Tourists Shocked at Monuments and Street Names for Holocaust Collaborators


Increasing numbers of summer tourists, in the spirit of “dark tourism” (and, in an EU/NATO country, a spirit of incredulity) are seeking out street names, public plaques, university lecture halls and other monuments to both collaborators and actual perpetrators of the Lithuanian Holocaust.

Some find the following sections helpful to locating specific sites:

(1) Anthology of street names and honors for killers and collaborators in Lithuania.

(2) Section on events and memorials for collaborators and perpetrators in various parts of Eastern Europe.

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Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Exotic Jewish Tourism, Human Rights, Legacy of 23 June 1941, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory | Comments Off on Tourists Shocked at Monuments and Street Names for Holocaust Collaborators

Peres in Vilnius July-August 2013 Summary Coverage


 

 Israel’s President Shimon Peres Welcomed in Lithuania

THE QUESTION: Did he remember in private at least to mention the fate of Litvaks (mostly  Israeli citizens), in their late 80s to 90s, being “sent to hell” as “suspected criminals for posterity” on the basis of  antisemitic governmental kangaroo pronouncements designed to invert the narrative of the Lithuanian Holocaust? Two of them, Yitzhak Arad and Joseph Melamed, are heroes of Israel’s 1948 War of Independence. Survivors correspond with president’s office.

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Open Letter to Evaldas Gustas, new Minister for the Economy in Lithuania



O P I N I O N

SAMPLE IMAGES

Background:

Original 2 May 2013 report; Person identified by the media submits 13 May 2013 complaint to the Press Commission [draft English translation], citing Anarchija.ltBalsas.ltKaunoŽinios.lt, Lrytas.lt as well as DefendingHistory.com. He does not deny the identification but disputes the characterization of his work as in harmony with neo-Nazism.

23 July update: Zeppelinus greets Baltic Pride with a new hate image.

Dear Mr. Gustas,

Congratulations on your recent appointment as Economy Minister. May your tenure be blessed with success, wisdom and good fortune for all of Lithuania’s citizens.

We address you on the advent of your tenure on a human rights matter rather than an economic question. We feel certain you would agree that there is a demonstrable correlation between the long-term successful economies of the world and free and open democratic societies that reject all forms of state-supported fascism, racism, antisemitism, homophobia and other forms of hate and exclusionism directed at segments of the population.

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Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Dovid Katz, EU, Human Rights, LGBTQ Equal Rights, Lithuania, News & Views, Opinion, Racism, Russian Speakers' Personal Status | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on Open Letter to Evaldas Gustas, new Minister for the Economy in Lithuania

An Important Book by Lithuania’s Health Minister, Totally Ignored by the Lithuanian Media. Why?



B O O K S

by Geoff Vasil

 See also: Andriukaitis’s 2012 reply to the foreign minister; on the floor of parliament; Andriukaitis section

Vytenis Andriukaitis by Defending History

Vytenis Povilas Andrukaitis, health minister of Lithuania. Photo: DefendingHistory.com

Vytenis Andriukaitis is a veteran politician. If you haven’t been following Lithuanian politics since 1990, there’s a good chance you’ve never heard of him, and even if you have, there’s a fair chance you didn’t notice him amid the various cults of personality which have dominated the political scene since about 1990.

The reason for that is fairly simple: Andriukaitis has never cultivated or even tolerated a cult of personality to grow up around him. From the very first days of Lithuanian independence, a freedom movement with which Andriukaitis was intimately involved, he has stubbornly clung to the idea of multiparty parliamentary democracy, largely by his own tenacity reviving the pre-World War II Lithuanian Social Democratic Party.

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Posted in Bold Citizens Speak Out, Books, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Vytenis Andriukaitis | Comments Off on An Important Book by Lithuania’s Health Minister, Totally Ignored by the Lithuanian Media. Why?

Defending History Honors


BOLD CITIZENS WHO STAND UP FOR HISTORIC DIGNITY AND HUMAN RIGHTS IN LITHUANIA (AND ANYWHERE!)


 

When they’re afraid to publish in Balbíreshok, just bring it here…

Olga Zabludoff’s Open Letter to South African Litvaks, too hot for the South African Jewish Report, now appears here


Professor Karen Sutton’s Essential Book on the Lithuanian Holocaust

AVAILABLE AGAIN


RECENT BOOKS:

David Bankier’s Holocaust Testimonials from Provincial Lithuania.  Efraim Zuroff’s review.

