New York Orthodox Jewish Woman Posts Video Exposing London “CPJCE” Cemetery Sellers
Timeline: Can a Foreign Gov. Plonk Monument to Alleged Nazi Collaborator in the Heart of New Britain, Connecticut?
[UPDATED]
NEW BRITAIN’S PROPOSED MONUMENT FOR LEADER OF A 1941 HITLERIST MILITIA | GLORIFYING COLLABORATORS | USA | LITHUANIA | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | ANTISEMITISM & BIAS | HUMAN RIGHTS
SEE DEFENDING HISTORY’S NEW SECTION ON NEW BRITAIN, CONN. ISSUES
Ruta Bloshtein Calls on Vilna Jewish Cemetery Petition Signers to File Complaints Against the “CPJCE” with the UK Charities Commission
UK | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY | OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER PROJECT | PETITION | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | CPJCE
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VILNIUS—Ruta Bloshtein, a native of this city and stalwart of its small Orthodox Jewish community, this week published an update to her international petition calling on the Lithuanian government to move its national convention center project away from the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt in today’s Snipiskes district of Vilnius. Over 43,000 people from several dozen countries have signed her petition to date.
In the update, Ms. Bloshtein calls on people of good will to contact the United Kingdom’s Charities Commission to file complaints against a rogue group of allegedly “cemetery selling rabbis” who allegedly issue permissions for building projects on old Jewish cemeteries on ground zero of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe in return for secret cash payments. They have been exposed by Wikileaks, and in reports in the Jerusalem Post, JTA, and Times of Israel. They are known as the “CPJCE” which stands for “Committee for the Preservation of Jewish Cemeteries in Europe.” See Defending History’s section on the group, and DH’s 2015 open letter (to which a reply was never received). Ms. Bloshtein asks in her update, that when reporting the “CPJCE” to the Charities Commission, its official charity-status number, 1073225, be mentioned.
City Council of New Britain, Connecticut Confirms Cancellation of Monument that would Honor Alleged Collaborator in the Lithuanian Holocaust
NEW BRITAIN TIMELINE | NEW BRITAIN’S PROPOSED MONUMENT (SECTION) | GLORIFYING COLLABORATORS | USA | LITHUANIA | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | ANTISEMITISM & BIAS | HUMAN RIGHTS | DOCUMENTS
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NEW BRITAIN—The City Council, known here as the Common Council, of this central Connecticut city, to the south of Hartford, today passed the following resolution, introduced by Alderman Professor Aram Ayalon, by a vote of 9 to 5. The vote split along party lines, with the Republicans in the minority. A spokesperson was quick to point out, however that “None of them supported this awful monument idea either. They were, however, supporting the mayor’s position that the monument was in fact never agreed to by the mayor’s office or town council, obviating the need for any resolution.” Mayor Erin E. Stewart is currently one of the candidates for the Republican nomination for governor, with the decision due at the party’s convention this weekend.
The text of the resolution follows:
New English-Yiddish Dictionary Moves to Own Website
VILNIUS—The new Yiddish Cultural Dictionary, an English-Yiddish dictionary, started at Defending History in January 2018, has now moved to its own website:
www.YiddishCulturalDictionary.org
Ukraine Report Claims America’s USAID Program is Financing Glorification of Fascist Groups that Took Part in the Holocaust
It sounds like something straight out of the wackiest conspiracy sites on the internet — but it may be true. The US Government — through its main foreign aid agency the US Agency for International Development (USAID) — may indeed be inadvertently funding the Ukrainian Government’s far-reaching project to whitewash and glorify the Hitlerist World War II era nationalist OUN and UPA organizations, whose hordes were responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of Jewish and Polish civilians.
Updates on Twitter: @DefendingHistor
Poland’s New Holocaust Law is Bad — But Not the Worst
OPINION | POLAND | FREE SPEECH
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by Dovid Katz
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So what happened on January 31st? The new law, adopted by both houses of the Polish parliament and then enacted on March 1st, warns that, “Whoever claims, publicly and contrary to the facts, that the Polish Nation or the Republic of Poland is responsible or co-responsible for Nazi crimes committed by the Third Reich […] or for other felonies that constitute crimes against peace, crimes against humanity or war crimes, or whoever otherwise grossly diminishes the responsibility of the true perpetrators of said crimes […] shall be liable to a fine or imprisonment for up to three years. The sentence shall be made public.”
The law is in some sense an overreaction to some common mischaracterizations of Poland’s role in the Holocaust, starting with the myth that Hitler chose to build concentration camps there because Poland was so antisemitic. He built them there because that is where the Jews were, more than three million of them. Nor did the Nazis generally recruit Poles to do the actual killing of Jews, as was the case in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and (western) Ukraine, among others. There were, to be sure, atrocities committed by Poles, such as the 1941 massacre of the Jews of Jedwabne—powerfully researched and immortalized by Jan Gross in his masterly 2001 book, Neighbors—and the unthinkable pogrom at Kielce, in 1946, just months after the end of the Holocaust.
