Tag Archives: Holocaust Obfuscation

EU Ambassador to Afghanistan Writes in the Wall Street Journal that Nazi Rule in Lithuania was “A Few Years’ Respite from the Communists”


The Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israel Office today released a statement in which its director, Holocaust historian Dr. Efraim Zuroff, calls for an apology from the European Union’s ambassador to Afghanistan, Vygaudas Ušackas, for insensitive and misleading remarks on the Lithuanian Holocaust in a 6 December 2011 Wall Street Journal article. A letter of protest by Jack Zwanziger of Chicago appeared in the WSJ on 14 December 2011.

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Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Double Games, Double Genocide, EU, Lithuania, Media Watch, News & Views, Politics of Memory | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on EU Ambassador to Afghanistan Writes in the Wall Street Journal that Nazi Rule in Lithuania was “A Few Years’ Respite from the Communists”

How the Zingeris-Račinskas Red-Brown Commission “Gently” Pushed Along the Conversion of Holocaust Studies into Double Genocide Studies



O P I N I O N

by Rachel Croucher (Melbourne)

Although not seeking to deny the Holocaust, the ultimate consequence of the movement to redefine genocide is the equalization of National Socialist and Soviet crimes. The characterization of Soviet crimes as genocide is a misrepresentation that hinders authentic remembrance of the Holocaust in Lithuania by helping to obscure the extent and nature of Lithuanian complicity in the killings of the local Jewish population.

The idea that the crimes of Hitler and successive Soviet regimes are in fact equal has been a growing force behind public discourse on the Holocaust since the formulation of the national Holocaust and Genocide Education Program at the sixth meeting of The International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania in June 2002.

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Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, "Red-Brown Commission", Australia, Double Genocide, EU, Free Speech & Democracy, History, Holocaust Policies of Mr. Ronaldas Račinskas and the State-Sponsored "International Commission" (ICECNSORL), Opinion, Politics of Memory, Rachel Croucher | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on How the Zingeris-Račinskas Red-Brown Commission “Gently” Pushed Along the Conversion of Holocaust Studies into Double Genocide Studies

‘Academic’ Article Co-Authored by Alexander Gogun (University of Potsdam), Posted on the Nationalist Website ‘OUN-UPA’, Obfuscates the Ukrainian Holocaust, Denying OUN and UPA Anti-Jewish Violence



O P I N I O N

by Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe

Aleksander Gogun, a historian at Potsdam University and at Humboldt University
of Berlin
, and Aleksander Vovk, are the joint authors of an article, originally published in 2005, that obfuscates the Holocaust and denies the anti-Jewish violence of the Ukrainian nationalists. The article, in Russian, Evrei v bor’be za nezavisimuiu Ukrainu  (Jews in the Struggle for an Independent Ukraine), presented in academic format, continues to appear on the nationalist website titled OUN-UPA at http://oun-upa.org.ua.

The article, posted at http://lib.oun-upa.org.ua/gogun/pub07.html,  gives the impression  that Jews served and fought willingly and enthusiastically in the UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army, Ukraїns’ka Povstans’ka Armiia) for an independent Ukrainian state. From the very outset of their article the authors claim that there were no pogroms in Ukraine in 1941, that Ukrainian nationalists never had a negative attitude toward the Jews and that Ukrainians who served in the German police during World War II did not participate in the Holocaust. The authors call all these things “stereotypes of Soviet propaganda” and imply that they never existed or happened.

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The Denial that is Part of Holocaust Obfuscation: Second Day of the Lithuanian Parliament’s Conference



by Dovid Katz

The Lithuanian Holocaust broke out in the week of 22 June 1941, when the Nazis attacked the Soviet Union; it is the week when, in many locations, so-called ‘patriots’ and ‘rebels’ in large numbers began to humiliate, plunder, injure and slaughter Jewish neighbors before the first Germans ever arrived. At the conference held yesterday and today in the country’s parliament, this was the Elephant in the Room that reared its head now and again, no matter how hard the political and academic planners worked to ensure that it would disappear in a program dedicated to virtually every other conceivable aspect (translation of original program here; final printed English version of the program here).

SEE ALSO:

Report on the first day of the conference.

Full translation of Mr. Racinskas’s speech.

The plot thickens. These are the very ‘patriots’ and ‘rebels’ who are being honored this week by major state institutions, and to no small degree, at this very conference. As if their launch of the Holocaust, which went on under German rule, and with their continued massive voluntary participation, is either some kind of uncorroborated slander, or, as if this is some very tiny detail in an otherwise glorious campaign of rebellion against Soviet forces (with no mention that the USSR’s troops were actually fleeing the German invasion, not their ‘rebellion’).

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Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Collaborators Glorified, Double Games, Dovid Katz, Events, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Genocide Center (Vilnius), Holocaust Policies of Mr. Ronaldas Račinskas and the State-Sponsored "International Commission" (ICECNSORL), Legacy of 23 June 1941, Lithuania, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Denial that is Part of Holocaust Obfuscation: Second Day of the Lithuanian Parliament’s Conference

Yad Vashem, Causing Pain to Survivors with Participation in Lith. Parliament Conference Lauding Collaborators, Withdraws at Last Moment (after Defending History’s Plea)


UPDATE 1: On 27 June 2011 at 3:31 PM (Vilnius time), the Israeli Embassy in Riga (responsible for Lithuania as well as Latvia) emailed DefendingHistory.com to say that Yad Vashem’s participation in the event has been cancelled. This was confirmed in a further email from Yad Vashem at 3:56 PM. In Vilnius, however, the name of Yad Vashem and its designated representative continue to appear on programs and brochures, giving the impression that the event enjoys the formal participation of Yad Vashem. See our public query to Yad Vashem.

UPDATE 2: See Defending History’s eyewitness reports of Day 1 and Day 2 of the conference.

According to a conference program posted on the website of the Lithuanian Parliament, Yad Vashem is the only Jewish institution sending a representative to the latest conference mounted by the Lithuanian government in its campaign to downgrade the Holocaust and whitewash the Lithuanian Holocaust’s first murderers (the L.A.F. and other fascist groups), often by glorifying them as ‘freedom fighters’. The printed brochure for the conference, to be held on 29 and 30 June 2011, announces the event as a joint project of the Lithuanian Parliament (Seimas) and the deeply antisemitic Genocide Research Center. One of the Center’s top ‘specialists’ participated in the recent neo-Nazi parade and went on to launch a public antisemitic campaign. He was neither removed from his post nor publicly reprimanded, as the season’s conferences plow ahead full steam.

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Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Collaborators Glorified, Double Genocide, Events, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Israel, It Pays to Defend History: Success Over the Years..., Legacy of 23 June 1941, Lithuania, Museums, News & Views, Yad Vashem and Lithuania | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Yad Vashem, Causing Pain to Survivors with Participation in Lith. Parliament Conference Lauding Collaborators, Withdraws at Last Moment (after Defending History’s Plea)

DefendingHistory.com announces Media Chronicle of Opposition to the 2008 ‘Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism’


DefendingHistory.com has announced the free availability of a frequently updated resource page that provides links for select major expressions of opposition to the 2008 Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism.  The page is available here or by visiting:

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‘Prague Process’ Crowd, with Lithuanian Jewish politician for cover (as usual), now proceeding with plans to ‘overhaul European history textbooks’ for Double Genocide and Holocaust Obfuscation


The Prague Declaration proponents in European Parliamentary circles, having renamed their movement the ‘Prague Process’, are triumphantly reporting on their latest initiative to bring to fruition yet another of the movement’s stated objectives: to overhaul all the history textbooks in Europe to reflect the supposed ‘equality’ of Nazi and Soviet crimes, in other words to continue with the far right’s revision-of-history project to downgrade the Holocaust in the course of Double Genocide ideology.

As ever, the group is able at critical moments to wheel out Lithuania’s right-wing Jewish MP, Emanuelis Zingeris, himself a signatory of the Prague Declaration, who publicly resigned from his country’s Jewish community many years ago, but continues to run the ‘Jewish track’ of a complicated double-game policy that has led, in 2011, to the absurdity of a year to remember the Holocaust as well as a year to commemorate some of its local perpetrators who are glorified as ‘anti-Soviet heroes’ (see here, here and here).

