Shimon Alperovich's concluding remarks on Holocaust Remembrance Day 2012

[TRANSLATION FOLLOWS AT THE END OF THIS NOTE]
Dr. Shimon Alperovich (Simonas Alperavičius), chairperson of the Jewish Community of Lithuania, offering some thoughts at the end of the Friday 27 January 2012 commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz in 1945 (Holocaust Remembrance Day) at the community's home on Pylimo 4, Vilnius. Dr. Alperovich courageously commented on the ultranationalists' "Double Genocide" politics as a way of diminishing the Holocaust's place in history. He also noted the welcome statement of Lithuanian Prime Minister Kubilius, in response to his foreign minister's comments last week about Hitler's and Stalin's moustache length being the only difference between Nazism and Communism (see: www.DefendingHistory.com and www.defendinghistory.com/?p=29402). THAT statement was part of the foreign minister's attack on eight of his countrymen who courageously signed the Seventy Years Declaration (see http://defendinghistory.com/?p=29230).
Dr. Alperovich, born in Vilna (then Wilno, now Vilnius) in 1928, and raised in Kaunas (Kovno), is a direct descendant of the Strashun Family of luminous 19th century Vilna scholars.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------­-----------------
Translation of Dr. Alperovich's remarks:

That was a brief but meaningful commemorative evening. I'd like to thank everyone who helped in preparing it: the performers, guests, friends, thank you everyone who came.
I want to tell you that many years have passed since the Holocaust, but this issue of the past remains just as urgent and painful today.
One could say that Jews suffered the most in Lithuania during World War II from the Nazis and local collaborators.
But even now we collide with these issues. There are until now those who would like to repeat the Holocaust, those who deny the Holocaust, those who view the Holocaust with skepticism.
It is not because we enjoy crying that we organize these sorts of evenings. We must remember that horrible tragedy that occurred in Lithuania and throughout Europe, where six million Jews died, including a million children.
Unfortunately we still have many issues.
Even today there are people who adhere to the double genocide theory, that Jews murdered Lithuanians, and so Lithuanians murdered Jews, an absurdity. One should not even have to enter into discussion with such people.
Even today there are people who want to make Nazism and Communism equivalent. Both of them were terrorizing regimes, both are full of horror, but we cannot place an equal sign between them, and what Prime Minister Kubilius said today, or this evening, was very good.
Thank you everyone for coming, be in good health, and fight against genocide.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Shimon Alperovich
• Holocaust Remembrance Day
• Lithuanian Holocaust
• Seventy Years Declaration
• Jewish Community of Lithuania