Many countries refuse to acknowledge the major role their citizens played in the mass murder of their Jewish inhabitants during the Holocaust.
By Dr. Efraim Zuroff
(Courtesy of The Jerusalem Post where first published)
The past few months have been very difficult for those who seek to preserve the accurate narrative of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe, a region that, since the transition from Communism to quasi-democracy, has become a hotbed of terrible Holocaust distortion.
Although many countries accept the fact that the Holocaust took place and was a terrible tragedy, almost all of them refuse to acknowledge the major role that their citizens played in the mass murder of their Jewish inhabitants.
For example, the Lithuanians, who were major participants in the mass murder of 96.4 percent of Lithuanian Jewry (212,000 of 220,000 Jews who lived in Lithuania during the Nazi occupation), have still refused to accept any responsibility for the massacres and to cancel the hero status of their “heroes” who collaborated with the Nazis in the mass murders of their Jewish fellow citizens – the same is true throughout Eastern Europe.
Three recent examples of Holocaust distortion will suffice to demonstrate the problem, which is rampant in post-Soviet Eastern Europe.
RECENT INCIDENTS IN LATVIA AND CROATIA
The first took place in Latvia about two months ago. A local prosecutor decided that Latvian mass murderer Herberts Cukurs – one of the highest-ranking officers of the notorious Arajs Kommando, which murdered tens of thousands of Latvian and Belarusian Jews, and who was assassinated by the Mossad in Uruguay – was not a criminal.
This decision would enable him to be buried in the cemetery of Latvian heroes according to the wishes of his family and Latvian extreme nationalists.
Numerous protests from Jewish organizations both in Israel and Latvia made the Latvian prosecutor temporarily change his decision, but the issue is not permanently closed.
A second example took place a month ago in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, where half a million fans of the country’s most popular singer, Marko Perković, better known by his nickname “Thompson”, purchased tickets for the largest concert in history, which was even listed in the Guinness World Records.
The problem in this case is that Thompson is a fanatic supporter of the fascist regime that ruled the “Independent State of Croatia”, created by Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, a government that launched three genocides against Serbs, Jews, and Roma (Gypsies) and was responsible for the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent people.
What made this concert so disturbing and concerning was that there were no protests against it, and leading politicians attended along with their young children, some even taking photos together with Thompson.
ANOTHER INCIDENT IN ROMANIA
The third example, this time from Romania, is particularly alarming. Newly elected President Nicusor Dan, a member of the liberal and progressive community, is challenging a recently passed parliamentary law designed to enhance the effectiveness and accessibility of efforts to combat antisemitism. Dan argues that the law infringes on freedom of expression, a justification commonly used in Romania by antisemites and Holocaust deniers.
Equally troubling was his recent statement during a press conference, in which he declared his opposition to prosecuting organizations that glorify former Romanian Nazi leaders as heroes. More recently, Dan has openly refused to comply with a ruling from Romania’s Constitutional Court, which upheld the legality and urgency of implementing the antisemitism law.
Rather than accepting the court’s binding decision, he announced his intention to send the law back to Parliament to revise it in accordance with his personal views.
This is a highly controversial decision, which is interpreted by the antisemites and Holocaust deniers as support for their revisionist and racist views.
The president’s actions have led to a significant surge in antisemitic incidents and Holocaust denial, including increased online harassment targeting Romanian Jews and the widespread glorification of Nazi collaborators and contemporary neo-Nazis. His stance has effectively reversed years of progress Romania had made in addressing local antisemitism and confronting Holocaust denial.
In the light of these recent developments, the question is who is responsible for combating Holocaust distortion? Yad Vashem harshly condemned the decision of the Latvian prosecutor, which was very helpful, but did not respond to what took place in Croatia or what is happening in Romania.
IHRA, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, has not responded at all to any of these incidents, which is hardly surprising since it is apolitical, and every one of its decisions must be unanimous. Thus, it is left to individual historians and Holocaust experts to speak out in the hope that they can convince local politicians to do what has to be done.
About the writer:
Over the last four decades, Holocaust historian Efraim Zuroff has played an important role in bringing Nazi criminals to justice as the chief Nazi-hunter of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Maximillian Marco Katz also contributed to this article. He is the founder and director of the Center for Monitoring and Combating Antisemitism in Romania.
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