Monica Lowenberg Releases Text of Letter to British ORT on Latest Lithuanian Embassy Sponsored “Litvak Do” in London
First posted on 27 November 2013 by Defending History
Add your voice to these petitions
here:
- Salford City Radio 94.4FM Interview in 2013 with Monica Lowenberg speaking about her trip to Latvia and the annual SS marches that take place in the capital of Riga. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTCjdF_TNzA
- Nazi Heroes- Waffen SS hailed in Latvia https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=tZ-DNbz3wmA Television Interview with Monica Lowenberg, Joel Rubinfeld and Glyn Ford MEP, 16 March 2012 VIEWS: over 102,000 as of Jan 2014
O P I N I O N
by Monica Lowenberg
Monica Lowenberg’s office has released for publication the following public letter sent to British ORT.
British ORT, FAO The Chief Executive, Mr. Dan Green
25 November 2013
Dear Mr. Green,
It is with deep regret that my 90 year old father, Ernest Lowenberg, former Berlin ORT pupil and I write to you today.
On the 13 November 2013, as chief executive of British ORT, you invited my parents and me to a concert that British ORT will be co-hosting with Westminster Synagogue and the Lithuanian Embassy on Monday 2 December 2013, as part of a two-day “Litvak symposium” at Westminster Synagogue. Shockingly, this “Litvak symposium” features a professor from Kaunas who thinks that glorifying his country’s 1941 Nazi puppet prime minister who helped send his city’s Jews to their deaths constitutes “the drama of Lithuanian history” and complained that timid college administrators are “frightened that they were going to get hit over the head with a club by the Jews.” (full text; English translation; reply by the Lithuanian Jewish community’s Milan Chersonski). Another “star” of this “Litvak symposium” is the editor of the Lithuania Tribune, a major mouthpiece for state Holocaust obfuscation, whose editor’s democratic values have not extended to publishing replies in his tribune (no pun intended). But he is happy to publish the state commission’s attacks on a Vilna Holocaust survivor as purported fact (background here and here). Is this really the kind of event British ORT and the Westminster Synagogue wish to be associated with?
I have copied Westminster Synagogue’s Rabbi Thomas Salamon into this mail, as well as your predecessor Robert Singer with whom over the years we have been in touch, as my parents and I feel it is important that they too are aware of where the Lowenberg family stands in this matter.
My parents and I are sadly obliged to decline your invitation as we refuse to have our names associated with a government that we have repeatedly called upon to change certain policies, including their ongoing sanitization and glorification of Holocaust collaborators as well as direct killers, a government that invests huge resources, despite trying economic times, in revising history to export a false equivalence of Nazi and Soviet crimes in an attempt to downgrade the Holocaust, which in Lithuania claimed 96.4% of the Jewish population, the highest percentage in all Holocaust-era Europe.
I have, as you know, personally informed British ORT with full documentary evidence. It is therefore particularly disturbing and personally upsetting that despite having this information, British ORT should actively go out of its way, under your leadership, to continue co-hosting an event with the Lithuanian Embassy.
In my last email to you of 14 November 2013, further to your telephone call, I suggested that if British ORT could not back out of the event that you allow myself and my father to read out the petition at the commencement of the concert to HE Ambassador Asta Skaisgirytė Liauškienė, Lithuanian ambassador to the UK. This would take under five minutes to read out at the event. What on earth is anyone afraid of in our free and democratic UK?
I am aware that Ronnie Wolf (daughter of former ORT boy Gerhart Wolf, many of whose family were also brutally murdered in Lithuania and Latvia) has also contacted you on the same matter. We have not heard from you and therefore we can only conclude that our request has been denied and that you will continue with this shameful concert.
As you are aware, the Lithuanian government have been pursuing a very active strategy that as the Jewish Chronicle in December 2012 noted, at a PR event with UCL and then at Jewish Book Week in February 2013 is clearly “duplicitous” and is part of a campaign of Holocaust revisionism. John Mann MP has referred to what is going on as an “industrial rewriting of history in Eastern Europe to excuse mass murders carried out on behalf of the Nazis.”
On the one hand we have a government who at these “Jewish events” shows a face that is open and friendly to a dialogue with, in particular, Holocaust survivors and their families, (but not I might add when they arrive on their doorstep and deliver petitions) yet at home, in Lithuania, legalizes swastikas; allows for Nazi marches to take place on Independence days in the very center of the nation’s capital and second city, and then names the youth who participate in such events as being “patriotic”; criminalizes Holocaust survivors such as Yitzhak Arad, former director of Yad Vashem; and glorifies perpetrators amongst many other actions that call out for dignified protest.
