Thursday, February 19, 2015

Lithuania: "There are many Lithuanians who find it hard to forgive Jews who killed nationalist freedom fighters"


Via the Jerusalem Post:
Approximately 500 ultra nationalists, some bearing Nazi swastikas, marched through a Lithuanian city that during the Holocaust saw the region’s most effective massacre of Jews.

Monday’s march through Kaunas, Lithuania’s second-largest city 60 miles from the capital of Vilnius, was the eighth annual event organized by the Lithuanian Nationalist Youth Union on Feb. 16 – one of their Baltic state’s two independence days.

(...) 
Tomas Skorupsis, an organizer of the march from the youth movement, said the event was not anti-Semitic. Repeating a popular view in far-right circles in the Baltic nations, he added: “There are many Lithuanians who find it hard to forgive Jews who, during Communism, killed nationalist freedom fighters. But I think we should leave it in the past and look ahead.”

Many in the Baltic nations – where Jewish communities hundreds of thousands strong were wiped out by the Nazis and their local helpers – regard local fascists as heroes because they fought Communist occupation, which is often equated with the Nazi one.

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