The Lithuanian government has met intense opposition after its
Foreign Minister criticised eight of his country's parliamentarians for
signing a declaration which rejects the "Double Genocide" theory - that
Jews were as culpable for atrocities during the Second World War as the
Nazis.
On January 20, the 70th anniversary of the Wannsee Conference that
codified the "Final Solution", 70 European parliamentarians from 19 EU
states signed the Seventy Years Declaration, which explicitly rejects
attempts to "obfuscate" the Holocaust.
Lithuania's Foreign Minister, a member of the right-wing nationalist
government, called the eight Lithuanians who signed the document
"pathetic". He went on to say that "Hitler's moustache was shorter",
implying that there was no other difference between the two dictators.
This week, British MP Denis MacShane sent letters of support to the eight parliamentarians.
He says in the letter: "I know it must be lonely to take a stand on
such a controversial subject but wanted to write to you to say you are
not alone and every decent British and European citizen stands with
you."
And Dr Shimon Alperovich, the 83-year-old head of the Jewish
Community of Lithuania said at a Holocaust Remembrance Day event last
week: "Even today there are people who adhere to the Double Genocide
theory, that Jews murdered Lithuanians, and so Lithuanians therefore
murdered Jews. An absurdity. One should not even have to enter into
discussion with such people."
The Seventy Years Declaration rejects the "Double Genocide" theory
inherent in the 2008 Prague Declaration championed by East European
nationalists. It also attacks the policy in a number of East European
states of using state resources to honour Hitler's local collaborators
and, in some cases, actual Holocaust murderers, for being "anti-Soviet"
heroes.
The declaration also rejects the Prague Declaration demand to have
European textbooks rewritten to treat Nazi and Soviet crimes "the same
way". It also praises the "nobility of Jewish partisans who survived
ghettos or camps and went on to fight the Nazis and their allies".
source: http://www.thejc.com/news/world-news/62983/lithuania-attacked-over-holocaust-retort
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