Tragically, it is becoming clear that many of these issues have been long-standing and are only intensifying as time goes by with Prof. Leonidas Donskis having been one of the very few voices, among elected officials from Lithuania who has truly and bravely spoken out against these things, a man who when I questioned him last year on whether the statements about the Lithuanian government were incorrect he responded in an email by saying I was not incorrect but “99% correct.”
I can therefore only conclude, as many others have, that the Lithuanian government are pursuing a very active strategy which is in my opinion clearly duplicitous. Glittering events, conferences such as those organized at UCL, book launches at Jewish Book Week, art exhibitions, concerts with British ORT are simply foils to a much larger strategy, a strategy that deliberately uses neo-Nazi marches on Independence Day (what a contradiction in terms if ever there was one) as useful vehicles to drum up nationalistic feeling. Clearly the marches are “useful” or by now the Lithuanian government would have disallowed them in the capital on Independence Day. The government’s campaign of Holocaust distortion, obfuscation includes the infamous Prague Declaration of 2008 which is the “bible” of the “Double Genocide” movement. A 2010 law passed by Lithuania’s parliament and signed by her president threatens up to two years’ imprisonment to those who would in effect deny the “Double Genocide” evaluation of twentieth century history.
As the eminent historian Professor Robert Wistrich wrote in an article this year in the Jerusalem Post, in response to a global forum on antisemitism:
“Lithuania, however, is a far worse case. For the past two decades, it has consistently omitted or minimized the massive scale of the nation’s complicity in the Holocaust, which greatly contributed to the barbaric slaughter of 95 percent of Lithuania’s 200,000 Jews 70 years ago. Rather than honestly confront this appalling record, the Lithuanian government has continuously stressed the Soviet “genocide” of Lithuanians, even insinuating that Jews were involved in these Communist war crimes.”
As I stated to you in our telephone conversation, for the purpose of historic truth and in the case of British ORT to preserve the dignity and memory of Colonel Levey and the other brave ORT personalities who literally risked their lives to save others, it is absolutely essential that British ORT does not allow its good name to be abused and be associated with the Lithuanian government. It is essential that British ORT does not host this concert with the Lithuanian government.
As Dr. Lionel Kopelowitz, former director of the Board of Deputies, noted when he was roped into attending the shameful UCL event, a previous Lithuanian government PR stunt in December 2012, what is said at these events is forgotten within a couple of days, if not hours, but the publicity which has the Lithuanian government’s name and logo of a proud knight on a horse on it, is for posterity, forever linked with the names of eminent and credible individuals and bodies.
In years to come, as the Lithuanian PR team continues to happily steamroll through the history books and the Jewish community, how will the everyday man on the street come to know the true history of Lithuania and the Baltics and what it is doing today when British ORT and Westminster Synagogue and other organisations link arms with the very government who are hell bent on distorting that history? I am aware that ORT has schools in Lithuania and receives funding from the Lithuanian government, as I am sure many schools in Lithuania receive funding from that government but not all schools run functions with the government in London today in efforts to cover for duplicitous policy. This is something that does not need to occur to maintain relations. British ORT has survived until now not running functions with the Lithuanian Embassy. Do you not think it is suspicious if not downright malevolent that out of all the hundred odd Jewish organisations in the UK the Lithuanian ambassador to London could target to run an event with this year, it should be the only one that my soon to be 91 year old father is deeply connected with? This is an act that is as suspicious as the invitation Second Generation Network received last year to co-host an event with the same embassy at Jewish Book Week last February 2013, an invitation the Second Generation Network declined when they realized the game the Lithuanian PR team were playing with them (Second Generation Network being the only Jewish organisation I belong to). These incidences are not coincidences but deliberate attempts of the Lithuanian embassy to undermine and silence the voices of those who contest their government’s despicable actions that have taken place not thirty years ago, not twenty, not even ten but — today.
The concert British ORT is involved in and hosting coincides, whether you are aware of this or not, with Lithuania’s presidency of the European Union Council and it is in the interest of the Lithuanian government to be seen to be co-hosting an event with British ORT. As the documentary maker and author of ”Tell Me No Lies” John Pilger has noted when investigating the propaganda techniques of various governments today, the Lithuanian government’s involvement in this concert demonstrates only one thing, how important PR is to that government and being associated with as many important names as possible to give them credibility at a time when they least deserve it on Jewish issues.
