The ‘70 Years Declaration’ is Launched by 70 EU Parliamentarians

70 Parliamentarians from 19 EU Countries Launch Seventy Years Declaration on 2012 Wannsee Anniversary

Eight Lithuanian Social Democrats (6 MPs, 2 MEPs) Sign On

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The 70 Years Declaration Opposes the ‘Prague Declaration’ and ‘Double Genocide’ Politics

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TEXT AND LIST OF FOUNDING SIGNATORIES 

TEXT IN FRENCH;  TEXT IN RUSSIAN

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Response: ‘Hitler’s moustache shorter’. Lithuanian Foreign Minister Says his Nation’s Parliamentarians who Signed are ‘Pathetic’; Says via Spokesperson: ‘No difference between Hitler and Stalin except in their moustache: Hitler’s was shorter’

Britain’s MP Denis MacShane Responds to Lithuanian Foreign Minister, Supports the Eight Lithuanian Parliamentarians who Signed the Seventy Years Declaration 

Lithuanian Prime Minister Joins the Discussion; Head of Jewish Community Blasts ‘Double Genocide’ on Holocaust Remembrance Day, Cites PM’s Helpful Remark

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MEDIA: Danny Ben-Moshe in the Jerusalem Post (18 Jan) → Algemeiner Journal (20 Jan), → J-Wire (21 Jan); Danna Harman in Haaretz (19 Jan) → Forward (19 Jan)Frank Brendle in Taz.de (19 Jan), in Junge Welt (20 Jan); BNS (20 Jan) ≈ BNS (21 Jan);  Lžinios.lt (20 Jan) [in English]; Lrytas.lt (20 Jan) [in English]; DefendingHistory.com (22 Jan); Lietuvos rytas editorial (25 Jan); Lithuania’s Prime Minister Kubilius comments to BNSDelfi.lt (26 Jan); Chairperson of Lithuanian Jewish Community on Holocaust Remembrance Day (27 Jan)

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Bravo!

DefendingHistory.com Congratulates the Eight Lithuanian Parliamentarians who became Founding Signatories of the Seventy Years Declaration

FOR THEIR COURAGE, INTEGRITY, LOVE OF ALL THEIR COUNTRY’S PEOPLES, AND OF EUROPEAN VALUES

Vytenis Povilas Andriukaitis, MP

Vilija Blinkevičiūtė, MEP

Justinas Karosas, MP

Justas Paleckis, MEP

Marija Aušrinė Pavilionienė, MP

Julius Sabatauskas, MP

Algirdas Sysas, MP

Birutė Vėsaitė, MP

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A Moral Epidemic?

Local Nazi Collaborators & Holocaust Perpetrators Honored in Parts of Eastern Europe

IS THIS REALLY HOW THEY SHOULD NOW BE RECYCLED BY ‘NEW EUROPE’?

Croatia

Estonia

Hungary

Latvia

Lithuania

Romania

Ukraine

EFRAIM ZUROFF IN HAARETZ 

DefendingHistory.com section on the glorification of Holocaust collaborators and perpetrators in Eastern Europe

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1930s Style Front Pages

BANNER HEADLINE: ‘THE JEWS’

Day 40

of zero public reaction from Lithuanian government officials, intellectual & religious leaders, writers’ union, US Embassy and local human rights organizations. Elderly survivor community badly shaken.

REPORT & IMAGES

Photo is of Chabad rabbi Sholom Ber Krinsky. Other mainstream media hate articles target 83 year old Dr. Shimon Alperovich, elected chairman of the Jewish Community of Lithuania:

Lietuvos rytas  — report here
and
Vakaro žinios — report here

MEDIA COVERAGE:
AJ (22 Dec); Simon Wiesenthal Center (28 Dec)JTA (28 Dec)Forward (28 Dec)15min.lt (28 Dec)D. Zakharov (29 Dec)JN1 (30 Dec)JC (5 Jan)AJ (17 Jan)CFCA (18 Jan)