Grant Arthur Gochin’s Malice, Murder, and Manipulation: One Man’s Quest for Truth.

Keith Morgan’s Ruta’s Closet.  Interview with the author.

Books Reviewed.  Film and Theatre.  Video and Radio.

 


 

 

Holocaust Survivors Protest Red-Brown Commission’s Vilnius Relaunch

Commission’s renewal comes with new defamation of Dr. Yitzhak Arad, former director of Yad Vashem. major scholar, and Holocaust survivor

DANNY BEN-MOSHE IN JERUSALEM REPORT

ON JEWISH COMMUNITY’S SITE. IN RUSSIAN: DH; LZBObzor.lt; Reporter; Shofar7.com

Yitzhak Arad’s paper covering the Commission’s role, government obfuscation of the Holocaust and the history of the Holocaust in Lithuanian sources

Commission’s website features the Prague Declaration and promotes Double Genocide; its chairman urged his country to adopt PD. Website defames Vilnius Holocaust survivor Prof. Pinchos Fridberg for having corrected an error. Still no public condemnation of the defamation of its own founding member Yitzhak Arad (or of Dr. Rachel Margolis and Joseph Melamed)

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS AND COMMENT BY HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS

PAGE, CRITIQUES AND SECTION ON THE COMMISSION. Recent PR event in Vilnius

Renewed Red-Brown Commissionfunded by government, has members from the Genocide Center, the parliamentary state security committee, scholars who have tried to mitigate the Nazi loyalties and Holocaust collaboration of the 1941 Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF) and Provisional Government, and, shockingly for Holocaust survivors (and under political pressure) — Yad Vashem

Resignations from the Commission (& associated bodies) on principle include Dr. Yitzhak Arad, Sir Martin Gilbert, Professor Gershon Greenberg, Professor Konrad Kwiet, Prof. Dov Levin

Commission Executive Director gives a very different spiel to Lithuanian audiences

Are the Commission’s academic members aware of the body’s entanglement in the political imbroglio over demands for Russian compensation? Is the East European Holocaust being instrumentalized in a contemporary geopolitical context?


 

De-Obfuscating a Complicated Story into its Simple Core:

2013: Bernard Dichek in The Jerusalem Report. 2012: Efraim Zuroff in Haaretz. 2011: Danny Ben-Moshe’s film Rewriting History. 2010:  Wendy Robbins on BBC World Service2010: Ricky Ben-David in the Jerusalem Post. 2010: Dovid Katz in the Guardian. 2009: Rafael Aaren in Haaretz. 2008: Arne Bengtsson in Baltic Worlds.

Survivors, Scholars and Public Figures Speak Out:

See: Yitzhak Arad  ◊  Yehuda Bauer  ◊ Danny Ben-Moshe  ◊  Gordon Brown  ◊  Abraham Cooper  ◊  Pinchos Fridberg  ◊  Sir Martin Gilbert  ◊  Clemens Heni  ◊  John Mann  ◊  Jonathan Freedland  ◊  Lord Janner  ◊  Leigh Phillips  ◊  Leyzer Ran Family  ◊  Tessa Rajak  ◊  Heidemarie Uhl  ◊  Efraim Zuroff  ◊  More voices of Holocaust Survivors

AS

“Double Genocide” Lands in the United States of America

BY STEALTH BOMBER OUT OF THE EAST, UNDER THE RADAR

One of the demands of the 2008 Prague Declaration is “approved” by the US

Are US officials aware of the 2012 Seventy Years Declaration response?

What is “Double Genocide”?

                                                                                            by Irina Izhogina


Holocaust Survivors from Lithuania Propose a Simple Honesty Test for Gala Sutzkever Events in Vilnius

Sutzkever in Vilna (Wilno, Vilnius)

Avrom Sutzkever as a young poet inVilna (from Defending History archive)

SEE ALSO:

TRANSLATION PRIZE SAGA;  OPINIONS OF HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS; THE PATTERN OF DOUBLE GAMES; 2012 SLSer SADDENED THAT MILAN CHERSONSKI WAS DROPPED FROM FACULTY. WAS HIS MESSAGE  UNACCEPTABLE? SEE MILAN CHERSONSKI SECTION.

WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT?