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Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Double Genocide, EU, Free Speech & Democracy, Human Rights, News & Views, Politics of Memory | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on ‘Prague Process’ Crowd, with Lithuanian Jewish politician for cover (as usual), now proceeding with plans to ‘overhaul European history textbooks’ for Double Genocide and Holocaust Obfuscation

Reply to Rokas Grajauskas: Condemnation of Communism Does Not Require Submission to Double Genocide, Holocaust Obfuscation, or the Recent Deterioration in Civil Society and Free Speech in Lithuania


 


O P I N I O N

by Dovid Katz

NOTE: This reply to the Lithuanian Foreign Policy Review paper by Rokas Grajauskas first appeared on the website of LFPR (direct link here).

[UPDATE of 1 March 2013]: The journal refused to publish a reply, but after an intervention from Prof. MEP Leonidas Donskis it was uploaded on the journal’s website for a time, and then removed.]

Rokas Grajauskas cites me in his recent article on these pages as invoking the notion Holocaust Obfuscation (a term I proposed at a London seminar in February 2008, then formally in 2009) to refer to “the efforts of the post-Communist countries to revive the memory of Stalin’s crimes.” Nothing could be further from the truth. The web journal I edit, DefendingHistory.com, although dedicated primarily to the battle against trivialization of the Holocaust and the concomitant racism and antisemitism of the new Far Right in Eastern Europe, contains a page on Soviet crimes, where I wholeheartedly embrace such Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly resolutions as 1096 (1996) and 1481 (2006), which wisely and rightly condemn Soviet crimes. It is vital that the full extent of these crimes be documented, the victims honored, the subject properly taught in international curricula, museums and memorializing institutions established, and justice pursued to the full extent of law. It is every bit as vital that Western commitment to Baltic security and independence remain unwavering, what with a huge unpredictable neighbor “with a certain past” (and unclear future) situated to the immediate east.

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Posted in Double Genocide, Dovid Katz, EU, Free Speech & Democracy, Human Rights, Hungary, Lithuania, Opinion, Politics of Memory, US State Dept Manipulated? | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Reply to Rokas Grajauskas: Condemnation of Communism Does Not Require Submission to Double Genocide, Holocaust Obfuscation, or the Recent Deterioration in Civil Society and Free Speech in Lithuania

A Dictionary of Lithuanian-Jewish Relations


  • Navigating the Minefield of Obfuspeak and Terminology of the field
  • Vilnius 2012
  • In Memory of George Orwell

Primary Concept:
Holocaust Obfuscation

Antisemitism Conferences or Studies = Obfuspeak for events and publications that are guaranteed to exclude any mention of contemporary local antisemitism at the point of production, but will feature excellent glossy brochures on the past and on intolerance in faraway lands

Blaming the Victims

Blizzard = Obfuspeak for when Estonia opts out of Obfuscationist documents and inches away from the expected Baltic positions

(It’s) Complicated = Obfuspeak for intentional confounding of the distinction between perpetrator and victim, and for efforts to confuse and confound issues

Control of Academia

Criminalization of Debate

Disneyland Ghetto Theme Park

Debate Rigging

Democracy Demolition

Dirty Tricks Department (+)

Double Genocide

Double-Genocider = (usually state-paid or favored) disseminator of Double Genocide revisionism, often camouflaged by ‘Jewish’ and ‘Yiddish’ events and by Holocaust Studies per se

Double Genocide Industry → Genocide Industry

Dry-Clean

Dual Citizenzhip = Obfuspeak for the notion that massive numbers of foreign Jews of Litvak origin are clamoring for Lithuanian citizenship only in order to stake claims for property or compensation and without any wish to invest in the country

Empty Jewish Addresses = addresses in Vilnius dedicated to the Jewish heritage but lacking in any genuine Jewish people, culture or knowledge

Equal Evaluation of Totalitarian Regimes = Obfuspeak for → Holocaust Obfuscation / Double Genocide

Erasmus Exchange Genocide Project

Ethnic and national symbols = Obfuspeak for: swastikas

Event Rigging

Fake Litvak

Fragments / Fragmentai = government project to restore ‘fragments’ of the Jewish quarter (/Vilna Ghetto) area, possibly with diverted Restitution funds, for PR and tourism, in the absence of clear support either from the Jewish community or from the current residents of the area.

Freedom of the Press = Obfuspeak for license for the mass media’s extreme antisemitic and homophobic incitement

Genocide = Obfuspeak for all crimes by states, which are inherently and necessarily equal (slogan: ‘Killing is killing’)

Genocide Advisor to the Prime Minister = formal Jewish advisor who will go along with Holocaust Obfuscation and Double Genocide while providing ‘Jewish cover’

Genocide Center = Obfuspeak for → a center interested in all except the one genocide that occurred in the country where it is located

Genocide and Resistance Research Center of Lithuania = Obfuspeak for the Research Center for Holocaust Obfuscation and Double Genocide, the most prestigious institution in town, providing ambitious academics with excellent prospects for income, publications and rapid elevation to the higher realms of politics and frequent foreign travel. When pressed by the public to nevertheless account for the murder of 200,000 Jewish citizens, the Center is quick to explain the situation. → Genocide Center

Genocide Industry = the collective institutional, financial, political, academic and media power of the Genocide Center, the Genocide Museum, the Red-Brown Commission, various history departments, faculties and institutes, and politicians and state agencies concerned with promoting Double Genocide and Holocaust revisionism

Genocide Museum = Obfuspeak for a museum interested in all but the one genocide that occurred in the country where it is located

Glorification of Holocaust Perpetrators

Government Litvaks

Graywash

Green House = Holocaust museum that provides an accurate history, and is invisible from any street

History Apartheid

Holocaust Memorial Year 2011 = Obfuspeak for a year of commemoration for the Holocaust that is simultaneously a year of commemoration for the perpetrators who launched the Lithuanian Holocaust in 1941, including a documentary film on the LAF

Holocaust Obfuscation

Holocaust Remembrance Day = September 23rd in Lithuania, marking the Germans’ liquidation of the Vilna Ghetto in 1943; rather than the international day, January 27th, marking the day Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviet army, or a day recommended by Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors, e.g. October 29th, date of the largest one-day massacre in Baltic history, when the Great Action was carried out at Kaunas’s Ninth Fort in 1941; or August 28th, marking the week in 1941 when seven entire age-old Jewish communities were totally annihilated, in both cases with massive voluntary local participation.

Human Rights = Obfuspeak for antisemitic tirades, particularly against Holocaust survivors, by major local ‘Human Rights’ organizations

Hypnotize = Obfuspeak for total psychological control of a → UJI

Identity Theft

International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes = Obfuspeak for Red-Equals-Brown Commission → Holocaust Obfuscation / Double Genocide

June 23rd  →  June Uprising

June Uprising = Obfuspeak for the onset of the Lithuanian Holocaust on 22-23 June 1941 at the hands of ‘local rebels’ who began the campaign of barbarity and murder against innocent Jewish neighbors that continued uninterrupted until the achievement of the annihilation of Lithuanian Jewry. [Historical note: the Soviet army was fleeing the Nazi invasion, not the Lithuanian Activist Front (L.A.F.) ‘rebels’ who were busy initiating the Holocaust, and whose earlier leaflets set out exactly what they had in mind for the Jewish citizens of their country.]

