The Jewish Community of Lithuania today issued a statement, a full translation of which follows: 

On November 15, 2010, the Russian Federation news website Komsomolskaya Pravda posted an article by Nijole Stablingyste called ‘Lithuanian history textbooks: distorted facts and animosity towards Russia’ which contains the inaccurate information that the book The Power of Historical Truth [Istorijos tiesos jėga] was launched at the Lithuanian Jewish Community. The same information was repeated on November 17 on the webpage Zepelinus under the title ‘Why is a Breakthrough on the Stereotype of the Lithuanian Judeo-Bolshevik Being Insinuated?’

Please retract this false information. 

We also became aware that the people of Lithuania are being invited to come to the Lithuanian Jewish Community [building] on December 19 at 1:30 PM supposedly to hear Valeri Ivanov deliver a lecture. 

We authoritatively conform that neither the Lithuanian Jewish community nor the Vilnius Jewish community have ever organized or are organizing such a lecture, so obviously we are are not inviting people to attend it. No such lecture will take place on our premises. 

We can only suspect that there are forces  specially  organizing and preparing such  provocations in order to drive a wedge between Jewish citizens and Lithuanian society and to attempt to present Jewish interests as opposed to Lithuania’s interests.  

We would like to assure Lithuanian society that Jews residing in Lithuania are loyal to the Lithuanian state and its independence and share the same aspirations and vision for the future as everybody else. 

Dr. Simonas Alperavičius
Chairperson, Lithuanian Jewish Community 

Fania Kukliansky
Chairperson, Vilnius Jewish Community