-Soviet rebels” though not a shot was fired at Soviet troops before they were running from the German onslaught), and I repeat, there is something wrong when the same government that finances that sends its commission members to prestigious universities around the world for events which do not include current professors who disagree (this is distinct from and not intended to be a statement about the individual professors sent or their own views on each question). Yes, it is darned good that Sara lives in Toronto and was included; that is terrific. On many other stops of the same basic roadshow, there doesn’t happen to be a local Holocaust survivor / scholar who can respond, and the principle of equal academic representation is one that universities would do well to bear in mind on such issues. The online version of the session program has THREE members of the Lithuanian state commission plus dear Sara of Toronto, whose paper title makes clear her status as a survivor and witness.

(2) It is not quite the case that “the prosecution of Arad” (or of Rachel Margolis and Fania Brantsovsky) was “aborted”… There never was any prosecution, nor any charges, or proceedings. This was one massive abuse of state power to DEFAME these (and by analogy all) Jewish resistance heroes of the Baltic Holocaust by defamatory leaks to the press about “war crimes” in the absence of an iota of evidence. Nothing can help to undo the damage except an apology from the state’s leaders. These survivors are still waiting for that public apology. Whether it’s Wikipedia or the final chapter of Prof. Chodakiewicz’s book “Intermarium” it is evident that without apologies from the state that financed the defamation in the first place the damage cannot be repaired, least of all by misinformation about “aborted prosecutions”…

(3) Turning to history and the manipulation of the narrative for future generations, the attempts to put into the record bogus and legally never-leveled charges against anti-Nazi resistance fighters, while investing in glorious reburials with full honors of LAF and Provisional Government Holocaust collaborators, are today part of the machinery of Double Genocide: finding fault with the victims and survivors, and turning the local perpetrators into heroes, all as part of the wider effort to “equalize” Nazi and Soviet crimes. The major document of that movement is the 2008 Prague Declaration publicly supported by the Commission. I hope and trust there was ample discussion of that and at least mention of the European parliamentary response, the Seventy Years Declaration of 2012, that was so courageously signed by eight Lithuanian parliamentarians (six MPs, two MEPs) —- but alas, they don’t get sent to foreign events, and it’s a pleasure to take even this small opportunity here once again to praise their bravery and integrity.
(4) I agree with you entirely that the focus on June-July 1941 at such events often means that the wider history of the Baltic Holocaust doesn’t get proper coverage. There’s a certain irony here: The state campaign to discredit the works of Prof. Dov Levin and other eminent scholars is in its own Baalamic way drawing attention to the very things that a number of East European states (not just Lithuania!) want to “change” for history. Even this little exchange right here….. Happy Chanukah from freezing and beautiful Vilnius, D.

Js Kopstein I’m afraid you’ll have to make another correction. In addition to Sara only two others were on the panel. The third was a no show. I should also add that Dieckmann’s was invited by me and not by the embassy. Plus I introduced the panel and Doris Bergen, our chair of holocaust studies, commented.

Dovid Katz In that case, please enter the corrections at the University of Toronto Centre for Jewish Studies website which continues to indicate for the record:
(a) THREE members of the Lithuanian government supported red-brown commission; sadly the web announcement fails to include that vital affiliation for a symposium on this very topic; the commission is the de facto major engine in the European Union for dissemination of the 2008 Prague Declaration, and
(b) the financial support for the event of the Embassy of Lithuania in Canada (again vital for honest disclosure, given the state support for the commission of which all three are members). Please see:
http://cjs.utoronto.ca/…/symposium-holocaust-lithuania-0

Fern Smiley Although it has been several weeks, my memory still works and I am convinced that something was clear about the lecture, which I attended. Sara was convincing in her hour by hour description of events. I found it distressing to hear the scholar, Dieckmann insist that she is wrong. Using the mantra “there are no such records” he attempts to make the case for the Lithuanians to be acting, only because the Germans are on the ground. But, as I was confused and talked to people (in Vienna and Vilnius), it became possible to understand Diekmann, as there would be no records in the German archives if Sarah’s version is accepted. Had he produced records of the sort that proved German interaction in Kovno during these moments, he would have been more convincing. Furthermore, one simply has to consider the question of whose idea was it to hold this conference. Everything will flow from there.

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Js Kopstein Sara came to us with the idea based on her conversations with the ambassador, so that settles that. Doris Bergen and I both agreed that the panel was a good idea, so long as both of us would book end it (you’ll recall I started it off with a long quote from a testimony describing in gruesome detail the infamous garage massacre) and Sara would be a panelist.