Lithuania: Speakers at anti-Semitism confab accused of Holocaust distortion

Via Jerusalem Post:

A symposium on anti-Semitism co-sponsored by the Lithuanian Jewish community has come under fire for including figures accused of distorting the Holocaust. The conference was held yesterday in Vilnius.

Several speakers at the gathering, such as filmmaker Jonas Ohman and Sarunas Liekis, a member of the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance, have been accused of obfuscating the Lithuanian role in the genocide of the country’s Jewry by both local historian Dovid Katz, editor of the Defending History website, and Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

“Of course, it’s impossible to know for sure, but it seems this may be another conference with lavish funding whose real purpose is to...obfuscate the situation rather than fight anti-Semitism, racism and extremism,” Katz, who is highly critical of the local Jewish leadership, told The Jerusalem Post in an email.

He was especially critical of Ohman, who was slated to discuss “distinctions between criticism of Israel and anti-Semitism,” accusing him of using one of his films to glorify post-war anti-Soviet partisan leader Juozas Luksa, who was “implicated in wartime Holocaust crimes.”

Asked about the conference, Zuroff, who is also highly critical of the local Jewish community, said it had been “designed to give the impression that the community is working hard to combat anti-Semitism and even Holocaust denial and distortion.”  more