Seventy years is the lifespan for latterday humans. It is also the years that have passed since Hitler's "Final Solution" Wannsee Conference.

In the half year beforehand, the Nazis saw how easy it was to find enthusiastic local killers in the parts of Eastern Europe they invaded in June 1941.

Around a million Jews perished by bullets there. Here in Eastern Europe, denial, never viable, has been replaced by a new ruse: Holocaust obfuscation. Deflate Nazi crimes, inflate Soviet crimes, redefine "genocide" by law, and find ways to turn local killers into heroes and to fault Jewish survivors.

In 2008, a group of East European members of the European Parliament proclaimed the "Prague Declaration". It has the word "same" five times, equalising Nazi and Soviet rule. Its demands: overhaul of textbooks, a single commemoration day, and a "Nuremberg" process for communists.

But 70 parliamentarians from 19 EU states have now signed the Seventy Years Declaration. A bold new reaffirmation. The legacy of the Holocaust shall not be undermined.

thejc.com