Read more
57 Members of US House of Representatives Condemn Holocaust Distortion in Ukraine and Poland
Glorification of Collaborators | Ukraine | Poland | US Policy | Antisemitism
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WASHINGTON DC—In a major initiative that could blow the lid off Eastern European historical revisionism, 57 members of the US House of Representatives released a major letter condemning Holocaust distortion in Ukraine and Poland. While Poland’s so-called “Holocaust Law” has been widely criticized, Ukraine’s state-sponsored — and far worse — glorification of ultranationalist Nazi collaborators and whitewashing of their murderous World War Two history has largely flown beneath the radar. The same is true of the Baltics and other East European states, as noted in a piece in today’s Jewish Currents.
The nationalist groups and individuals lionized by Ukraine’s Government today — including the OUN-UPA and its leaders such as Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych — were complicit in the Holocaust as well as the mass murder of between 70,000-100,000 Polish civilians from 1941-1945. The US Congress initiative was led by dauntless California Congressman Ro Khanna, who we are told by one of our sources in Washington pushed the letter through despite intense opposition from the Ukrainian and Polish embassies. Khanna was the same Congressman who ensured a provision banning aid to the Ukrainian neo-Nazi Azov battalion was part of the recent defense bill. According to an elderly Holocaust survivor in Lviv, recently interviewed by Defending History, “In Ro Khanna, the souls of the six million victims of the Holocaust have found a true friend.”
Follow Defending History on Twitter at @DefendingHistor for more on this story as it develops. The full text of the congressional letter (with the 57 signatures), follows here. Please use the page-turning handles at the upper left to navigate. (or view as PDF).
Lithuania’s Museum of Holocaust Denial
Museums | Genocide Museum | Genocide Center | Double Genocide | Collaborators Glorified | Lithuania
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by Dovid Katz
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This past winter here in Vilnius, the charming capital of Lithuania, was much like any other. During long solid weeks of subzero temperatures, as the flow of tourists and roots-seekers slowed to a trickle, I adjusted the route of my daily walk to pass by up to a dozen top tourist sights. Day after day, there was one constant: The most popular, winter-defying “must-visit” for foreigners is “The Museum of Genocide Victims.” Perhaps there is something grotesquely sexy about “genocide.” Maybe the promise of (real) former KGB interrogation rooms and isolation chambers in the basement is less run-of-the-mill and more strikingly authentic than much usual museum fare. Estimates obtained from the museum’s administrators suggest about a million visitors total to date.
Read more…
“Pylimo Jewish Commissariat” Ensures Readers Won’t Ever Hear About the New York Times
HUMOR (OF SORTS) | VILNIUS JEWISH LIFE | OPINION | MEDIA WATCH
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by Motke Chabad
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Our national Ministry for Jewish Control’s website editors were recently faced with a daunting quagmire. An article in the New York Times (one written, to make matters worse, by a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist), had featured, right on top, a large beautiful photo of a handsome young Lithuanian Jewish man, Simon Gurevich, who was elected head of the Vilnius Jewish Community by an overwhelming majority, one year ago. Even worse, he is of pure Litvak heritage going back seven hundred years on all sides of his family. Shockingly, the article quoted him as saying that the government might find a better place for its new national convention center than on top of the old Vilna Jewish cemetery. (Obviously he was misled by those 42,500 people who signed some petition or other. By the way, a few years ago I helped the Commissariat in its search at the time for a suitable new rabbi with that question in mind.)
Who’s afraid of Simon Gurevich and The New York Times?
Naturally, all those local Jews who voted for Mr. Gurevich are Russians who claim to be Jewish, as the Commissariat demonstrated brilliantly last May beyond any shadow of a doubt. The challenge became to ensure that readers from the lands of the capitalist leaches, those who speak English, never find out about this article. Easy enough, who will ever hear about a New York Times article about our distant country? Mum’s the word.
Brussels (& Some Fine London Architects) Duped into “Double Genocide” Program of “Equalizing” Nazi and Soviet Crimes?
OPINION | PRAGUE PLATFORM | DOUBLE GENOCIDE | POLITICS OF MEMORY | BRUSSELS/EU
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Today’s edition of The Architects’ Journal (AJ) gracefully announces that Tszwai So, director of Spheron Architects, has been declared the winner of the “international competition to design a pan-European Memorial for the Victims of Totalitarianism.” Mr. So, named a rising star in British Architecture in 2016, is widely acclaimed as one of the most illustrious younger talents of European architecture in our time. Our team feels certain that he would be the first to wish to be apprised of an ulterior political program behind a seemingly neutral architectural project which will now be exploiting his reputation, and his firm’s, as well as his actual design, in promoting a political project that is vastly more controversial than meets the eye at first acquaintance.
