Jerusalem – The Simon Wiesenthal Center today called upon Jews of Lithuanian descent (Litvaks”) the world over to boycott a new initiative announced late last week by Lithuanian Prime Ministry Andrius Kubilius to create a “Litvak heritage forum.” In a statement issued in Jerusalem by its chief Nazi-hunter, Israel director Dr. Efraim Zuroff, the Center accused the Lithuanian government of trying to enlist Jewish support for its ongoing campaigns of Holocaust distortion and promoting a false equivalency between Communist and Nazi crimes.
According to Zuroff:
“The creation of a new “Litvak Forum” is merely the latest in a long line of Lithuanian governmental initiatives to promote a false narrative of the events of World War II, which minimizes the extensive role of local Nazi collaborators in the mass murder of Jews and promotes the canard that Communist crimes were equivalent to those of the Nazis. Such an initiative is the equivalent of forming an Armenian support group for Turkish efforts to deny the Armenian genocide.
“The Center will continue its efforts to thwart Lithuanian Holocaust distortion and is already in contact with the “Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel,” the world’s largest Litvak organization to ensure the failure of the latest governmental tactic to hide the truth about the Holocaust in Lithuania and to prevent naïve Litvaks from helping destroy their own historical legacy.”
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