In view of the facts mentioned and because my parents and I recognize how important it is for anyone who truly cares about historic truth, justice and the prevention of far-right extremism currently sweeping Europe for each of us, where and when we can, challenge the Lithuanian government and their actions that happen and escalate today and because it is evident that under your leadership British ORT does not share this concern, it is with sincere regret that we need to inform you and make public that the Lowenberg family severs all ties with British ORT and do not permit British ORT to use any information, photographs, articles I have written in English and German on ORT, books concerning our family in any publicity you may choose to create for print or web publications. In some respects we are writing ourselves out of your history, as the history you will now be involved in is one that is based in lies of a heinous nature that defeat description.
This is how strongly we feel about the association you have deliberately nurtured that we are prepared to sever a life-long commitment with the organization that saved my father’s life. Our gratitude will forever lie with Colonel Levey and the brave ORT people who literally risked their lives so that we can live today.
Regards,
Monica Lowenberg
CC:
- Gali Bartal, British ORT
- Robert Singer, World Jewish Congress
- Rabbi Thomas Salamon, Westminster Synagogue
- Rabbi Barry Marcus, Central Synagogue
- Dr Lionel Kopelowitz, former director of the Jewish Board of Deputies
- Dr Efraim Zuroff, Director, Simon Wiesenthal Center, Israel
- Professor Danny Ben-Moshe, Deakin University, Melbourne
- Professor Dovid Katz, Defending History
- Graeme Atkinson, International Editor, Hope Not Hate
- John Mann MP
- Ronnie Wolf
- Former Berlin ORT boys
PS I would also like to draw to your attention three petitions that will remain open:
1. Petition to ban this coming year’s neo-Nazi march in central Vilnius:
2. To remove monuments to Nazi war criminals throughout Lithuania:
3. To mark progress across an array of issues the Lithuanian government could easily make progress on.
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LITVAK SYMPOSIUM IN LONDON 1-2 DECEMBER 2013
WILL ANYONE HAVE THE MORAL COURAGE AND SEE THE MORAL IMPERATIVE TO READ OUT THE PETITION TO HER AMBASSADOR?
Abandon defamation of Holocaust survivors and glorification of Holocaust perpetrators
Of interest will be the following details concerning some of the speakers:
(1) Egidijus Aleksandravicius:
(2) Editor of the LITHUANIAN TRIBUNE:
3) http://stop16marchinriga.blogspot.co.uk/2013_01_01_archive.html
End of the World and the Day After and correspondence between Monica Lowenberg and UCL
4)http://defendinghistory.com/
In particular see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7PcNQVYeDM&feature=youtu.be Look how long former Berlin ORT boy, 90 year old Ernest Lowenberg had to wait at the Lithuanian Embassy's doorstep last December 2012 to deliver an international petition against the actions the Lithuanian government are involved in today.
5. Last UCL event, this time round not just with the Lithuanian ambassador but also the Estonian and the Latvian
UK PAGE: http://defendinghistory.com/uk
UK SECTION: http://defendinghistory.com/category/uk
UCL SECTION: http://defendinghistory.com/category/ucl-manipulated
SECTION ON FASCIST
MARCHES: http://defendinghistory.com/category/neo-nazi-and-pro-fascist-marches
GLORIFYING
COLLABORATORS: http://defendinghistory.com/category/collaborators-glorified
Richard Bloom Film
The film explores the search for these collaborators, the efforts to prosecute them and the refusal of countries to bring their citizens to justice.
More info at richardbloomproductions.com
The large-scale migration of thousands of Lithuanian Jews (Litvaks) during
the late nineteenth century shaped popular Anglo-Jewish culture and identity.
It is no surprise that over 125 years their impact upon Jewish history, culture
and identity remains as rich as it was in the shtetls of old. The two-day
symposium, organised by the Lithuanian Embassy in the United Kingdom in tandem
with the heritage partners across Britain, seeks to help genealogists, local
historians and British-Jewish scholars alike.
COMMENT by Fabio Perselli posted on the eventot site
http://eventot.com/the-litvak-
PROGRAMME
FROM PALE TO METROPOLIS
Sunday, 1 December, 2013
Venue: Lithuanian Embassy, 2 Bessborough Gardens, London, SW1V 2JE
RSVP by email: events@uk.mfa.lt / tel.
