Moscow has welcomed the EU's dismissal of a Lithuanian
article that denies the Holocaust and disputes the
role of the Nuremberg Trials.
The publication in Lithuania described the Holocaust as a “legend” and the war
crime trials as “farcical”. Russia has condemned attempts
by other nations to rewrite the WWII history, and denounces
annual marches of former SS members in some European
capitals.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry
commented on a strong stance by European ambassadors
to Lithuania in view of an article published in the Veidas
Weekly.
"We are glad to
hear that finally our partners have responded to mass
media publications in Lithuania and other Baltic countries
that have whitewashed Nazi criminals,” the statement
says, according to ITAR TASS. “Russia calls for the counteracting
of unscrupulous attempts to rewrite the history of World
War II and encourage pro-Nazi supporters."
"This encroaches
upon the memory of those who died during WWII and humiliated
the feelings of WWII veterans," the ministry stressed.
On November 21, at the opening
of the Nuremberg Trials Museum, Russian Foreign Minister
Sergey Lavrov said the Nuremberg Tribunal was a leading
political and judicial achievement of the epoch, but
some did not learn its lessons.
"There is no doubt
that the Nuremberg Tribunal is a leading political and
judicial achievement of the epoch,” he said.
“There is no other explanation
for annual marches of former SS members in a number of
European capital cities, prosecution of anti-fascist
veterans or recognition of the swastika by a court as
part of the cultural heritage of the Balts," Lavrov concluded.
Efraim Zuroff, head of the
Simon Wiesenthal Center, says the EU has to speak out
over the distortion of the past:
“I think that this is an outgrowth
of an atmosphere in Lithuania in which the narrative
of the history of the WWII is being consistently distorted.
I think it’s high time that the countries of Europe,
the countries of the world, of the civilized world make
clear to Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia and these other
post-communist countries that the attempt to distort
the history of the Holocaust will not be tolerated, the
attempt to equate communist and Nazi crimes will not
be tolerated.”
“You cannot say and you can’t
minimize the role of the Soviet Union in the victory
over Nazi Germany and you can’t try and claim that the
people that liberated Auschwitz were just as responsible
for its establishment and the mass murder that went on
there,” he added.
Professor Dovid Katz from
the World Without Nazism Movement, says the issue of
Holocaust denial in Baltic states is being politicized.
“It’s a sort of by-product
of a much wider problem that I call ‘Holocaust obfuscation’
– the movement in the Baltic states that does not deny
the Holocaust, but tries to write it out of history,
minimize it, trivialize it, relativize it,” Katz maintains.
“Its intellectuals, politicians,
academics, media people, who are ultranationalists, don’t
want any stain on their history. And are confusing it
with current political issues, trying to use Holocaust
issues in East-West relations as a stick against today’s
Russia,” he explains.
Professor Katz agrees that
Soviet crimes were horrendous, but, he said, we must
remember that the Russian people were the first victims
of Soviet crimes.
“It was not a war of ethnic
destruction, murder, genocide, annihilation of the people.
The two are very different. And I think that the nations
of the world have to be steadfast in not allowing the
Holocaust obfuscation that’s now emanating from Eastern
Europe to succeed,” he concluded.
rt.com
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