Mr. So and Spheron Architects, like the other contestants, were most likely unaware that the sponsor of the competition, the Prague-based Platform of European Memory and Conscience, known for short in Eurocircles as the Prague Platform, is the prime European engine for the far-right movement of World War II history revisionism that is increasingly becoming known as Double Genocide. That phenomenon was recently among the main points of a New York Times article by Pulitzer Prize winning correspondent Rod Nordland concerning the “Genocide Museum” here in Vilnius, which has close ties with the “Prague Platform” in the pursuit of Double Genocide politics in the European Union.
New Britain, Connecticut Says No to Monument Honoring Alleged Holocaust Collaborator
Monument to Adolfas Ramanauskas is Rejected for Public Space of New Britain
“MAJOR SUCCESS” IN EFFORTS TO HALT THE EXPORT OF “DOUBLE GENOCIDE” HISTORY REVISIONISM TO THE WEST
Hero of the saga is City Council alderman Professor Aram Ayalon. His petition and active contacts with colleagues internationally brought rapid results
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New Britain Progressive report cites DH role.
Defending History broke the news first, on 14 January 2018.
Chronicle of a saga: DH’s section on New Britain.
Lithuania’s Intensive Spring Season for New Brand of Holocaust Denial
OPINION | LITHUANIA | FREE SPEECH | COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED | USA | NEW BRITAIN, CONNECTICUT
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The team at Defending History has witnessed quite a lot in Eastern Europe over the last decade when it comes to Holocaust obfuscation and its related ills, including glorification of actual Holocaust collaborators, defamation of Holocaust survivors who joined the resistance, and a progressive chipping away at Western norms of free speech and tolerance. It is almost as if the Western powers don’t care whether folks in the “Eastern EU” have the same rights of expression as others.
During these last few weeks, an unusually intensive convergence of events has been noticed here in Vilnius. To bring our loyal readers up to speed we thought it might be useful to summarize what’s been happening on the Lithuanian Holocaust obfuscation and history rewriting front. Links to articles are included for those interested in reading more.
Updated Headlines for Sad Saga in New Britain, Connecticut
OPINION | NEW BRITAIN’S PROPOSED MONUMENT FOR LEADER OF A 1941 HITLERIST MILITIA | GLORIFYING COLLABORATORS | USA | LITHUANIA | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | ANTISEMITISM & BIAS | HUMAN RIGHTS
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Will New Britain, Connecticut really allow a public monument to an alleged Nazi collaborator? City Council member Professor Aram Ayalon launches petition calling for moratorium pending research; Latest.
Will Mayor Erin E. Stewart break her silence with some rapid words of simple moral clarity? This is even worse than Charlottesville: It’s about putting up a new monument for an alleged Nazi collaborator on public land in Connecticut. Where’s leadership?
Defending History in New Britain, Connecticut Against Plans to Glorify Alleged Holocaust Collaborator on Public Grounds
OPINION | NEW BRITAIN’S PROPOSED MONUMENT FOR LEADER OF A 1941 HITLERIST MILITIA | GLORIFYING COLLABORATORS | USA | LITHUANIA | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | ANTISEMITISM & BIAS | HUMAN RIGHTS
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The New Britain Progressive, a newspaper in New Britain, Connecticut today carried a report entitled “Council Petition Would Halt Ramanauskas Monument, Pending Investigation”. It begins with the news that
“Alderman Aram Ayalon has introduced a City Council petition requesting, ‘a temporary halt of the building of a monument to commemorate Lithuanian militant, Adolfas Ramanauskas, until further research has been conducted to help confirm the history behind the man being memorialized.’ Ayalon cites concerns regarding accusations about Ramanauskas and the parts of the Holocaust that occurred in Lithuania in 1941.”
The paper’s report cites the Simon Wiesenthal’s October 2017 protest concerning the Lithuanian parliament’s decision to name the year 2018 for the alleged Nazi collaborator, as well as Defending History’s January 2018 plea to New Britain Mayor Erin E. Stewart to halt the project to glorify in the United States a leader of one of the marauding Hitlerist militias of June and July 1941 whose main “accomplishment” was unleashing the Holocaust starting even before the Germans arrived or before they managed to set up their functioning occupational administration. As it happens, the wider complex of these issues in Lithuania today was the subject of a New York Times report last Friday, 30 March.