 

CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA: REWRITING HISTORY COMING ON WEEKEND OF 3-4 AUGUST 2013

UK: GLASGOW, LEEDS, LIVERPOOL, LONDON, MANCHESTER, NEWCASTLE IN JULY 2013

A DOZEN SYNAGOGUES SCREEN DANNY BEN-MOSHE’S REWRITING HISTORY

United Synagogue of Great Britain Signs the Seventy Years Declaration

Film’s website  ◊  Reviews  ◊  Seventy Years Declaration (SYD)  ◊  SYD debates   ◊  SYD text  ◊  in European languages  ◊  Danny Ben-Moshe


A European Battle for Memory — and for Human Rights

The Debate in: AustraliaCanadaEUIsraelSouth AfricaUKUSA

London screenings of the documentary film Rewriting History

Litvak tourism, exotic tourism and dark tourism

Racism, antisemitism and homophobia in high places: Zeppelinus is key official at the Economy MinistryDoesn’t like our editor

Antisemitism and Honors for Holocaust collaborators

Red-Brown Commission blues

———

Evaldas Balčiūnas on Holocaust perpetrators made into “heroes”

Milan Chersonski on young Lithuanian anti-fascists who speak up against the glorification of Holocaust perpetrators

Aleksanders Feigmanis on an unmarked Holocaust grave in Riga

Leena Hietanen on Germany’s president who is getting into bed with Estonian Holocaust revisionists

Dovid Katz in Hope not Hate on glorification of Nazi war criminals by an EU/NATO government and the same country’s neo-Nazis

Geoff Vasil on sophisticated attempts to sanitize Holocaust perpetrators

Lina Žigelytė on the neo-Nazis’ hatred of feminists

Efraim Zuroff in The Times of Israel on a Latvian celebration of the anniversary of… the 1941 Nazi invasion


Explore Defending History

What it’s all abut.  Articles.  Authors.  Countries.  Sections.  Opinion.  Books.  Film.  Litvak Culture,  Litvak Studies (& map).  Litvak Tourism (Dark Tourism too).  Lithuanian Holocaust Studies (& map with shtetl list).  Human Rights & LGBT issues.  Antisemitism.  Local citizens who stand up.  More

ISSUES INCLUDE: Double Genocide” & “Red-Brown Commission”; “Prague Declaration” (response: Seventy Years Declaration);   “heroization” of collaboratorsaccusations against survivors;  criminalization of debate;  More


German and Estonian Presidents in Photo-op at “Double Genocide” Shrine in Tallinn

LEENA HIETANEN REPORTS FROM TALLINN

Tallinn photo-op with red-brown backdrop: Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves (left) with German president Joachim Gauck (Postimees—Erik Peinar). The modernist sculptural salute to red-brown equivalence, in the heart of an EU capital, showcases the curious supposed equality of the perpetrators and the liberators of Auschwitz. More red-brown iconography here.


A Vilnius Library with an Agenda?

Wyman Brent’s prophecy fulfilled?

Official invitation of the “Vilnius Jewish Public Library” to recent event glorifying the “Red-Brown Commission” without a single critic of the commission included in the panel.  Geoff Vasil’s eyewitness report The evening of elite Red-Brown Commission worship  featured two top Commission operatives.

Previous event at “Jewish Library” included featured speaker from the antisemitic Genocide Center who the previous week (in the mainstream Lithuanian media) publicly belittled the Holocaust history of “Israeli [he means: Jewish] scholars” in his attempt to sanitize the LAF/PG 1941 killers of Lithuanian Jewry. English translation of his interview; Geoff Vasil replied in Defending History.

See section on the Library

But where were all these “Jewish culture loving dignitaries” when over a thousand neo-Nazis, some sporting swastikas, marched passed the library’s entrance on the nation’s independence day?

IS THE “JEWISH” LIBRARY STILL COURTING NAIVE FOREIGNERS AND ‘USEFUL JEWISH IDIOTS’ IN ZINGERIAN RED-BROWN CAMPAIGN?

———

From the Red-Brown Commission’s website:

Commission’s executive director calls beloved Vilnius Holocaust survivor a “liar” on Commission’s website;  Exec director’s performance in Rigaat Seimas (for a different audience…); in Rewriting History

Background on the “Red-Brown Commission”


 

Vilnius: Would a “Jewish Museum” Graywash the Holocaust?

RELATED: DARK TOURISM (FOCUSED ON THE ADULATION FOR HOLOCAUST COLLABORATORS THAT LEADS TO SANITIZATION AND GLORIFICATION);  WHAT WERE THE INTENTIONS OF THE LITHUANIAN ACTIVIST FRONT (LAF) BEFORE WAR BROKE OUT? MORE. 2011 EVENTS TO HONOR THEM

SEE ARTICLES BY EVALDAS BALCIUNAS AND MILAN CHERSONSKI

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The Fate of an Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery that is Part of Now



O P I N I O N

by Dovid Katz

This comment first appeared in The Times of Israel on 22 May 2013.


