01.04.11, 00:49
ynetnews.com
Lithuanian lie, Israeli silence
Efraim Zuroff

Op-ed: Lithuania claiming that Communist crimes equivalent to those of the Nazis

Two weeks ago, Lithuanian Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius visited Israel at the head of a large delegation of public figures and businessmen. The visit was virtually ignored by the Hebrew-language media, but this is not particularly surprising given the fact that visits to Israel by the prime ministers of small, and ostensibly unimportant, countries are a common occurrence. There are, however, countries which played a significant role in Jewish history and therefore receive more public attention than their current political status would normally warrant, and Lithuania is one of them.

And why was Kubilius' visit supposed to be of special significance? During the past few years, Lithuania has invested much effort in an attempt to obtain international recognition for its false claim that Communist crimes are equivalent to those of the Nazis and deserve the same response. These efforts are increasing and gaining momentum and increased support in Europe, thereby endangering the special status of the Holocaust as a unique historical tragedy in the annuals of mankind.

The opening salvo of this campaign was launched two and a half years ago with the publication of the "Prague Declaration" - a manifesto signed by 40 public figures and intellectuals from post-Communist East European countries, headed by former Czech President Vaclav Havel. According to the document, "Europe will not be united until it is able to...recognize Communism and Nazism as a common legacy," and calls for the designation of August 23 as a joint day of commemoration for all the victims of totalitarian regimes, i.e. Nazism and Communism.

This date was chosen to attribute equal responsibility for the crimes of the Shoah and the tragedies of World War II to the Soviet Union (along with Nazi Germany.) In addition, the "Prague Declaration" calls for the rewriting of all the textbooks and history books, taking into account the equivalency between Communist and Nazi crimes, demands which will reduce the Holocaust to just another tragedy among many others.

Shameful embarrassment
In order to understand the motivation for these demands, it is important to remember that in Eastern Europe, collaboration with the Nazis included active participation in the mass murder of Jews, a fact which these countries, and especially the Baltic states, are trying as hard as possible to hide or at least minimize.

The acceptance of their demand for equivalency between Communism and Nazism will help mitigate the criticism of their Holocaust crimes, as if Communism and Nazism are equal, it means that the former also constitutes genocide, and if that is the case, Jews (who were part of the Communist establishment) were also guilty of genocide, and therefore have no right to criticize the nationals of these East European countries for their Holocaust crimes.

In other words, if everyone is guilty of genocide, no one is guilty of such crimes, and these countries can change their status from "nations of perpetrators" to "nations of victims," with all the concomitant benefits of reparations and restitution in the wake of such a transformation.

No country has invested more efforts and resources in promoting the "Prague Declaration" than Lithuania, whose nationals collaborated with the Nazis in the mass murder of Jews to the widest extent possible, a fact which contributed very significantly to its astronomical percentage of Jewish victims, 96.4%, the highest in Europe.

Lithuania is doing everything possible to refrain from honestly confronting its Holocaust crimes, and I therefore believed that the visit of Prime Minister Kubilius to Israel would be an excellent opportunity for our leaders to make clear to the guests that promoting the "Prague Declaration" is simply unacceptable and that the State of Israel will view the continuation of the efforts to implement its recommendations as a particularly unfriendly act.

After all, if the Jewish state will not object, the path to establishing this false symmetry as the historical truth, with all the accompanying negative consequences, will be clear.

To my great chagrin, despite the fact that all the relevant material regarding this problem was prepared in the Foreign Ministry prior to the visit, our leaders did not raise the issue of the promotion of the "Prague Declaration" in their meetings with PM Kubilius and his entourage. Thus, from the Lithuanians' standpoint, the visit went very smoothly and pleasantly and they could return to Vilnius quite pleased with its results, and with the path cleared for the distortion of the history of the Holocaust and the erasure of their horrific crimes. What a shameful embarrassment.

ynetnews.com