Left = Obfuspeak for anyone not of the New Far Right

Lenin Theme Park = Obfuspeak for a park for communist statues with historic signposting blaming the Jews for communism and particularly anti-Nazi Jewish partisans for sabotaging Lithuania during the war

Liberal = Obfuspeak for anyone not of the New Far Right

Liberastas = Far Right’s insulting term for a liberal, on the model of ‘pederast’

Lithuanian Jewish studies conference = Obfuspeak for conference without Lithuanian Jews

Lithuanian Swastika = swastika with added lines purportedly signifying the Pillars of Gediminas, a classic Grand Duchy of Lithuania symbol, especially unfortunate as Grank Duke Gediminas, who established Vilna, has been remembered for many centuries by Jews and other minorities as a symbol of tolerance, ingathering of peoples and peaceful multicultural coexistence with the rights of minorities guaranteed

Litvak = Obfuspeak for a non-Litvak, usually a Lithuanian government official, compromised academic or associated businessman wanting to cash in on one or another of the Fake Litvak projects; occasionally also a Western Jew awarded glory by the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry and recruited to government PR efforts; → Identity Theft

Litvak Forum = Obfuspeak for a forum run by non-Litvaks for the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry in the hope of attracting ‘rich Litvaks’ to support projects that would cover for Holocaust Obfuscation. Comment by the Litvak Studies Institute here.  ALSO, a well-meaning forum for non-Litvaks and Litvaks who can be relied on to abstain from serious criticism of the Lithuanian government on Jewish issues, and to paper over serious dialogue on the actual issues (that could lead to harmony) with PR. We are following the emerging term ‘Government Litvak’. Watch this space.

Litvakless Litvak-fest

Looted Books Room = Emerging popular name in Vilnius for the proposed room for looted prewar Yivo books and archives which the Lithuanian government has refused to return to Yivo.

May 5th = the day in 2008 when police came looking for Holocaust Survivors Dr Rachel Margolis and Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky, considered by some to be the lowpoint of modern Lithuanian history

May 9th = the day marking the formal defeat of Nazi Germany in the East (1945), which World War II veterans and their families and Holocaust Survivors and their families would wish to celebrate as before, but often feel intimidated since the 2008 law prohibiting ‘Nazi and Soviet symbols‘.

Museum of Genocide Victims = Obfuspeak for the Museum of Soviet Crimes that completely ignores (a) the one local genocide that occurred and (b) glorifies the murderers who launched the Holocaust in Lithuania

‘1940 came before 1941′  = the Double Genociders’ claim that the genocide of 1941 was a roughly proportionate reaction to the ‘genocide’ of Soviet (‘Soviet-Jewish’ in antisemitic parlance) rule of 1940-1941

Partisan = Obfuspeak for Baltic Holocaust perpetrators of 1941 who initiated the Baltic Holocaust before the Germans even arrived, in concord with the wishes of the arriving / just-arrived new Nazi occupiers. Glorified as freedom fighters by the new Far Right

Patriotic = Obfuspeak for affiliation with neo-Nazism

Patriotic Slogan = Obfuspeak for: Žydai—lauk, Juden raus etc, particularly at parades on major thoroughfares on national holidays

Pogrom = Obfuspeak for Holocaust mass  murder constituting the onset of genocide, by local killers in Lithuania, predating the establishment of German administration in numerous localities

Prague Declaration

Prague Process = Obfuspeak for → Holocaust Obfuscation / Double Genocide

Pre-trial Investigation = Obfuspeak for government action to defame dissidents or veteran Jewish anti-Nazi partisans without having to ever charge or clear the targets

Rabinowitz-Dorf the situation = to use expensive American PR techniques to legitimize → Fake Litvaks and → Holocaust Obfuscation

Red-Brown Commission →  International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes

Red-Brown Iconography

Red-Brown Jailtime Law, passed by the Lithuanian parliament in June 2010 and signed by the president, threatening up to two years in prison for those who would deny Nazi or Soviet genocide (hence those who would deny that Soviet crimes rise to genocide, or would deny equivalence).

Respectability for hire = the disbursement of grants by the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry and its embassies to naive (or unscrupulous) prestigious academic and cultural institutions and museums to stage ‘Lithuanian-Jewish events’ as cover for the policies pursued in Lithuania and the European Union

Restitution = Obfuspeak for → Disneyland Ghetto Theme Park

Restitution Advisor to the Prime Minister = formal Jewish advisor who will go along with Disneyland Remnants, expounding to the press about the ‘French Model’,  while providing ‘Jewish cover’

Russian lackey = Obfuspeak for someone who disagrees with the far-right revisionism of World War II history

Sanitization

Sarašas = the list of alleged Holocaust perpetrators previously on the website of an Israeli organization of survivors from Lithuania

Single Double Genocide = the double game of demanding equalization of Nazi and Soviet crimes in the European Parliament, while locally, in museums and research centers, reserving the term ‘genocide’ for Soviet crimes alone

So-called Lithuanian-Jewish relations = a term coined by Professor Sara Ginaitė for events and programs that cover for the lack of dialogue about the actual issues, and replace them with artificial declarations of harmony and dialogue with artificially picked panels and conclaves

Spousal illness = the legal concept devised by a Vilnius court to enable the one Nazi war criminal ever convicted in independent Lithuania, Algimantas Dailidė, to escape even minor symbolic punishment on the grounds that his wife was ill at the time of the conviction

Stockholm Programme = European Union edifice into which the Red=Brown Campaign, led by Lithuania’s foreign minister, attempted to insert Double Genocide; they were repudiated by the EU in December 2010

Sunflower Litvak = Obfuspeak for American Jewish stand-ins for representatives of the Litvak community anointed by the ambassador of Lithuania in Washington in a grand ceremony

Swasticals = the family of symbols similar to or reminding the viewer of the swastika, including the → ‘Lithuanian Swastika’ with the added lines purported to signify the Pillars of Gediminas

Swastika = Obfuspeak for an ancient Baltic symbol of the sun, that should not nowadays, Heaven forbid, be mistaken as a current omen of neo-Nazism, racism or antisemitism, by ruling of a Lithuanian court in 2010

Tale of Two Brents = Term of description for the occasional confusion between the perhaps-soon-to-be-capitulated Yivo property library (on the initiative of Jonathan Brent) and the Vilnius Jewish Library (created and assembled by Wyman Brent)

Talibans = Term of derision used by self-proclaimed ‘moderates’ to describe both the Far Right antisemitic establishment and — the surviving Litvaks and their spokespeople

Talibanization = Stigmatization of the views of the Holocaust Survivor community  and the Western narrative of World War II as extremist and in the spirit of terrorism

Thought Police = Obfuspeak for those who speak out against racism, homophobia and antisemitism

Tolerastas = Far Right’s insulting term for an advocate for Tolerance, on the model of ‘pederast’

Totalitarian = Obfuspeak for all aspects of the Nazi and Soviet regimes, which are ipso facto found to be equivalent

UJIs (Useful Jewish Idiots) from abroad who can be persuaded with medals, junkets, honors and sundry favors, including funding for serious projects

Violence = Obfuspeak for Holocaust trivialization, implying mutual violence and the supposed inherent equivalence of all violence

(To) vinokurize = mobilize Jewish citizens to act against the local Jewish community

Woodward Bernstein = a financial analyst who follows the money trail of Fake Litvaks in the US

Yiddish Institute = Obfuspeak for an institute without Yiddish or one that helps antisemitic elements in the government get rid of the country’s last Jewish professor.

Yiddish Studies professor = Obfuspeak for a professor of anything but Yiddish who purports to speak for Jewish causes, projecting ‘Jewish  legitimacy’ by use of the cuddly term ‘Yiddish’

(To) zingerize = confuse the issues by simultaneous pursuit of contradictory goals for different audiences

Zuroff (Lith. Zurofas or Zuroffas; Lat. Zurofs) = a proud Litvak who asks that truth be told about the Holocaust and who seeks justice for the annihilated Lithuanian Jewry in the form of fair trials for alleged perpetrators in their own country; a dreaded nightmare for the Holocaust Obfuscation movement, hence a term of derision for a Jew in contemporary antisemitic discourse in the Baltics

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Opposition to the 2008 ‘Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism’


This page has moved here. Thank you.

NEW URL:

https://defendinghistory.com/prague-declaration/opposition

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Red-Brown Iconography


The governing establishments in Eastern European states sometimes produce red-brown symbols as part of the wider campaign to give the notion of red-brown equality an aura of official sanctioned status. The effects are obvious: People are being desensitized to the swastika, Soviet symbols are ‘artistically’ (i.e. via political kitsch) recombinated into the new Dual Equal Evil symbols making the revisionist history ‘true’. Severe pain is caused to families of Holocaust Survivors and anti-Nazi Soviet war veterans alike. The continued silence of the European Union, the OSCE and NATO encourages the drift toward the far right, which includes clean-up of the image of Nazi collaborators in elite circles, and glorification of Nazi symbols in more uncouth environments.

