Free Debate under Threat

17 June 2008.  BBC report, 'Lithuanian ban on Soviet symbols'. A legally imposed 'equivalence' of 'Nazi and Soviet symbols' came as a grave moral blow to elderly veterans of the war against Nazism, and their proud families.

November 2008.  Blackballing [= cancellation of invitation] of VYI seminar presentation by Dr Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center Israel office.  Note: Dr. Zuroff was very cordially received by various state agencies, including the Seimas (parliament), state prosecutors' offices, and the mayor's office and elementary school of his ancestral town Ligmiyan (Linkmenys).

19 March 2009.  Delfi.lt reports that the lack of criminalization 'regarding the denial of the Soviet genocide crimes' is 'an obstacle to seek to legally equate the crimes of the Soviet genocide to the Nazi genocide'. BNS's English summary.

21 March 2009.  After the intrepid journalist and human rights advocate Andrius Navickas (see Bold Citizens) protested to the press commission about the front page cartoon of the Jew and the Gay controlling the world (see Antisemitism), a caricature of his head was put into both figures on the front page of Vakaro zinios.

21 May 2009.  Proposal 154(1), registered by the Seimas (parliament) of Lithuania, would impose up to three years of imprisonment for one who 'denies, severely diminishes or justifies the genocide accomplished by Communism or Fascism' etc.  English translation.  9 June 2009 summary.

August 2009.  Seminars on Holocaust Obfuscation had to be held in private apartments during the Summer Program in Yiddish Language and Literature. Memoirs: Julia Blaukopf (Photographic Interiors, Pennsylvania); Jana Hock (Museum Ritter, Waldenbuch);  Michael Cohen,  Josh Markovitz  (both UCLA). Comment in the Guardian and the Nation. Vilnius Yiddish Institute staff list distributed to summer course students — purged of staff who have spoken out publicly on behalf of the accused survivors and against ‘Double Genocide’. Lectures were convened at private apartments on August 10, 17, 19, 20 (more details at: Events).  Image from 17 August; first and last slides; slide on European Parliament issues; more at Jamie Ehrenpreis's Facebook site. Group of participants after the 19 Aug. presentation; more by J. Ehrenpreis here. Austrian Holocaust museum volunteer Adalbert Wagner sets up power-point facilities, generously lent by the Green House Holocaust Museum. Thanks to Dr Judy Freier, Dr Ilya Levin, Prof Abraham Lichtenbaum, Daniel Nemenyi, Dr Shimon Samuels, Berti Wagner & others for their dedicated help; to Larry Mandel, Daniel Nemenyi, Martina Ravagnan for opening up their homes. There is hope all around that next summer’s Yiddish program will revert to the proud tradition of the free forum that characterized the previous 27 years of the project, not least in the expression of the spirited and cherished views of Litvak communities around the world.

[Statement by this site's editor: 'These sad issues have arisen within the VYI, perhaps under pressure from "higher" political forces; but in no way or circumstance has any non-VYI party at Vilnius University ever attempted to circumscribe my freedom of speech or compromise my status. In fact, I have been treated splendidly by Vilnius University for ten and a half years and it is a pleasure to take this opportunity to make this point absolutely clear.' — Dovid Katz, Feb. 2010]

8 October 2009.  Supposedly impartial Baltic Times coverage of a later version of the proposed law [see above 21 May] that would max out at just two years of imprisonment for disagreeing with the state's version of 'Soviet and Nazi genocide'. The BT report also gloats that 'Earlier this year, the members of the European Parliament decided that Stalin's USSR and Hitler's Germany were equal' (cf. materials on the Prague Declaration page).