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Courageous Achievements

Brussels — Valiant members of parliament and the European Parliament from Latvia, Lithuania and other East European Countries sign the Seventy Years Declaration

Kaunas — Daiva Čepauskaitė’s new play: ‘Day and Night’

Šiauliai — Evaldas Balčiūnas is translating the memoir of a Jewish woman partisan of the Vilna Ghetto

Vilnius — In the face of untoward pressure over many years, Rachel Kostanian has maintained steadfast historical accuracy in the Green House Holocaust department of the State Jewish Museum; Esther Goldberg’s reports I & II

Vilnius — Books and a documentary of lasting value produced by the House of Memory, led by Linas Vildžiūnas, Vaidotas Reivytis and others; projects curtailed by the government’s ‘red-brown establishment’ monopolizing resources

Vilnius — Saulius Beržinis’s Kopa Studios producing series of uniquely spin-free documentaries on the Holocaust

Riga — Rabbi Menachem Barkahan’s New Holocaust Museum

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A Shock for Survivors and Visitors to the Lithuanian Capital

New ‘Holocaust Room’ in the Cellar of Vilnius’s State Sponsored Genocide Museum Sanitizes the Local Fascists who Unleashed the Genocide of Lithuanian Jewry

 

 Culmination of a year of government events glorifying the Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF) and other Hitlerist groups that initiated (and whose members became the backbone of) the annihilation of the country’s Jewish minority

LAF leaflets set out plans for genocide prior to the German invasion. Historians on the 1941 campaign of mass murderSurvivors testifyMapRecent nationalist glorification. Now, the new Holocaust Room in the cellar of a major state museum in an EU capital has this to say:

Year to commemorate the perpetrators ran parallel with a year to commemorate the Holocaust, too; One in a series of ‘dual tracks’ to satisfy at once the antisemitic, Holocaust-revisionist Far Right and foreign Jewish groups

PR: ‘Fake Litvak’ initiatives (Identity Theft) & Double Games
 ♦

ANTISEMITIC EXHIBITS IN MAIN HALL OF GENOCIDE MUSEUM DISPLAYED AS BEFORE, WITH NO CURATORIAL COMMENT

 ♦
MEANWHILE, IN WASHINGTON DC, NEW JEWISH ‘SUNFLOWER’ GROUP MANIPULATED BY LITHUANIAN EMBASSY TO DISTORT AND TRIVIALIZE THE 1941 GENOCIDE OF THE JEWISH POPULATION AS ‘FREEDOM FROM THE SOVIETS’  AND — ‘AT THE PERIL OF THE JEWISH COMMUNITY’; RESPONSE HERE.
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Admirers Celebrate

90th Birthday of Dr. Rachel Margolis

Tel Aviv attorney Joe Melamed, head of the Association of Lithuanian Jews, celebrating Dr. Rachel Margolis's 90th birthday in Rechovot

Left her safe haven with righteous Christians to join her family in the Vilna Ghetto. Joined the Jewish underground anti-Nazi resistance. Witness to creation of the Yiddish Partisan Hymn.

Escaped to join the partisans and fought valiantly against the Nazis in the forests of Lithuania. The only one in her family to survive the Holocaust.

Volunteered for the short-lived Jewish museum after the war.

Dedicated half a century to Biology at Vilnius University.

Helped establish the Green House Holocaust exhibit. Rediscovered, deciphered and published Kazimierz Sakowicz’s diary of Ponár. Author of a remarkable memoir. Beloved guide, lecturer and teacher on Jewish Vilna and the Holocaust.

Target of a campaign of defamation by Vilnius prosecutors, the “Lithuanian Human Rights Association” and other far-right Holocaust-revisionist elites.