See 2016 efforts to “export” red-brown iconography westward to — Brussels

Estonia

Official emblem of the Estonian International Commission for Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity

Keynote memorial structure at Tallinn’s major historical museum (here being honored by the presidents of Estonia and Germany).

Hungary

Emblems of the House of Terror museum in Budapest, which features a variety of red-brown juxtapositions.  The first example that follows is from the entrance hallway of the museum. The second is the back cover of the museum’s official guidebook. The third is the iconography added atop the building itself.

Lithuania

Stamp & envelope set issued by the Lithuanian Postal Service,  which incorporates three potent messages: (a) the alleged sameness of Nazism and Communism, symbolized by  the graphic unification of th two symbols;  (a) elevation to fact of the opinion that the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of 23 August 1939 was the central aggression of World War II; and (c), the campaign for August 23rd to become a Europe-wide ‘Red-Brown Remembrance Day’ canonizing revisionist history internationally, and inevitably displacing or downgrading Holocaust Remembrance Day specifically, and undermining the sense of the notion genocide more generally.

Part of the ‘red-brown-mobile’ often seen in central Vilnius:

The red-brown ‘scorecard’ produced by Delfi and published on various occasions in connection with news reports on red-brown ‘equivalency’ topics (e.g. in 2009;  in 2011).

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The Genocide Center



“Genocide and Resistance Research Center of Lithuania”

13 August 2010


O P I N I O N

by Dovid Katz

Images by Richard Schofield (© R. Schofield)

Didžioji Street 17/1, Vilnius

 

UPDATES:

A ‘chief specialist’ of the Genocide Center participated in the March 2011 (and 2012 and 2013) neo-Nazi parades, and then went on to make antisemitic statements to the press.  His July 2011 article in the mainstream media. As of Summer 2012, he is still a ‘chief specialist’ at the Center.

A revelatory gem from the Genocide Center’s website:

“Remembering the parallel with homicide, it could be said, that one may cut off all four of a person’s limbs and he or she will still be alive, but it is enough to cut off the one and only head to send him or her to another dimension. The Jewish example clearly indicates that this is also true about genocide. Although an impressive percentage of the Jews were killed by the Nazis, their ethnic group survived, established its own extremely national state and continuously grew stronger. Therefore, although a huge percentage of killed group members may indicate the cruelty of the oppressor, more complicated methods are needed to estimate the real results of genocide for the group as the entity.”

SEE ALSO:

DH SECTION ON THE GENOCIDE CENTER

Individual pages of DefendingHistory.com are dedicated to unraveling various aspects of the revisionist history campaign now underway in Europe. It is not always easy to disentangle the interlocking components. They include: trying to replace the history of the Holocaust with a new model of ‘Two Equal Genocides’ (Soviet and Nazi) in resolutions before the European parliament; the establishment of state-sponsored commissions to carry out the campaigns to get this done, even while convincing western organizations that the ‘new’ Holocaust studies incorporated within this paradigm are legitimate.

The Genocide Center is responsible for the historical misrepresentations and antisemitic exhibits at the Genocide Museum (and its new “Holocaust room”) in central Vilnius, and at Gruto Parkas near Druskininkai.

But there is also the disturbing issue of discrepancy between the ‘for export’ versions and what is on offer domestically on the ground. At major institutions in certain East European capitals, the impression is given that there was in fact only one genocide in Eastern Europe, and that it was the Soviet one, a notion frequently accompanied by antisemitic mischaracterizations of Soviet crimes as largely or primarily Jewish.

This is particularly evident at the Museum of Genocide Victims on the main boulevard of Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, and at the Gruto Parkas (Lenin Statue Park) tourist complex near Druskininkai.  Features common to both include (a) diminution or elimination of the Holocaust from the history formally presented to the public and tourists; (b) open antisemitism and disdain for Holocaust victims, survivors and anti-Nazi resistance fighters, and (c) a pro-fascist ambiance that extends, unbelievably, to glorification of perpetrators of genocide as long as they were in someone’s sense ‘anti-Soviet’. On this last point, see now the valiant July 2010 essay by Lithuanian author and humanist Tomas Venclova, and the courageous statement issued in September 2010 by the Jewish Community of Lithuania.

Does the Genocide Center attempt to whitewash Nazi war criminals (instead of investigating their crimes)?

Two further distressing aspects have come into play in recent years, in a way wholly unanticipated. First, the efforts to criminalize and prosecute Holocaust Survivors who joined the anti-Nazi resistance. Second, the introduction of new laws to criminalize opinions that differ from the new ‘Truth’ about history that states in the region (not only Lithuania!) are attempting to legislate. It has taken time for news of these sometimes opaque developments to adequately filter through, but at last, there is growing awareness and opposition in Western democratic and Jewish circles to the targeting of survivors, to the state commissions, and to the European Parliament campaign to ‘equalize’ Nazi and Soviet crimes. None of these Western responses try to diminish the genuine need to educate the West about the horrendous Soviet crimes and occupation from which the nations of Eastern Europe suffered so much.

The vexed issue of motives is sometimes linked to contemporary regional antisemitism (which in 2010 included judicial decisions in favor of swastika displays). Sometimes, it is seen to be an ultranationalist attempt to obfuscate and relativize the huge voluntary participation by ‘anti-Soviet patriots’ in the actual murder of virtually the entire Jewish population in LithuaniaLatvia and Estonia. Some (certainly not all) of the revisionist efforts here in Lithuania have been coordinated from one control center in central Vilnius: the state-sponsored Genocide and Resistance Research Center of Lithuania. Housed in a handsome building in Vilnius’s prestigious Old Town  (website here), it is the provider of historic information and texts for display to both the Genocide Museum and Gruto Parkas (where its texts stand as state’s historic fact despite the park’s privatization). It has its own ‘Special Investigations Department‘ and works closely with prosecutors and with parliament. Various politicians have held high positions in the Genocide Center.

Question of the Month:

The Genocide and Resistance Research Center of Lithuania reports on its website on the work of its Special Investigations Department.

Question: Does this department have any connection to the ongoing and shameful ‘investigations’ of Jewish Holocaust Survivors who joined the anti-Nazi resistance and are heroes of the free world?



History has its ironies, and an old building its secrets. It so happens that the Genocide Center’s headquarters stands at the site of one of the gates of the (‘small’) Vilna Ghetto, located in the medieval Jewish Quarter area, moments from the Gaon of Vilna’s place of residence. These winding streelets constituted an epicenter of East European Jewish civilization for centuries. But inside this ghetto gate, set up in September 1941, thousands of the city’s Jewish citizens were incarcerated in preparation for genocide in a matter of weeks (distinct from the ‘large’ ghetto that was liquidated two years later, in 1943).

We are at the corner of Didžioji (Yiddish Breyte gas; ‘Broad Street’) and the narrow winding Stiklių Street (Yiddish Glezer gesl; ‘Glazier Street’). In fact, the gate to the ghetto was affixed right to this building’s wall. The angle in the wall marks the spot. The people outside the gate were free. Those on the inside were slated for genocide because they were Jewish. But this ‘detail’ is not mentioned on the building of this research center dedicated to — genocide in Lithuania. The precise spot is visible on the Yiddish map from Vilna Ghetto times, where the thick black line is the ghetto boundary. Most of the building (lower right hand corner of the map) borders the last yards of free Vilna at this gate, with the final portion, from the kink in the wall to the end, flush against the start of the Vilna Ghetto area. Below it, a zoom-in of the building itself.


The kink in the wall marks the spot. The ghetto gate was affixed to the wall of this building (it is thought) right at or very near the angled meeting of the two sections. Incarceration for genocide to one side. Freedom of the ‘superior’ races on the other. A spot that seems, very sadly, not to be deemed worthy of historic marking by the building’s present occupants: the Genocide and Resistance Research Center.