One of the predictable consequences of genocide is the spectacle of old cemeteries without relatives or descendants of the buried to care for the gravestones or the site. Some stones will fall, some will sink, and then some will just be taken as usable components for the foundations of houses, the ballast of roads or the walls of a basketball court.

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Posted in "Good Will Foundation" (Jewish Restitution in Lithuania), Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Dovid Katz, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory | Comments Off on The Fate of an Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery that is Part of Now

Estonian Pro-Fascists Celebrate Country’s 1944 Waffen SS Legion


This year’s summer celebration of Estonia’s Hitler-allied Waffen SS was held as scheduled, in the Sinimae hills of eastern Estonia last Saturday, the 27th of July. Images and reports were carried by Postimees and other media.

Source: Postimees

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Posted in Celebrations of Fascism, Collaborators Glorified, Estonia, Events, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, News & Views | Comments Off on Estonian Pro-Fascists Celebrate Country’s 1944 Waffen SS Legion

Litvak & Yiddish


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Jerusalem of Lithuania


Tribute to Milan Chersonski: a dozen years as editor of Lithuania’s last Jewish newspaper

logo of Jerusalem of Lithuania newspaper

VIDEO TRIBUTE HERE

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Zeppelinus


Official at Economy Ministry is Still Hard at Work on Antisemitic-Racist-Homophobic “Economics”

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Revival of Antisemitism in Europe



O P I N I O N

by Roland Binet  (Braine-l’Alleud/Belgium)

 

One would have thought that after the destruction of millions of Jews during the war and the creation of Israel, that  antisemitism would have disappeared forever from Europe, the harsh and bloody lessons of the Holocaust having been learned. Yet, now, almost seventy years later, antisemitism is still an important factor to be reckoned with, both in Eastern and Western Europe.

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Zeppelinus, Unmasked as Official at Lithuania’s Ministry for the Economy, Posts New Gay-Hate Image to “Welcome” Baltic Pride Week



O P I N I O N

by Dovid Katz

The leading neo-Nazi blogger in Lithuania, “Zeppelinus,” who was unmasked several months ago by a number of publications as a high official at the Ministry for the Economy and chairman of the nation’s Tripartite Commission, did not deny the identification.

Instead, quite incredibly, he complained to the press commission against those who would dare deem to be unacceptable his hateful racist, antisemitic, homophobic and pro-fascist productions.

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Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Events, Human Rights, LGBTQ Equal Rights, Media Watch, News & Views, Opinion, Racism | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Zeppelinus, Unmasked as Official at Lithuania’s Ministry for the Economy, Posts New Gay-Hate Image to “Welcome” Baltic Pride Week

Free Speech and Holocaust Remembrance in the Eastern European Union



O P I N I O N

by Geoff Vasil

NOTE: This was written in response to “Foreign countries use far-right operations to undermine Lithuania’s image” published on June 7, 2013, on the Lithuania Tribune website.

Initially the editor-in-chief of the Lithuania Tribune agreed to publish the following reply in the Lithuania Tribune, but then changed his mind and finally refused, only informing the author a month later…

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Posted in Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Free Speech & Democracy, Geoff Vasil, History, Lithuania, Media Watch, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory | Comments Off on Free Speech and Holocaust Remembrance in the Eastern European Union

A Library with an Agenda? Bringing American Naifs On Board the Ultranationalists’ Baltic Holocaust Distortion Train?



SUMMARY COVERAGE OF “VILNIUS JEWISH PUBLIC LIBRARY” EVENTS TO 19 JULY 2013:

Wyman Brent’s prophecy fulfilled?

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Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, "Red-Brown Commission", Double Games, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, Events, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Vilnius Jewish Public Library, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on A Library with an Agenda? Bringing American Naifs On Board the Ultranationalists’ Baltic Holocaust Distortion Train?

EHU Center for German Studies: “Colloquium Vilnense 2013” is Short on “The Second Opinion” when it comes to The Holocaust



O P I N I O N

by Dovid Katz

 

Colleagues at the prestigious European Humanities University in Vilnius (EHU, also known as the Belarusian Humanities University, in exile here in Vilnius) have passed on the public poster for this year’s series of seminars under the title Colloquium vilnense 2013, running from May to November 2013. The A3 size poster is reproduced (much reduced) at the bottom of this page in two halves.