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MORE INFORMATION AND TRIBUTES:

FORMER UK PRIME MINISTER GORDON BROWN ♦ 5 MEMBERS OF THE US CONGRESS ♦ ACADEMIC STUDIES PRESS ♦ KEENE STATE COLLEGE ♦ SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE ♦ LORD JANNER OF BRAUNSTONE ♦  LATE LITHUANIAN PRIME MINISTER ALGIRDAS BRAZAUSKAS ♦ ISRAELI AMBASSADOR CHEN IVRI APTER ♦ ADL DIRECTOR ABRAHAM FOXMAN ♦ NCSJ ♦ METRO WEST HOLOCAUST COUNCIL ♦ LEIVICK HOUSE TEL AVIV ♦ JEWISH CHRONICLE ♦ ALGEMEINER JOURNAL (& 2) ♦ RACHEL MARGOLIS.COM

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Coverage in DefendingHistory.com:

OVERVIEWS HERE & HERE;  7 MAY 2008;  19 JUNE 200928 OCTOBER 2009;  27 JANUARY 2010;  28 OCTOBER 2010;  3 JANUARY 2011;  5 MAY 2011;  28 AUGUST 2011;  23 SEPTEMBER 2011.

Two Vilna natives: Dr. Margolis prepares to sing the Jewish partisan hymn together with Jerusalem attorney (and Yiddish singer) Diana Shapiro

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Believe it or not. . .

Vilnius Prosecutors Launch Campaign against Another Holocaust Survivor, 86, this time via — Interpol!

Joe Melamed

Joe Melamed in his Tel Aviv office

At Lithuanian prosecutors’ demand, Israeli Interpol liaison officers speak with Mr. Melamed about the ‘accusations’

Report in Haaretz by Yossi Melman

Yad Vashem withdraws invitations to visiting minster and resident ambassador for Vilna Ghetto commemoration; Coverage in Haaretz by Yossi Melman; Associated Press (→ CBS News, Fox, MSNBC, Washington Post, YahooNews etc); JTA (→ WJC, JJ, Juedische.at, etc); Mishpacha

Three British MPs file Early Day Motion 2161 to protest the Lithuanian government’s action

DefendingHistory.com reports here and here

  Geoff Vasil in the Jewish Chronicle

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Critiques of the Prague Declaration, the Prague Process and ‘Double Genocide’

Opposition to the Prague Declaration: A Page of Links

Dovid Katz in the Jewish Chronicle (May 2009)

Efraim Zuroff in the Jerusalem Post (July 2009)

Dovid Katz in LTCM (Sept 2009)*

John Mann MP in the Jewish Chronicle (Oct 2009)

Clemens Heni in WPK (Oct 2009)*

Shimon Samuels at the OSCE (Oct 2009)

Heidemarie Uhl in IJFA (2009)*

Holocaust Survivors Speak (Dec 2009)

Yehuda Bauer in the Jerusalem Post (Jan 2010)

Clemens Heni in SPME (Jan 2010)

Dovid Katz in the Guardian (Jan 2010)

Dovid Katz in the Tablet (May 2010)

Efraim Zuroff in the Jerusalem Post (Aug 2010)

Leonidas Donskis in Delfi.lt (Sept 2010)

7 Ambassadors in Vilnius (Nov 2010)

Lord Janner in PCAA (Jan 2011)

DefendingHistory.com (Dec 2011)

*Papers in academic format
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When a Major Scholar’s Book is Abused by East European Nationalists

Vilnius book event for the Lithuanian edition is held at the Foreign Ministry with a disturbing speech by the director of the History Institute

East European nationalists are abusing the book

Select critiques of Bloodlands

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Lithuania: May 5th made it Three Years since Police Came Looking for Two Women Holocaust Survivors


THREE YEARS


Holocaust Survivors:

Not Charged — Not Cleared

With non-stop defamation: Lithuanian ‘Human Rights’ [!] Association calls for  ‘sentencing’ of named ‘citizens of Jewish nationality’ for ‘organizing a massive slaughter’; Document is here; Comment herehere.