The plot thickens. The building now housing the Genocide Center is pivotal in the historic narrative of the Vilna Ghetto. It is where the Nazis staged the ‘Great Provocation’ of 31 August 1941 — the alleged shooting of a German soldier — that was used as the pretext for the immediate murder of around eight thousand Jewish citizens, followed within a week by the herding of all the city’s Jews into the two ghettos in early September. It is the building from which an alleged shooter was dragged and beaten. Herman Kruk wrote in his diary:

‘On the corner of [Wielka = Didžioji, Breyte gas] and Glezer Streets, a shot was heard. They say a German was wounded. Soon there was a commotion, and someone pointed to a Jew from a house on that corner of Glezer and Wielka Streets, as the one who must have shot the German. People soon appeared there; the Jew was beaten horribly, everything was thrown out of his house, and a pogrom against Jewish property spread over Glezer and Jatkowa Streets. This did not finish the game. At night, they started driving the tenants out of their apartments. This goes on today, too.’ [excerpt of entry for Tuesday, 2 September 1941]

from: Herman Kruk, The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania. Edited and introduced by Benjamin Harshav. Translated by Barbara Harshav. Yivo and Yale University Press: New Haven & London 2002, p. 83.

Immediately following the alleged shooting of a German soldier on Glezer Street on Sunday 31 August 1941, and the accusation against a Jewish resident of the building that is today the Genocide Center, some eight thousand Jews were arrested, taken to Lukishki Prison and from there to Ponar (Paneriai) and murdered. Within a week the ‘retaliatory measures’ included the incarceration of all the city’s Jews in the first (large) and second (small) ghettos. This trilingual notice (German, Lithuanian, Polish) released by the Gestapo on Monday 1 September 1941 announced collective responsibility of the Jewish people for the shooting. Genocide of Vilna’s Jewry was underway. Image from Leyzer Ran, Jerusalem of Lithuania, NY 1974, vol. II, p. 432). By permission of Professor Faye Ran (NY).


The abrupt murder of eight thousand citizens leads to stacks of ownerless property in town. The Gestapo rapidly followed up with this public order (Nr. 4 on 1 Sept. 1941), this time in German and Lithuanian, ordering the ‘registration’ of the abandoned Jewish property in Vilna. Image from Leyzer Ran, Jerusalem of Lithuania, NY 1974, vol. II, p. 432). By permission of Professor Faye Ran (NY).


What then is today’s message of the Genocide Center to the outside world? After many protests, a single title containing the word Holocaust (a booklet by a local historian) was finally added to the pantheon of weighty tomes, nearly all of them on Soviet crimes. The horrific crimes of the communist regime obviously need to be exposed and studied, but not as a ruse for distorting or deleting the Holocaust, and not under the spurious title of Genocide in an establishment dedicated to that very topic, here at ground zero of the East European Holocaust. Bizarrely, this is an establishment that seems to want to downgrade the genocide that actually took place in the country. Below, the publications on display in the center’s windows.


An image of this corner (start of Glezer gesl) from before the war, from Leyzer Ran’s Jerusalem of Lithuania (NY 1974, vol. I, p. 68). By permission of Professor Faye Ran (New York City).


Then and now: Juxtaposition of the prewar image with the same spot today (© R. Schofield).

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Critiques of the Red-Brown Commission



1998    2001-2007    2008-2011    2012-2013    2014-2015    2016   2017-2018    2019   2022


◊ 
SEE ALSO:

DH editor’s take

Video: Commission’s director about Fania Btantsovsky and other Jewish partisan heroes defamed by antisemitic prosecutors

Page on the Commission

Section on the Commission

Commission’s Own Website

2015 Appeal to conscience of members of the Commission

2015 Appeal by one of the last Vilnius Holocaust survivors


Holocaust Survivors expressed grave concerns about the Commission at its inception in 1998. As PDF. See also 1998 letter of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.


From Karen Sutton’s The Massacre of the Jews of Lithuania. Lithuanian Collaboration in the Final Solution, 1941 – 1944 (published by Gefen, Jerusalem & NY 2008; excerpt from p. 211):

Sutton revised


From David Bankier’s  Expulsion and Extermination: Holocaust Testimonials from Provincial Lithuania (published by Yad Vashem, Jerusalem 2012; excerpt from page 204):

Bankier on red-brown commission


From Yitzhak Arad’s “The Holocaust in Lithuania, and its Obfuscation, in Lithuanian Sources” (2012):

Arad on Commission


 

2001-2007

Efraim Zuroff (Vilnius 2001)

Efraim Zuroff (Jerusalem 2005)

Efraim Zuroff (Jerusalem 2007)


2008-2013

Sir Martin Gilbert resigned in 2008:


Jewish Community of Lithuania and Uni0n of Former Ghetto and Concentration Camp Prisoners (Vilnius 2008). Letter contains the text:

‘The fact that the “International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania” established by the President (chaired by E. Zingeris), did not publicly defend its own member Yitzhak Arad, or the other Jewish anti-Nazi partisans, is also surprising.’

Jewish Community of Lithuania and Uni0n of Former Ghetto and Concentration Camp Prisoners (Vilnius 2008)

Karen Sutton, professor of history at Touro College in New York, in her The Massacre of the Jews of Lithuania (see Recent Books → 2008; Background →  2008):

‘Despite a number of half-hearted measures and ill-conceived historical commissions, contemporary Lithuania has much soul-searching to do to come to terms with what happened [….]’ (p 209); ‘Both the historical commission and the lethargy of the Lithuanian Department of Justice on the issue of alleged war criminals have elicited an enormous outpouring of opposition from the Lithuanian Jewish survivor community and — “symmetrically” — tacit approval of the general non-Jewish population’ (p 211).

Yad Vashem (Jerusalem 2008)

Geoff Vasil (Vasiliauskas) (Vilnius 2008)

Valdas Vasiliauskas (Vilnius 2008);  English translation


Professor Dov Levin demanded removal of his name in 2008:


Avi Friedman (Jerusalem 2009)

Dovid Katz (Vilnius 2009a)

Dovid Katz (Vilnius 2009b)

Shimon Samuels (Paris 2009, presented at Warsaw); alternate link

Jonathan Freedland (London 2009)

Clemens Heni (Berlin 2009)PDF

Esther Goldberg (London 2010)

Dovid Katz (Vilnius 2010);  in Russian translation

Dovid Katz (Vilnius 2010b)

Dovid Katz (Vilnius 2010c)

Bildungswerk für Friedensarbeit e.V. (2011)

2011: Commission’s understanding of “Holocaust Studies”  revealed at the Lithuanian parliament in the speech of its executive director / director general.

Professor Konrad Kwiet resigned in 2011:


2012-2014

28 August 2012.  DefendingHistory.com: ‘Yad Vashem shocks Holocaust survivors by rejoining Lithuanian government’s “red-brown commission”’.

31 August 2012.  Lietuvos rytas: ‘Taking an interest in Nazi and Soviet crimes is a response to Russian propaganda’.  English translation.  DefendingHistory.com comments.

3 September 2012.  DefendingHistory.com: ‘English text of Joseph Melamed’s letter to Yad Vashem’.

3 September 2012.  DefendingHistory.com: ‘Joseph Melamed, head of Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors’ association, releases letter to director of Yad Vashem’.

3 September 2012.  DefendingHistory.com: ‘Holocaust survivors, based in Tel aviv, issue statement on renewal of red-brown commission’.

21 November 2012.  DefendingHistory.com: ‘When the politicians run the conferences on — history’ by Evaldas Balčiūnas.

21 November 2012.  DefendingHistory.com: ‘Red-Brown circus in Lithuanian capital’.

26 December 2012.  DefendingHistory.com: ‘Tell me I’m wrong’ by Geoff Vasil.

1 January 2013.  DefendingHistory.com: ‘Instead of truth about the Holocaust — myths about saving Jews’  by Pinchos Fridberg.