020 7592 2841
14:00 Welcome by: Mr Šarūnas Birutis, Minister of Culture of the Republic of
Lithuania
Mrs Asta Skaisgirytė Liauškienė, Ambassador of the Republic of Lithuania
Mr Vivian Wineman, President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews
Moderator: Mr Ruslanas Iržikevičius, Editor-in-Chief, The Lithuania Tribune
14:15 Prof Egidijus Aleksandravičius, Vytautas Magnus University
Lithuanian Diaspora: Forgotten Pages of the Story?
14:30 Dr Nicholas J Evans, University of Hull:
The Social, Cultural and Political Impact of the Litvak During the Age of the
Great Migration
15:15 Prof Michael Berkowitz, University College London:
Genealogically-informed Scholarship: Litvak Strains in Holocaust and Jewish
Historical Research
15:30 Q&A
16:00 Reception
18:00 End of the event
FROM REFUGEE TO SETTLER
Monday, 2 December, 2013
Venue: London Metropolitan Archives, Huntley Room, 40 Northampton Road,
Clerkenwell, EC1R 0HB
RSVP by email: Bente.Dahl@cityoflondon.gov.uk
/ tel. 020 7332 3851
14:00 Introduction: Dr. Nicholas J Evans, University of Hull
14.05 Ms Galina Baranova, Lithuanian State Archives
A Selected Overview of Documents in the Lithuanian State Historical Archives
Related to the Life of Lithuanian Jews
15:00 Ms Lorna Kay, Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain (Manchester)
Documenting Litvak Migration in the North of England
15.25 Ms Charlotte Scott, London Metropolitan Archives
Aliens to Citizens: Collections at the London Metropolitan Archives and What
They Can Tell You
15:50 Q&A followed by a visit to the conservation studio
CONCERT
Monday, 2 December, 2013, 7:00 pm Reception, 7:45 pm
Venue: Westminster Synagogue, Kent House, Rutland Gardens, Knightsbridge,
London, SW7 1BX
RSVP by email: events@uk.mfa.lt / tel.
020 7592 2841
A concert of Jewish Songs and Music with the Lithuanian singer Liora
Grodnikaitė, mezzo-soprano, accompanied by pianist Darius Mažintas and
accordionist Martynas Levickis.
The event is free of charge; donations for the ORT projects in Lithuania are
gratefully accepted (ORT is the world's largest Jewish education and vocational
training NGO).
COMMENT by Fabio Perselli posted on the eventot site
http://eventot.com/the-litvak-
For British ORT and the Westminster Synagogue to co-host a cultural event with the Lithuanian Embassy in London is either spectacularly naive or brazenly provocative.
It is with sadness and alarm that I have been following Lithuania's enthusiasm for revising history in recent times: Lithuania – now an EU and Nato state holding the presidency, no less, of the European Council – was among the first in line when Hitler stormed eastwards in his Operation Barbarossa.
Just to remind ourselves: between June 25 and 27 1941, in Kaunas alone, Lithuanian nationalists (mainly volunteers) were responsible, along with the Wehrmacht, for the systematic culling of some 60-70,000 Jews. In three days. And that was just the prelude. Until then Vilnius had been celebrated as the "Jerusalem of Lithuania", a nation with a quarter of a million Jew...s forming a cornerstone of a commercially thriving and culturally rich corner of Europe. The Nazis murdered 96.4% of them, the highest proportion of ethnic annihilation they managed anywhere – a feat they could never have dreamed of achieving without such staunchly loyal collaborators. Lithuania's Jewish community now barely represents 0.1% of the country's 3.3 million.
These nationalist "heroes", so keen to fight the Russians alongside the Nazis that they would go to any length to impress, are the very figures Lithuania now sees fit to rehabilitate and salute through memorials and marches, especially on the 16th of February – Lithuanian National Day.
It's not even a case of "Forgive and Forget" – it's more a policy of "Forgive and Glorify".
The Litvat Days 2013, my gut instinct tells me, are a cynical PR attempt on the part of the Lithuanian authorities to appear cuddly and inclusive. Nothing new there. But for ORT and the WS to be led down the garden path in this way? – I am speechless. And I read with interest – and regret – that even one of ORT's historic figureheads, Holocaust survivor Ernest Lowenberg, has decided to do the dignified thing and withdraw his support for ORT after many decades.