UNITED STATES CONGRESSMEN STILL WAITING FOR A MEANINGFUL REPLY

FORMER BRITISH PRIME MINISTER GORDON BROWN HONORS DR RACHEL MARGOLIS

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Litvak Studies in progress

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Support

If you would like to join our supporters around the world, please contact Professor Danny Ben-Moshe at:

defendinghistory@gmail.com

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Romania: President Praises Alliance with Hitler

Current President of Romania, speaking of Antonescu’s Collaborator Regime that contributed significantly to Nazi genocide:

“We had an ally and we had a territory to recover [Moldova]. If I had faced the same conditions I would have done it.”

Moldova’s former president calls on EU to respond

DETAILS HERE

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New Petition on Change.org

Evan Malnik (Washington DC) launches a petition concerning Lithuanian citizenship law and its effect on restitution of private property to rightful owners and their heirs

PETITION HERE

PAGE ON CITIZENSHIP ISSUES HERE

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Ukraine: Fascists, Collaborators, Perpetrators — Honored

DETAILS HERE

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Latvia: 2,500 Turn Out to Hail Country’s Waffen-SS

Increased Turnout for This Year’s Waffen-SS March in Riga

DETAILS HERE AND HERE

COMMENT HERE AND HERE

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PLANS TO HONOR HOLOCAUST MASS MURDERER AND RE-INTER  HIS REMAINS IN RIGA

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Estonia: Hitler’s Invasion Celebrated

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Roundup

Select Debates, Essays, Broadcasts, Appreciation

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UK MP Denis MacShane Rushes to Defense of Lithuanian Parliamentarians who Signed Seventy Years Declaration; Slams Foreign Minister’s Hitler-Stalin ‘Joke’

The following press statement was issued today by the office of UK MP Denis MacShane concerning the response of the Lithuanian foreign minister to the news that eight Lithuanian parliamentarians had signed the Seventy Years Declaration. More details on page 1.


News Release 25 Jan. 2012

On the eve of National Holocaust Day, former Europe Minister Denis MacShane MP has written to Lithuanian MPs and MEPs who defied their political establishment to sign a statement on the Holocaust which attacks attempts to devalue the Nazi extermination of Jews by claiming it is no worse than the crimes committed by communists.

The Seventy Years Declaration was issued on 20 January 2012 by seventy European Union parliamentarians (MPs and MEPs) concerned about the return of antisemitism as an issue in contemporary politics. In January 1942, Nazi officials met at a conference at Lake Wannsee close to Berlin to plan the industrially organized extermination of European Jewry.

In recent years, European right-wing politicians have sought to gain acceptance for their view that the suffering under communist rule was the same as the Nazi extermination of Jews. This so-called “double genocide” thesis has been criticized by campaigners against modern antisemitism as leading to a devaluation of the unique specific Jew-hating roots of the Holocaust.

Now social democratic MPs and MEPs in Lithuania who signed this declaration have been attacked by government officials. Lithuania’s Foreign Minister went so far as to say there was no difference between Hitler and Stalin except the length of their moustache. Continue reading

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The Waffen-SS as Freedom Fighters


O P I N I O N

by Per Anders Rudling

Despised and ostracized, the Swedish community of Waffen-SS volunteers long gathered in secret on April 14, “The Day of the Fallen,” for obscure ritualistic annual gatherings at a cemetery in a Stockholm suburb.[1]

Since the 1990s, the rituals have not needed to be clandestine: the few, now very elderly survivors now head to Sinimäe, Estonia, where they feel they are now getting the honor to which they are entitled. Here, Swedish, Norwegian, Austrian, German and other Waffen-SS veterans from Western Europe meet up with their Estonian comrades.[2] The annual gatherings include those who volunteered for ideological reasons, and who are today actively passing on the experiences to a new generation of neo-Nazis.

Continue reading

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“Civil” Discourse in Ukraine


O P I N I O N

by Jared McBride

I sent the following op-ed, “Euro 2012: Maydan of hate?” to the Kyiv Post in late December regarding the hate literature that is often sold on Maidan Nezalezhnosti. It was published on 21 December 2011. One can read the comments made on the Kyiv Post‘s website here (taken today from the Comments section following my op-ed).