15 January 2013.   The Algemeiner: ‘Instead of truth about the Holocaust — Myths about saving Jews’ by Pinchos Fridberg.

17 January 2013.  DefendingHistory.com: ‘Red-brown commission’s newest layer of obfuscation: Are names of members secret?

27 January 2013US Researcher is Persuaded that the Problem in Lithuania is called “Zuroff and Katz” …

21 February 2013.  Executive director of the red-brown commission calls prominent Vilnius Holocaust survivor a ‘liar’ on the commission’s website.

28 May 2013.  Executive director of the commission uses paper at Riga conference to personally attack Defending History editor.

21 June 2013.  One of the commission’s new members, the head of the research department art the Genocide Center, tries yet again, in a public interview, to whitewash th LAF murderers of June 1041. Geoff Vasil replies.

5 December 2013.  Commission ‘does’ Toronto.

 


2014-2015

2 March 2014.  Defending History’s English translation of the public correspondence between Vilnius Holocaust survivor Prof. Pinchos Fridberg and Yivo director Dr. Jonathan Brent concerning the commission. Original appeared on 1 March in Yiddish in New York’s Forward (Forverts).

8 March 2014.  Olga Zabludoff comments on the misrepresentations by the commission’s representative on a panel discussion organized by Yivo in New York City in February 2014.

15 March 2014.  Defending History’s appeal to the conscience of the members of the commission.


2016

18 November 2016.  Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust (University of Haifa, Institute for Holocaust Research), vol. 30, no. 3, pp. 1–30: ‘Is East European “Double Genocide” revisionism reaching museums?’ by Dovid Katz.

22 November 2016.  ISGAP Flashpoint: ‘Antisemitism in the twenty-first century shtetl’ by Dovid Katz.


2017

December 2017. Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust (University of Haifa, Institute for Holocaust Research), vol. 31.3, pp. 285-295: “The Extraordinary Recent History of Holocaust Studies in Lithuania” by Dovid Katz.


2019

August 2019. Lithuania’s official Jewish Community reports that the executive director of the “red-brown commission” is under police investigation for corruption.


2022

April 2022. Red-Brown Commission seems to abandon any distancing from the far-right state-sponsored Genocide Center, whose director has long been a regular participant in far-right antisemitic events that often glorify local Holocaust collaborators as supposed heroes. See Evaldas Balčiūnas’s review of  a book by Genocide Center director A.Bubnys, published in Lithuanian only by the Commission, and its implications for the wider debate.

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Critiques of the 2008 Prague Declaration (Select Bibliography)


Jump to  2008   2009   2010   2011   2012   2013   2014

THE PRAGUE DECLARATION AND ITS BACKGROUND

Five Occurences of the word same in the Prague Declaration:

1 “Consciousness of the crimes against humanity committed by the Communist regimes throughout the continent must inform all European minds to the same extent as the Nazi regime’s crimes did”

2 “Believing that millions of victims of Communism and their families are entitled to enjoy justice, sympathy, understanding and recognition for their sufferings in the same way as the victims of Nazism have been morally and politically recognized”

3 “Recognition that many crimes committed in the name of Communism should be assessed as crimes against humanity serving as a warning for future generations, in the same way Nazi crimes were assessed by the Nuremberg Tribunal”

4 “Establishment of 23rd August, the day of signing of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, as a day of remembrance of the victims of both Nazi and Communist totalitarian regimes, in the same way Europe remembers the victims of the Holocaust on January 27th”

5 “Adjustment and overhaul of European history textbooks so that children could learn and be warned about Communism and its crimes in the same way as they have been taught to assess the Nazi crimes”

 

Historic Breakthroughs

25 November 2010. For the first time since the Prague Declaration was proclaimed on 3 June 2008, a group of ambassadors  has spoken out to oppose ‘Double Genocide’. Opposition to the Declaration has been mounting steadily.

‘Spurious attempts are made to equate the uniquely evil genocide of the Jews with Soviet crimes against Lithuania, which, though great in magnitude, cannot be regarded as equivalent in either their intention or result.’

Excerpt from a letter to leaders of Lithuania from the Vilnius-based ambassadors of Britain, Estonia, Finland, France, Netherlands, Norway and Sweden, 25 November 2010

DETAILS HERE AND HERE

20 January 2012. European Parliament opposing document:

The Seventy Years Declaration

The Prague Declaration was preceded by perfectly legitimate and noble condemnations of the evils of Soviet communism in the European Union’s institutions, before this movement was hiijacked by the far right’s red-equals-brown campaigners and their government backers in the eastern part of the EU. See: Soviet Crimes.

RELATED: PAGE ON TIMOTHY SNYDER’S BLOODLANDS


2008

Holocaust Survivors protest.

British Parliament (31 January 2008): MP John Mann, chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group against Antisemitism, critiques the January 2008 precursor of the ‘Prague Declaration’ [see entry for 2:30 PM, paragraph 4; see also paragraph 3].

Algemeyner Zhurnal (25 July 2008): ‘Will the world remain silent as a new and more cunning form of Holocaust Denial comes before — the European Parliament?’ [in Yiddish] (by Dovid Katz). Part II.

Jerusalem of Lithuania [publication of the Jewish Community of Lithuania] (Oct-Dec 2008): ‘Concept inflation and the criminalization of debate’ (by Leonidas Donskis).

Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs 3.3: 59-72: ‘Conflicting cultures of memory in Europe: New Borders between East and West?’ by Heidemarie Uhl.


2009

IPS (6 April 2009): ‘Communist ideology, as bad as Nazism?’ (by Zoltán Dujisin).

Institute for Global Jewish Affairs (1 May 2009): ‘Reviewing the Holocaust anew in multiple contexts’ (by Yehuda Bauer).

Jewish Chronicle (22 May 2009): ‘Prague’s declaration of disgrace: a European attempt to equate Communism with Nazism will falsify history’ (by Dovid Katz).

Irish Times (30 May 2009): ‘Genocide Industry has hidden agenda. Attempts at equalizing historical wrongs are often aimed at Holocaust Obfuscation’ (by Dovid Katz).

Jerusalem Post (12 July 2009): ‘A combined day of commemoration for victims of Nazism and Communism?’ (by Efraim Zuroff).

ITF [International Task Force on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research] (17 August 2009): Statement of the ITF Chair regarding the European Parliament resolution on European conscience and totalitarianism’ (by Ambassador Tom Vraalsen).

Guardian (28 September 2009): ‘The Nazi whitewash. I can’t believe Eric Pickles supports Latvia’s “For Fatherland and Freedom” party, which wants to rewrite a murderous history’ (by Efraim Zuroff); alternate link.

Luciana Berger’s Blog (3 October 2009): ‘With friends like these…’ (by Luciana Berger).

OSCE Human Rights Conference in Warsaw (5 October 2009): ‘“Prague Declaration” is a project to delete the Holocaust from European history’  (by Shimon Samuels); press release; alternate link.

Guardian (20 October 2009): ‘I knew this day of Holocaust “debate” would come. Just not in my lifetime’ (by Jonathan Freedland)

Clemens Heni (26 October 2009): ‘The Prague Declaration, Holocaust trivialization and antisemitism’ by Clemens Heni. PDF.

Jewish Chronicle (29 October 2009): UK MP John Mann, chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group against Antisemitism, calls the Prague Declaration ‘a sinister document’ in his ‘Europe must focus on Baltic hate’.

Jerusalem of Lithuania (Autumn 2009): Milan Chersonski, editor of Jerusalem of Lithuania, publication of the Jewish Community of Lithuania, discusses the renewed government campaign against Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky, librarian of the Vilnius Yiddish Institute, in the context of the red-equals-brown movement in Europe.

Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel asks the Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism to condemn  the  Prague Declaration.

Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism (16 December 2009): Informal statement by German parliamentarian Gert Weisskirchen.

Jerusalem Post (23 December 2009): ‘Of insult and mockery’ by Efraim Zuroff.

Washington Jewish Week (30 December 2009): ‘Don’t let the Holocaust be rewritten out of history’ by Dovid Katz.


