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The Holocaust in the Baltics &
Holocaust Obfuscation
Thank you for visiting. The shorter-term aim is to provide a Second Opinion to counter the ongoing efforts by various governments and agencies to minimize, trivialize and relativize the Holocaust. Collectively these efforts constitute the Holocaust Obfuscation movement. It seeks to write the Holocaust out of history as distinct concept (without necessarily denying a single death), and replace it with a model of two equal genocides (‘Double Genocide’).
Various results follow. These have in recent times included: attempted redefinition of the word genocide; painfully absurd accusations against aged Holocaust survivors; dissemination of racist and antisemitic moods; attempts to restrict freedom of debate; state financed campaigns to persuade the European Union to accept the revisionist model, via the Prague Declaration, via a Europe-wide mixed Nazi-Soviet commemoration day, and other mechanisms.
Under no circumstances should citizens of the Baltic nations be held responsible for the campaigns on these issues being waged by various governmental, media, academic and other elite circles.
The longer-term project is to provide information on the Holocaust at individual locations in the Baltics, rapidly accessed by clicking on a place name (in both alphabetic list form and on a map). These will include detailed memoirs by survivors, many of which have yet to be translated. A first experimental format is included on the ‘Locations’ lists on the site’s Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian Holocaust pages.
This website is dedicated to the memory of Meir Shub. Edited by Dovid Katz. More at site information.
Coverage and Comment
2008-2009
28 May 2008. Jerusalem Post: ‘I have fought once, I can fight again’ by Danielle Singer; alternate link.
5 June 2008. Jewish Chronicle: ‘The Holocaust survivors facing war-crimes trials’ by Dana Gloger; alternate link.
19 June 2008. Open Letter from the Jewish Community of Lithuania and the Union of Former Ghetto and Concentration Camp Prisoners.
17 July 2008. BBC Radio's Crossing Continents: ‘Lithuania and the battle for memory’ by Tim Whewell [interviews of Dr. Yitzhak Arad, Sir Martin Gilbert, Ms. Ruta Puisyte, Dr. Efraim Zuroff etc]; alternate link. Accompanying article: ‘Reopening Lithuania's old wounds’.
1 August 2008. Letter from three U.S. congressmen (Berman, Hodes, Wexler) to the prime minister of Lithuania.
20 August 2008. Jewish Week: ‘Capital of culture or injustice?’ by Mark Weitzman (director of government affairs at the Simon Wiesenthal Center USA).
21 August 2008. Economist: ‘Prosecution and persecution: Lithuania must stop blaming the victims’; alternate link; 2nd alternate link.
28 August 2008. Open Letter from the Jewish Community of Lithuania and the Union of Former Ghetto and Concentration Camp Prisoners.
September 2008. Jewish Currents: ‘Investigating Jewish partisans in Lithuania: the protest of a veteran Jewish partisan’ by Professor Sara Ginaite.
5 October 2008. Haaretz: ‘Lithuanian academic blasts war crimes probe of ex Yad Vashem chief’ by Hagai Citroen.
10 October 2008. Transitions Online: ‘Hostages to an ill-begotten theory’ by Professor Leonidas Donskis; alternate link.
November 2008. Jewish Currents: ‘Analyzing Lithuanian antisemitism. The “Double Genocide” theory refuses to quit’ by Geoff Vasil (Vasiliauskas); alternate link.
26 January 2009. History News Network: ‘Muddling the Holocaust in Lithuania’ by Professor Steven S. Lawson.
13 February 2009. Haaretz: ‘When Lithuania was Yiddishland’ [including text on the exclusion of Dr. Rachel Margolis from the Jerusalem Book Fair's Lithuanian section] by Raphael Ahren; see also: Jerusalem of Lithuania: ‘It's not just about the Jerusalem Book Fair’ (Jan-March 2009).
13 March 2009. Jewish Standard: ‘Lithuania must stand up against antisemitism’ by Abraham Foxman.
9 April 2009. Keene State College honors Dr. Rachel Margolis.
May-June 2009. Foreign Policy: ‘In other words: Baltic ghosts’ [with interviews of Ms Faina Kukliansky, Professor Antony Polonsky etc] by Nick Bravin.
29 June 2009. Jerusalem Post: ‘Baltic states assailed for Holocaust Obfuscation’ by Etgar Lefkovits.
12 July 2009. Jerusalem Post: ‘A combined day of commemoration for victims of Nazism and Communism?’ by Efraim Zuroff.
5 August 2009. Mishpacha: ‘The new deniers’ by Avi Friedman.
22 August 2009. Jerusalem Post: ‘Rewriting Shoah history in Estonia’ by Efraim Zuroff.
9 September 2009. Guardian: ‘This rewriting of history is spreading Europe’s poison’ by Seumas Milne.
17 September 2009. Vilnius in Your Pocket. Comment by editor-in-chief Sco.
28 September 2009. Guardian: ‘The Nazi whitewash’ by Efraim Zuroff; alternate link.
2 October 2009. Newsweek: ‘Europe’s central disappointment’ by Paul Hockenos.
5 October 2009. OSCE Human Rights Conference in Warsaw: ‘“Prague Declaration” is a project to delete the Holocaust from European history’ by Dr. Shimon Samuels (director for international relations at the Simon Wiesenthal Center Europe Office); press release; alternate link.
13 October 2009. Guardian editorial: ‘Latvian Waffen-SS: No ifs, no buts’.
14 October 2009. Guardian: ‘Eastern Europe’s long buried truths’ by Efraim Zuroff.
2o October 2009. Guardian: ‘I knew the day of Holocaust “debate” would come. Just not in my lifetime’ by Jonathan Freedland.
Background:
Leonidas Donskis: ‘The inflation of genocide’ in EuropeanVoice.com, 24 July 2009); alternate link.
Dovid Katz (professor, Vilnius University; director of research, Vilnius Yiddish Institute): ‘On three definitions: Genocide, Holocaust Denial, Holocaust Obfuscation’ in Leonidas Donskis (ed), A Litmus Test Case of Modernity. Examining Modern Sensibilities and the Public Domain in the Baltic States at the Turn of the Century [= Interdisciplinary Studies on Central and Eastern Europe 5], Peter Lang: Bern 2009, pp 259-277.
