OPINION | LEGACY OF 23 JUNE 1941 | 2011 ATTEMPTS TO SANITIZE THE LAF | LAF’S INTENTIONS IN WRITING | ŠKIRPA’S PLANS | COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED | LITHUANIAN JEWISH AFFAIRS | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS
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OPINION
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VILNIUS—The Seimas (Lithuania’s parliament) hosted a “history conference” on June 19th dedicated, in the opinion of this journal, to far-right Holocaust revisionism seeking to whitewash and deflect from the outbreak of mass murder of Lithuanian Jewish civilians on June 23rd 1941 in Kaunas and dozens of other locations. Thousands of Jews were killed before the arrival or setting up of authority of the invading Germans. The murderers, who donned white armbanders, generally declared themselves to be members of the Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF), which in its prewar leaflets had made its intentions re the Jewish minority of Lithuania crystal clear. The various “declarations” on June 23rd were in concord with the spirit of abject loyalty to Adolf Hitler and to the imminent removal of the Jewish minority. (There was no statement or version that said “We will protect all our nation’s citizens, whatever their ethnicity”…)