2010

Scholars for Peace in the Middle East / SPME (4 January 2010): ‘The Prague Declaration: Antisemitism with a democratic face’  by Clemens HeniAlso on WPK.

Jewish Chronicle (7 January 2010): ‘A sinister scheme to devalue the Shoah is gathering steam’ by Efraim Zuroff.

The Guardian (8 January 2010): ‘Halting Holocaust obfuscation. The Baltic ultranationalists rewriting east European history as an equal Nazi-Soviet “double genocide” must be stopped’ by Dovid KatzRepublication in Russian.

Jerusalem Post (25 January 2010): ‘Remembering accurately on International Holocaust Remembrance Day’ by Yehuda Bauer.

Haaretz (26 January 2010): ‘Shoah scholars slam European Union Parliament for Obfuscation campaign’ by Cnaan Liphshiz.

Simon Wiesenthal Center (26 January 2010): Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, responds to the Arad accusations plus plans to replace Holocaust Remembrance Day with a mixed red-brown memorial day. Excerpt: ‘And how exactly, for example, would such “joint commemorations” unfold in Lithuania? A moment of silence for Jewish citizens butchered by the Nazis and their local collaborators, followed by a moment of silence for these victimizers, later turned into “victims of Communism?” I urge Lithuania and other supporters of this drive to drop their campaign and instead preserve the memory of the Shoah and the unique suffering of its victims that is commemorated on Holocaust Memorial Day.’

Warsaw Yiddish Radio, Naye Khvalyes, 31 January 2010): radio interview in Yiddish of Dovid Katz by Katka MazurczakAlternate link.

WPK (1 February 2010):  ‘Antisemitismus und die Prager Deklaration von Juni 2008’ by Clemens Heni.

Jewish Chronicle (4 February 2010): Simon Round’s interview of Dr Efraim Zuroff.

The Nation (12 February 2010): Mark Weitzman, United States director of governmental affairs at the Wiesenthal Center, reports that ‘[from] his talks with US officials in Washington and on Capitol Hill, he believes that the American silence on the matter will soon change as they are beginning to understand the seriousness of the situation’.

The New York Jewish Week (16 February 2010): ‘Islamophobia and Antisemitism: Holocaust Revisionism in Germany’ by Benjamin Weinthal.

Connecticut Jewish Ledger (26 February 2010): ‘Conversation with… Dovid Katz’ by Cindy MindellPDF.

Clemens Heni’s paper at the Baltic Forum in Riga on 15 March 2010.

Jerusalem Post (2 May 2010): ‘No tolerance for false history’ by Efraim Zuroff.

Tablet Magazine (3 May 2010): ‘The Crime of Surviving’ by Dovid Katz.

The Canadian Jewish News (21 May 2010): ‘Montreal professor launches Litvak Studies Institute in Vilnius’ by David Lazarus.

WPK (3 June 2010): ‘Joachim Gauck, die Prager Deklaration und europäischer Antisemitismus heute’ by Clemens Heni.

HITB (3 June 2010): ‘Contra Prague: Declaration on Unequal Totalitarian Regimes’ by Dovid Katz.

WPK (17 June 2010): ‘„Geistige Gesundung“ – Joachim Gauck und die neueste deutsche Ideologie’ by Clemens Heni.

NPD-Blog.Info (21 June 2010): ‘Zuroff: Gaucks Kandidatur “extrem beunruhigend”’.

Jerusalem Post (27 August 2010): ‘A threat to Holocaust memory’ by Efraim Zuroff.

Illustrierte Neue Welt (August-September 2010): ‘Relativierung des Holocaust. Prof. Dovid Katz im Gespräch mit Karl Pfeifer’ by Karl Pfeifer.

Leonidas Donskis’s blog (1 September 2010): ‘When will the truth finally set us free?’ by Leonidas Donskis.

Parliamentary Committee Against Antisemitism (1 September 2010):  ‘Time to free Europe of this poison’ by Dovid Katz.

Guardian (14 September 2010): ‘I see why “double genocide” is a term Lithuanians want. But it appals me. To equate Soviet and nazi crimes is dishonest and historically false. Why has this poisonous idea taken such deep root?’ by Jonathan Freedland.

Central and Eastern European Watch (15 September 2010): ‘”Double Genocide” and Lithuania’ by Karl Naylor.

The Guardian (17 September 2010): ‘Lithuania’s double genocide policy’. Letter to the Editor from Professor Tessa Rajak.

‘Lithuania has taken more than a “walk-on part in British politics”. When the European parliament called on its members, in April 2009, to mark 23 August as the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism, and when the OSCE, in July 2009, adopted the Vilnius Declaration on increasing awareness of totalitarian crimes, we too became party to the equation of Nazi crimes with those of communism in the Baltic states. By accepting the parallelism, we also have excused collaborators, ignored the unspeakable savageries perpetrated in Lithuania between 1941 and 1945, condoned the pardoning of every single Lithuanian war criminal until today, and endorsed the prosecution of Jewish resistance fighters, whose situation remains unresolved.’

Professor Tessa Rajak (London) in The Guardian (17 Sept 2010)

The Guardian (30 September 2010): ‘Why Red is not Brown in the Baltics. Unhappily,  Timothy Snyder’s historical reassesment of the Nazi-Soviet pact coincides with Baltic ultra-nationalist agendas’ by Dovid Katz.

Canadian Jewish News (7 October 2010): ‘Nazi crimes have been downgraded in Lithuania’ by Esther Goldberg.

The Guardian (21 December 2010): ‘Why is the US silent on “double genocide”? While European countries have condemned the new Holocaust revisionism in the Baltics, America shows no moral leadership’ by Dovid Katz.   In Russian.

The Guardian (21 December 2010): ‘EU rejects eastern states’ call to outlaw denial of crimes by communist regimes. Eastern European states wanted Soviet crimes “treated according to the same standards” as those of Nazi regimes’ by Leigh Philips.

Jewish Chronicle (29 December 2010): ‘EU halts move to downgrade Shoah’ by Michel Zlotowski.


2011

DefendingHistory.com: ‘Six countries try to “slip in” Double Genocide in the “Stockholm Programme”; European Commission says: No!”

Parliamentary Committee Against Antisemitism (17 January 2011):   ‘Never Again’ by Lord Janner of Braunstone.  Report here.

House of Commons, UK Parliament (20 January 2011): speech by MP Denis MacShaneReport here.

DefendingHistory.com (26 January 2011): ‘A rather simple story: Lithuania, the Jews, and the Shoah’ onDefendingHistory.com by Clemens Heni.

Canadian Jewish News (3 February 2011): ‘West must address Lithuanian revisionism: prof’ by David Lazarus.

Jewish Chronicle (4 February 2011): ‘A shameful Shoah whitewash’ in the Jewish Chronicle by Efraim Zuroff.

Jewish Chronicle (4 February 2011): ’Lithuania accused over Holocaust event’ in the Jewish Chronicle by Simon Rocker.

Die Tageszeitung (4 February 2011):  ‘”Diese Kampagne macht mich sehr wütend!”‘ [Interview of Dr Shimon Alperovich, chairman of the Jewish Community of Lithuania] by Frank Brendle.

Open Letter, signed by twenty-one persons, hand-delivered to the Embassy of Lithuania in London (7 February 2011).

Letter from the European Commission confirming the negative appraisal of 22 December 2010, regarding attempts to enact ‘Double Genocide legislation’ (21 February 2011). English translation. [A response to Didier Bertin of the Society for the Promotion of the European Human Rights Model]

Society for the Promotion of the European Human Rights Model (25 February 2011): Open letter from Didier Bertin to Viviane Reding, vice president of the European CommissionEnglish translation.

Society for the Promotion of the European Human Rights Model. Selection of documents.

East European Jewish Affairs (vol 41 [December] 2011, no. 3, pp. 207-221): ‘The detonation of the Holocaust in 1941: a tale of two books’ [review of Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands and Alexander PrusinThe Lands Between] by Dovid Katz.


2012

Seventy European Union parliamentarians sign the Seventy Years Declaration, published on 20 January 2012, which contains the language: ‘We reject attempts to obfuscate the Holocaust by diminishing its uniqueness and deeming it to be equal, similar or equivalent to Communism as suggested by the 2008 Prague Declaration.’