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Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Documents, Double Games, Dovid Katz, EU, Events, Free Speech & Democracy, Germany, Lithuania, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Vilnius Yiddish Institute, Yiddish Affairs | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on EHU Center for German Studies: “Colloquium Vilnense 2013” is Short on “The Second Opinion” when it comes to The Holocaust

Holocaust Survivors from Lithuania Issue Statement on Sutzkever Prize in Vilnius


On the 15 July 2013 centenary of the birth of the illustrious Yiddish poet of Vilna, Abraham Sutzkever (1913–2010), the last active association of Holocaust survivors from Lithuania released the statement below (also available as PDF). It urges organizers, participants, judges and prize winners to avoid being instrumentalized as cover-up props for Holocaust obfuscation. It proposes that they simply issue public statements calling for written public apologies from the Lithuanian government to the defamed Jewish partisans who knew Sutzkever well from the forests of Lithuania and dozens of years of contact in survivor circles. See the related debate on this year’s Sutzkever Prize.

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Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Documents, Double Games, Events, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Joseph Melamed, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Sutzkever Prize in Lithuania, Yiddish Affairs | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on Holocaust Survivors from Lithuania Issue Statement on Sutzkever Prize in Vilnius

Vexed Revival of “Red-Brown Commission”



State-sponsored Zingeris-Račinskas “red-brown commission” (officially: International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes in Lithuania) in Vilnius posts new list of members.

See also: 

Page on the commission

Critiques of the commission and its associated Prague Declaration

DH section on the commission.

Resignations to date from Commission-related bodies include Dr. Yitzhak Arad, Sir Martin Gilbert (London), Prof. Gershon Greenberg (Washington DC), Prof. Konrad Kwiet  (Sydney) and Prof. Dov Levin (Jerusalem).

Holocaust survivors themselves have stood up to express disquiet about some aspects of the commission: Yitzhak AradPinchos Fridberg (more), Dov Levin (more), Joseph Melamed (more), Basheva Ran, the Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel, Jewish Community of Lithuania / Union of Ghetto Survivorsdecade and a half of issues.

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Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Double Games, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Germany, Holocaust Policies of Mr. Ronaldas Račinskas and the State-Sponsored "International Commission" (ICECNSORL), Lithuania, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Views of Prof. Sarunas Liekis, Vilnius Jewish Public Library | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Vexed Revival of “Red-Brown Commission”

President of Germany Hails Baltic Double Genocide Revisionism



by Leena Hietanen (Tallinn)

Germany’s president, Joachim Gauck, welcomed intensified cooperation between Estonian and German historians in the cause of continuing the search for Communist crimes in both Soviet Estonia and East Germany. He posed for photographs alongside Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves with a backdrop of the iconic red-equals-brown Hollywoodesque “set” welcoming visitors to the nation’s Museum of the Occupation in Central Tallinn.

german and estonian presidents celebrate double genocide

Photo of the two presidents with red-brown-equals-sign backdrop at the Museum of the Occupation in Central Tallinn: Postimees (Erik Peinar). More red-brown iconography here.

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Posted in Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Estonia, EU, Germany, Leena Hietanen, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Prague "Platform" | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on President of Germany Hails Baltic Double Genocide Revisionism

Would a Jewish Museum in Vilnius Graywash the Lithuanian Holocaust?



O P I N I O N

by Dovid Katz


A recent visit to Vilnius’s “Jewish Museum — Tolerance Center” has revealed a shocking panel purporting to convey the “facts” of June 23rd 1941, the darkest date in Lithuanian Jewish history. It is the date on which the Holocaust in Lithuania began. No need, incidentally, to take our word for it. Ask any Lithuanian Jew, of any generation, current abode or political persuasion: When did the Holocaust in your country start?

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Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Collaborators Glorified, Double Games, Exotic Jewish Tourism, Lithuania, Museums, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory | Comments Off on Would a Jewish Museum in Vilnius Graywash the Lithuanian Holocaust?

Wiesenthal Center Blasts Latest Pro-Fascist Commemoration by Latvian Authorities


JERUSALEM—The Simon Wiesenthal Center today denounced the commemoration of the “liberation” of the Latvian city of Limbazi, sponsored by the Visu Latvija political party, a member of the ruling coalition in the nation’s parliament in Riga.

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Posted in Celebrations of Fascism, Collaborators Glorified, Efraim Zuroff, Events, Latvia, News & Views | Comments Off on Wiesenthal Center Blasts Latest Pro-Fascist Commemoration by Latvian Authorities