Vilnius and Three Other Lithuanian Jewish Communities Call for New Democratic Elections
DOCUMENTS | VILNIUS JEWISH LIFE | LITVAK AFFAIRS | DEMOCRACY | GOOD WILL FOUNDATION | HUMAN RIGHTS
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VILNIUS—Baltic News Service (BNS) carried today the text of a public statement issued by the Vilnius Jewish Community (VJC), joined by the Jewish communities of Klaipėda, Šiauliai, and Ukmergė (known in Jewish history as Meml, Shavl and Vilkomir, respectively). For its readers’ information, Defending History is providing a translation below. Please note that in the event of any query arising, the Lithuanian text alone is authoritative; items in square brackets [] have been added in the translation for clarity.
Readers wishing to look at the background are invited to our tracking section, Lithuania’s Jewish Community Issues. As our readers know, the Defending History community tends to see in the sad events of recent years the ominous hand of manipulation of a small but creative and proud Jewish community, by way of restitution monies that, some believe, are being channeled in ways that are not according to the democratic wishes of the members of the nation’s Jewish community. During last year’s election campaign, the rules were changed mid-campaign to disenfranchise the Jewish community’s living members via a new system based on a handful of organization chiefs, one of whom lives in Brussels. In one of the saga’s lowpoints, picking up on local antisemitic tropes, the official, government-sponsored community, where various ex-government or political officials and/or their children occupy some of the major positions, accused the actual Vilnius Jewish Community of being Russian speakers who pretend to be Jews, leading to international media coverage.
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Translation of Text from BNS, 23 March 2017:
Center of Vilnius Again Gifted to 1,000 Far-Right & Neo-Nazi Marchers on Lithuania’s Cherished March 11th Independence Day
VILNIUS MARCHES | KAUNAS MARCHES | REGIONAL PRO-NAZI MARCHES | COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED | ANTISEMITISM | EVENTS | OPINION
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By Defending History Staff
Photos by Julius Norwilla, Ruta Ostrovskaya, and Dovid Katz
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VILNIUS—For the 11th year running, the center of Lithuania’s beautiful capital, Vilnius, was gifted in the high afternoon hours this past Sunday, Match 11th, to far-righters and neo-Nazis on the annual holiday cherished by the free world for its historic importance, in 1990, in the series of events that toppled the Soviet Union’s hated misrule. The Defending History community, all resolute admirers of Lithuania who celebrate its success, has monitored this event annually. The international outcry after the 2008 event, which featured “Juden raus” and a throng of swastikas had led to curious “compromises” each year between organizers and the municipality on what will and will not be done. But no sign yet of the mayor’s office, municipality or government finding the moral backbone to just say, “No, not in the center of our capital on our independence day.”
Some Baltic Events in the Week of 11 March 2018
EVENTS
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SUNDAY 11 MARCH: Celebrating Lithuania’s independence and success and also, as each year, monitoring the neo-Nazi march for which the center of Vilnius is gifted (on this of all days). See our eyewitness report.
Did Latvia’s Foreign Minister Just Honor an Author for a Book that Spews Antisemitism and “Explains” the Holocaust?
OPINION | LATVIA | FOREIGN MINISTRIES AND HOLOCAUST POLITICS | GLORIFYING COLLABORATORS | BOOKS | ANTISEMITISM
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by Alexander Gilman (Riga)
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Latvia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Edgars Rinkēvičs seems to have found a brand new idol and role model — Ludwig Seya, who had been a diplomat in the prewar Latvian Republic for 22 years. For a short time he was a minister, but mostly he held ambassadorships to various countries. After Latvia was annexed to the Soviet Union he taught at the main Latvian university in Riga. In 1944 he was arrested by the Nazis for underground activities in the Latvian Central Council, a union of pre-war politicians and intellectuals who tried to persuade the West to insist on the independence of Latvia after World War II. After being liberated from the concentration camp on the territory of Poland, Seya was arrested by the Soviet military authorities and sent to a Stalinist gulag.
Chief Rabbi of Western Wall and and Holy Sites in Israel Calls on Lithuania’s President to Cancel Convention Center Project at Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery
DOCUMENTS | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY | OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER PROJECT | PETITION | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | CPJCE
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JERUSALEM—The 1 February 2018 letter of Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, Rabbi of the Western Wall and Holy Sites in Israel to the president of Lithuania, Dalia Grybauskaitė, was released here today for publication. In it, the world-renowned rabbi who heads the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, pleads with the president of Lithuania to “cancel this plan to make this site a convention center.” He reminds her of the tens of thousands of Jews buried at the old Piramónt cemetery of Vilna, now in the Šnipiškės district of Vilnius, capital of Lithuania. His letter follows the 7 January 2018 letter from the Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi David Lau, and the pleas of virtually all the world’s leading rabbis of Litvak heritage (and many others) over recent years, in addition to many people of good faith of all backgrounds.