Jerusalem Post (28 May 2012): ‘A new dilemma in hosting a German president’ by Efraim Zuroff.

Haaretz, Books Supplement (24 September 2012): ‘Killed by their neighbors’ [review of David Bankier’s Expulsion and Extermination: Holocaust Testimonials from Provincial Lithuania; Frank Buonagunio’s The Last Bright Days. A Young Woman’s Life in a Lithuanian Shtetl on the Eve of the Holocaust; Ellen Cassedy’s We Are Here: Memories of the Lithuanian Holocaust]’ by Efraim Zuroff [PDF of print edition here].

The Times of Israel (15 November 2012): ‘Efraim Zuroff, history’s lonely defender’  by Dovid Katz.

DefendingHistory.com (1 December 20120): ‘The Holocaust in Lithuania, and its obfuscation, in Lithuanian sources’ by Yizhak Arad.

London Jewish News (13 December 2012): ‘You cannot praise fascists and be pro-human rights’ by Dovid Katz.

David Williams, Rewriting History. Holocaust Revisionism Today, Hope Not Hate: London 2012.

Marc Ramdosky and Danny Ben-Moshe (producers of the documentary film) Rewriting History, Sydney 2012.


2013

Website of the Jewish Community of Lithuania (17 January 2013): ‘Instead of truth about the Holocaust — myths about saving Jews’ by Pinchos Fridberg. Also in the Algemeiner Journal (15 January 2013), the Operation Last Chance website of the Simon Wiesenthal Center (19 December 2012), and Defending History (24 December 2012), where links are provided to the publications of the article in the Russian language.

Jerusalem Post (9 April 2013): ‘A threat too serious to ignore. Israel should take action on Holocaust-related issues as some “culprits” likely to take over EU presidency’ by Efraim Zuroff.

Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs (May 2013). ‘Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, Intermarium: The Land between the Black and Baltic Seas’ reviewed by Dovid Katz.

DefendingHistory.com (27 May 2013): ‘State-sponsored collective memory revisionism; a 21st century incarnation of Holocaust Denial?’ by Dovid Katz [PDF of power point presentation at the Second International Conference on Holocaust Museums and Memorial Places in Post-Communist Countries (in Riga, Latvia)].

Huffington Post (31 May 2013): ‘Truth wins’ by Edward Jacobs.

Section on the Prague Declaration (4 June 2013) in Clemens Heni’s paper at the World Jewish Congress Institute for Research and Policy.

DefendingHistory.com (15 November 2013): Clemens Heni’s works on the Prague Declaration.


 

2014

At the end of 2013, in an announcement disseminated mainly in January 2014, the World Union for Progressive Judaism announced it “fully endorses the Seventy Years Declaration. This Declaration, endorsed by 70 European Union parliamentarians who represent all sides of politics, is an attempt to distinguish between the horrors of the Shoah and other crimes against humanity. This has taken on a greater importance since the Prague Declaration of 2008 which attempts to equate the era of Nazism to that of Communist tyranny.”

In late March 2014, the Board of Deputies in London called on members of the European Parliament to work against the Prague Declaration and its ethos, in its A Jewish Manufesto, issued in the run-up to the European Parliament elections.

May 2014: Dan Stone’s new book, Goodbye to All That? A History of Europe Since 1945 (Oxford University Press) refers to the debate symbolized by the Prague Declaration vs. the Seventy Years Declaration.

Apastekhlatroymer: ‘Die Geschichte verteidigen – Defending History’ by Hans Breuer (post of 21 June 2014).

 

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Prague Declaration


Manifesto of the ‘Double Genocide’ and Holocaust Obfuscation movement

See also: Opposition to the Prague Declaration; Proposal for replacement; Statement on Soviet Crimes; The Seventy Years Declaration (+ Section).

The ‘Prague Declaration’ and its preceding and derivative European resolutions are based on ‘Double Genocide’: the proposed ‘equivalence’ of Nazi and Soviet crimes as revisionist history for the European Union. The theoretical constructs for the Double Genocide movement were developed by a number of historians in Eastern Europe, who have themselves on occasion been taken to task by courageous Lithuanian scholars who have exposed these works for what they are (see e.g. the classic review by V. Brandišauskas now available in English translation). Some of the bold dissenting voices from Lithuania are credited on this site’s Bold Citizens page.

The ‘Prague Declaration’ includes the following demands of the European Union:

‘recognize Communism and Nazism as a common legacy’

‘recognition that many crimes committed in the name of Communism should be assessed as crimes against humanity serving as a warning for future generations, in the same way Nazi crimes were assessed by the Nuremberg Tribunal’

‘ensuring the principle of equal treatment and non-discrimination of victims of all the totalitarian regimes’

‘a day of remembrance of the victims of both Nazi and Communist totalitarian regimes’

‘adjustment and overhaul of European history textbooks so that children could learn and be warned about Communism and its crimes in the same way as they have been taught to assess the Nazi crimes’

Chronological Outline of Developments (selection only)

Demands that the ‘Lithuanian suggestion to evaluate as equal crimes of Nazism and Stalinism’ be taken up by all EU countries (30 November 2007).

The precursor conference on ‘United Europe, United History’ in Tallinn (22 January 2008). 23 Jan. BNS report on the event, from the website of an Estonian MEP active in the movement (report now removed).

The ‘Prague Declaration’ (3 June 2008) at its own site [update of January 2012: declaration removed from this site which was reassigned to another Prague Declaration; see here for full original text; see here for a 2010 page capture of the original site); alternate link.

The ‘Prague Declaration’ on the website of the ‘International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania’; in Lithuanian.

Lithuanian ambassador to the United States formulates the red-equals-brown position in a letter to an American Jewish newspaper (11 July 2008).

Over four hundred MEPs sign a declaration supporting the Europe-wide establishment of August 23rd as a ‘European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism’ (23 Sept 2008).

President of Lithuania predicts that Europe will ‘equally’ condemn Nazi and Soviet crimes (24 Nov 2008).

The European Parliament resolution (2 April 2009) recommends a single mixed ‘Europe-wide Day of Remembrance for the victims of all totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, to be commemorated with dignity and impartiality’ [item 15]. Alternate link.

Incumbent chairman of the European Parliament thanks the Baltic states for educating the West via the red-brown resolutions (28 April 2009).

Elements of the ‘Prague Declaration’ (ambiguous ‘double genocide language’) inserted into the OSCE’s ‘Vilnius Declaration’ of 3 July 2009 [see p. 48, points 3 and 10].

Elements of the ‘Prague Declaration’ presented to the European Parliament session of 14 October 2009 (BNS report of 13 October 2009).

Proposal in Brussels at a European Parliament conference by the director of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, Czech Republic (14 October 2009). The speaker of the Lithuanian parliament insisted that Europe adopt ‘a single view on the crimes of totalitarian regimes’.

Lithuania’s major news portal Delfi.lt  attacks Israel’s president Shimon Peres for differentiating Nazi and Soviet crimes, providing this graphic (14 November 2009).

The spirit of the Prague Declaration is inserted into the ‘Stockholm Programme 2010-2014’ with a provision on ‘equality’ of totalitarian regimes (report of 8 Dec 2009).

Attempted academic justification for the Prague Declaration by Rokas Grajauskas in Lithuanian Foreign Policy Review, 2010 (2): ‘Is there a chance for a common European culture of remembrance?’

After the EU’s Dec 2010 repudiation of attempts to insinuate Double Genocide in the Stockholm Programme, the Prague Declaration movement regroups in 2011 under the banner of: The Prague Process, announcing plans for 29 March 2011 meeting and funding under the ‘Europe for Citizens’ program, as well as plans to (abuse) the Hungarian and Polish presidencies of the EU for the red-equals-brown movement.

In 2012, the Lithuanian foreign ministry announces that pursuing in the EU the proposed unification of European history in a red=brown framework would be one of the formal goals of Lithuania’s 2013 rotating presidency of the EU.

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