Shame.
Fabio Perselli,
Translator and editor
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In the meantime it will be of interest to readers to know that only TEN days ago a Latvian state dance troupe displayed a very large swastika on 17 November 2013 in Riga stadium, see article in Hope Not Hate 24.11.2013
One has to now question whether to celebrate being European capital for culture in 2014, in little over a month, the Latvian government will be endorsing more of this blatant fascist behaviour in an EU, NATO,OSCE country?
10:40-13.00
Monica Lowenberg discusses her campaign against state glorification of Latvian SS veterans in Latvia today, followed by a screening of the documentary 'Rewriting History' which examines a new form of Holocaust revisionism in Lithuania, with the equating of Nazi and Soviet crimes. This will be followed by a Q&A with the film's director, Danny Ben-Moshe, via Skype.
Presenters
Danny Ben-Moshe
Danny Ben-Moshe is an Associate Professor and Research Fellow at the Centre for Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia. He is the film-maker of 'Rewriting History', which explores the banalisation of the Holocaust in Lithuanian today and its creeping effect on the EU, too.
Monica Lowenberg
Defending History
Since initiating in 2012 the petition 'Stop the 16 March marches and Latvians revising history', Monica has written prolifically on the banalisation of the Holocaust taking place in the EU today and has been widely published in the UK and abroad. Monica is London correspondent for defendinghistory.com.
Sunday December 22, 2013 10:40 - 13.00
The full Limmud Conference 2013 programme is available online and you can download the Limmud Conference 2013 web application. The brand new app allows you to set up an account, browse sessions and presenters and create your personal Limmud Conference planner.
The full Limmud Conference 2013 programme is available online and you can download the Limmud Conference 2013 web application. The brand new app allows you to set up an account, browse sessions and presenters and create your personal Limmud Conference planner.
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DOCUMENTARY
"After all we survived- The Riga Ghetto." 98 Min. DVD
DOCUMENTARY
"After all we survived- The Riga Ghetto." 98 Min. DVD
Director Jürgen Hobrecht
Production Polis Film
All rights reserved Berlin 2013
Details and outtakes
(English version coming soon)
Zwischen November 1941 und Oktober 1942 werden rund 22.000 Juden aus dem Deutschen Reich nach Riga verschleppt. Unmittelbar vor der Ankunft der deutschen, tschechischen und österreichischen Juden in Riga werden an nur zwei Tagen 27.000 lettischen Juden und Jüdinnen ermordet, um Platz für die Neuankömmlinge aus dem Reich zu schaffen. Auch Tausende Deportierte aus dem Deutschen Reich werden direkt nach der Ankunft erschossen. Diejenigen, die das Ghetto lebend erreichten, erleiden jahrelange Qualen.Von 24.605 in den Jahren 1941 bis 1942 nach Riga deportierten Juden aus dem „Großdeutschen Reich“ überleben nur 1.073.
Zeitzeugen berichten in dem Film von dem Massaker an den lettischen Juden, dem Leben im Ghetto und dem Überleben mit dem Trauma.
Interessenten an Filmvorführungen in Schulen, Gedenkstätten, Museen etc. sind herzlich willkommen. Die DVD kann für 12,00 + 3,00 Versand bei info@phoenix-medienakademie.com bezogen werden.
Between November 1941 and October 1942, 24.606 Jews from the "Deutsche Reich" (Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia) were deported to Riga. 4.500 were shot on arrival. The remaining Jews were sent to the Reichsjudenghetto and Jungfernhof and forced to live in an area where about 13,000 people had lived previously. However, before the "Reichsjuden" had been deported to Riga, to make room for the new arrivals, some 25,000 Latvian Jews out of 30,000, who had been placed into the Riga ghetto from August 1941 onwards were, over only two days, shot by the Nazis and willing Latvian collaborators. The brutal murder of Latvian Jews was one of the second-worst atrocities in the first stage of the Holocaust and yet, until now, this terrible chapter has rarely been spoken or written about.
Those who survived the ghetto suffered for years after. Out of the 24.606 ReichsJuden who were deported to Riga between 1941-1942, only 1,073 survived .
In Hobrecht’s new film, German and Latvian survivors speak out for the first time about the massacre against the Latvian Jews, the living conditions in the ghetto and how they survived the trauma.
