LONDON—The World Union for Progressive Judaism released the following statement today, endorsing the Seventy Years Declaration (SYD). It also appears on the WUPJ website.
The news release, which was also circulated widely via the WUPJ’s emailed news reports, follows by half a year the SYD’s endorsement by Britain’s major Orthodox union, The United Synagogue, in the summer of 2013. [SYD text in European languages]
The World Union for Progressive Judaism representing its 2 million members spread across 47 countries, 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.
The seventy Years Declaration robustly condemns Stalinist tyranny, calls for distinct and separate recognition of the many European tragedies of the 20th century and totally opposes East European attempts to glorify Nazi collaborators and the honouring of Waffen SS in Latvia and the Lithuanian Activist Front in Lithuania. The declaration goes on to acknowledge the need to honour Jewish partisans and opposes attempts in Lithuania to prosecute Holocaust survivors who joined the resistance. It also opposes attempts to inflate the definition of genocide to encompass sundry crimes of totalitarian regimes.
The Declaration also calls for the remembrance of the millions of non-Jews who suffered under various tyrannies and for the need to memorialise the horrific crimes of Stalinism.
The Seventy Years Declaration aims to recognise the uniqueness of Nazism and the Holocaust and to protect history from the numerous revisionist attempts to equate the Shoah with the horrors of the Stalin period.
The WUPJ supports the declaration and calls on its members to draw attention of their governments and communal bodies to this matter and to recognise the uniqueness of the Shoah and the attempts to rewrite history.
For further information please visit the web site: www.seventyearsdeclaration.org