Posted on 07/29/2002 9:05:23 AM PDT by RCW2001
</CLARI-ITEM HEADER>
VILNIUS, July 29 (AFP) - A Lithuanian politician burned an Israeli flag while playing Nazi marching songs to protest a 10,000-dollar (euro) reward offered by Nazi hunters for information on war criminals, a newspaper reported on Monday.
Saulius Ozelis, a member of the municipal council in the western city of Taurage drove around town for half an hour on Sunday playing Nazi marching songs loudly on his car stereo before setting the flag on fire, according to the daily Lietuvos Rytas.
Several dozen members of Ozelis' far-right Lithuanian Freedom Union attended the action, which had not received permission from local authorities.
Ozelis told the newspaper he was protesting against an offer made earlier this month by the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center to pay a reward of 10, 000 dollars for information about Nazi criminals.</CLARI-ITEM STORY>
2. Tahnk you for positng a site for apologists of Lithuanian anti-semetism.
Hey, I like Wagner!
He's probably my favorite.
But up until very recently
you would never hear
this master's works played in Israel.
And he died before Hitler was born!
I suggest you re-read that site. Lithuanians are almost begging for reconciliation. The country has a good history of prosecuting Nazi war criminals. They go after communist criminals too which annoys both Israel and Russia.
Latvia suffered the same fate as Lithuanian. Click here to see pictures of Latvians being forced into cattle cars for a trip to Soviet concentration camps and death.Izak Bucinskis was in charge of the Workers' Guard and People's Militia at the time. Don't hear much about him, do we?
Let me quote the page in question.
an earlier posting I wrote that, in my experience, Jews do not think of their famous people of the past (eg Gaon of Vilnius) as Lithuanians. I wrote: "Did the Gaon even speak Lithuanian? No one knows for sure, but probably not." Igor Sagdeev says: "Probably not. So what?" Well, so a lot. Here is an encapsulation of one of the main problems of Lithuanian- Jewish relations in the past. To Lithuanians, our language is everything. What would we be without it? (Look at Belarus: when the leader has no respect for his country's native language, is it surprising that all he can think of is to quickly be absorbed by Russia?)
As for the Jewish polulation as a whole, perhaps ignorance of Lithuanian had something to do with forced settlements in Shtetles etc?
As for the language issue, My great-grandfather and his wife both spoke Lithuanian, Polish, Russian, Yiddish, and Hebrew. (I suppose a Rabbi and doctor the two were rather well educated). Middle and upper class Jews commonly spoke many languages. Others spoke the local language as their first tongue. My father never learnt Yiddish. His first language was Polish.
We all know the facts of 1940. The majority of Jews in Lithuania were pleased that the USSR occupation had begun. Yes, they had their reasons (afraid of Hitler, etc) but the fact was they didn't care tuppence about Lithuania's loss of sovereignty. Did they expect this attitude to endear them to the Lithuanians? Just like today - their threats to try to block Lithuania's membership of NATO and EU unless Lithuania steps up its efforts to try Jew-killers - while totally shutting up about Lithuanian-killers. What kind of reaction do they expect? Is this the path of reconciliation?
Meanwhile, you don't have to delve in the events of 59 years ago to see the Jewish attitude to protecting their own criminals. Look at the Sheinbaum case: this Jewish lad murders someone in USA and runs off to Israel and the Israeli court rejects the US attempt to have him extradited. And if I dare to bring up the subject of Israel's treatment of Palestinians, that will generate accustaions of "anti-Semitism" "irrelevance" and "changing the topic".
Notice the utter irrelevence of the second part of the paragraph to the first. It is simply a sign of generalised rambling hatred of Jews.
Sheinbein was convicted in Israel. He was not protected.
The authors crocodile tears for the Palestinians is an attempt to assuage guilt from 1000 years of mistreatment of Jews in Lithuania.
The whole page is the author complaining about the "Jewish lobby" double standards, Jewish power, Jewish arrogance....
Where is the reconciliation?
Latvia suffered the same fate as Lithuanian. Click here to see pictures of Latvians being forced into cattle cars for a trip to Soviet concentration camps and death.Izak Bucinskis was in charge of the Workers' Guard and People's Militia at the time. Don't hear much about him, do we?
We don't here about Soviet crimes period. Race is not a factor. The one-time religion of the executor is irrelevent here. The media is covering for Communists. They have been doing this since the days of IF Stone propogandizing in the NY Times.
Antisemitism Research
Summer 1998, Volume II, Number 1
The Failure to Prosecute Nazi War Criminals in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, 1991-1998
Efraim Zuroff
Any attempt to assess contemporary efforts to prosecute Nazi war criminals in the Baltics must begin with a brief historical description of the active involvement of local collaborators in the implementation of the Final Solution in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Unlike the situation in most of the rest of Europe, where the majority of the Jews were rounded up by the Nazis and their local helpers but were murdered in Polish death camps, practically all the Jews annihilated in the Baltics were killed locally and in many cases by their compatriots.
The active involvement of Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians in the murders took various forms. Probably the most pernicious, was their service in special killing units established by the Nazis expressly for the implementation of the mass murder of "enemies of the Reich." Units such as the Lithuanian Ypatinga burys (Vilnius Sonderkommando) and the 12th Auxiliary Police Battalion, and the Latvian Arajs Kommando each carried out the murder of tens of thousands of Jews, and the latter two formations were even sent outside their respective countries to carry out mass executions which earned them considerable notoriety. In addition, local police units throughout the three countries were active participants in the annihilation of local Jewish communities, as were vigilante gangs of local fascists who in some cases, particularly in Lithuania, began their physical attacks on Jews even before the Nazis occupied their homeland.
Local administrators played a role in the various stages of the persecution and murder of the Jews (and the confiscation of their property), and the role of propagandists should also not be ignored. Given the relatively large number and particularly high percentage of Baltic Jews murdered-especially in Lithuania (212,000 Jews killed which constituted 96.4% of the Jews living under Nazi occupation), but to a certain extent in Latvia as well (67,000 Latvian Jews which constituted 95.7% of the local community)-and the murder of at least several thousand,primarily Central European,Jews in each of the three countries,as well as the active participation of numerous Balts in the killing of Jews in Byelorussia and Poland - it becomes clear that the number of Lithuanians,Latvians,and Estonians who played a role in the annihilation of European Jewry is extremely large and quite significant by any standard.
Many of these perpetrators were brought to trial by the Soviet authorities during the initial decade following the end of World War II, but others were never held accountable. A considerable percentage of those in the latter category escaped prosecution by emigrating to the West, in many cases to countries like the United States, Australia, Canada and Great Britain which had fought against the Nazis. Ironically, within less than a decade after the conclusion of the hostilities the former allies had admitted at least hundreds, if not thousands, of Balts who had collaborated with the Nazis.
..........
Here is the url:
http://www.cidi.nl/html/antisem/art1-02.html
Not sure what to make of all of this really.
And helping to ship thousands of Lithuanians to concentration camps in the Soviet Union is not mistreatment? That happened before Germany invaded.
The communist butchers are another matter. They are running loose, being protected by certain countries (Helena Brus in the UK for instance) and they are spewing a lot of revisionist history about WWII and the Soviet Block.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.