In response to my op-ed I had my educational background questioned; I was deemed a supporter of Kaganovich, Tabachnyk, and Yanukovych in no particular order; I was given various history lessons that have nothing to do with the letter at hand (and nothing to do with history either); conspiracy theories were shared; and I was called names, not least “son of a bitch.” The last epithet was perhaps the most ironic bearing in mind that I am fortunate to have a mother who raised me to have enough dignity to not insult people on internet forums while hiding behind false names.

Continue reading

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Lithuanian Foreign Minister Berates his Country’s Parliamentarians who Signed ‘70 Years Declaration’; Says Hitler = Stalin Except for Length of their Moustaches

The foreign minister of Lithuania did not wait until the day was over.

“It is not possible to find differences between Hitler and Stalin except in their moustaches (Hitler’s was shorter).”

— The Foreign Minister of Lithuania, commenting upon the Seventy Years Declaration in the early hours of 20 January 2012, 70th anniversary of the Wannsee Conference

Continue reading

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The Seventy Years Declaration

 

 


The Seventy Years Declaration

on the Anniversary of the Final Solution Conference at Wannsee


 

On this the 70th anniversary of the formal adoption by the Nazi leadership of the “Final Solution of the Jewish Problem” we the undersigned

Continue reading

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Free Speech Reaffirmed by Vilnius Judge in Algirdas Paleckis Case


O P I N I O N / E Y E W I T N E S S   R E P O R T

by Dovid Katz

One of the placards carried by pro-Paleckis demonstrators outside the Vilnius courthouse

Continue reading

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Box Coverage on Algirdas Paleckis case to Midday 18 January 2012


Free Speech on  Trial?

DefendingHistory.com was there. . .

Paleckis Verdict, Postponed to 30 Dec, Postponed again to 18 January 2012 (3 PM)

BACKGROUND: HERE AND HERE

Moacir P. de Sá Pereira comments

Algirdas Paleckis’s critique of legal neo-Nazi parades, legalized swastikas and military personnel participating in Nazi activities — at the November 2011 conference on tolerance in Vilnius: videotranslationreport.

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Mainstream Daily ‘Lietuvos rytas’: A New High-End Home for Antisemitism in Lithuania?

On January 15th, the Lietuvos rytas website (Lrytas.lt) published a massive article by veteran Holocaust denier Petras Stankeras, who was forced out of his Interior Ministry post in November 2010 after writing in a popular weekly that the murder of six million Jews is a ‘legend’. The new article features a flattering vintage framed photo of Hitler and is written in the form of an objective historic survey of the book’s history. It was a republication of an article by Stankeras that had earlier appeared in the elite magazine Kultūros barai.

Continue reading

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Jerusalem-Kabul Exchange of Ideas: Dr. Efraim Zuroff, head of Wiesenthal Center’s Israel Office, Replies to EU’s Ambassador to Afghanistan, Vygaudas Ušackas


THE DEBATE (IN REVERSE CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER)

Background on DefendingHistory.com:

2 January 2012 report

13 January 2012, from Efraim Zuroff (Jerusalem):

EXCERPT FROM OP-ED IN HAARETZ.  FULL TEXT HERE.

Continue reading

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‘Prague Declaration’ is Removed from Own Site (www.PragueDeclaration.org)

The 2008 Prague Declaration has mysteriously disappeared from its own site: www.PragueDeclaration.org, where it had been comfortably seated for years. Instead, that domain now yields information on a totally different Prague Declaration. (Prague is a delightful city for conferences and declarations, and there are truly many.)

Continue reading

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Some Worrying Slippage at ‘Bernardinai.lt’?


O P I N I O N

by Geoff Vasil

Andrius Navickas, a religious studies expert and editor-in-chief of the Bernardinai.lt website, published a rather strange editorial at the end of 2011 taken from a speech he gave over Lithuanian Radio.

Continue reading

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