| **UPDATE** Read related JTA story: Yad Vashem takesback invitations to Lithuanian officials |
JerusalemâThe Simon Wiesenthal Center today praised the recent decision of Yad Vashem to rescind its original invitation to Lithuanian Ambassador to Israel Darius Degutis and visiting Ministerof Culture Arunas Gelunas to participate in tomorrow’s annual memorial assembly to commemorate the Jews murdered in Lithuania during the Holocaust. The decision was made in the wake of therefusal of Yosef Melamed, Chairman of the Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel, to attend the event in the light of a recent attempt by the Lithuanian government to prosecute him for“libeling” so-called “Lithuanian heroes,” whom he exposed as participants in Holocaust crimes. In a statement issued here today by its chief Nazi-hunter, Israel director Dr. Efraim Zuroff, theCenter noted the significance of Yad Vashem’s decision in the context of the ongoing battle being waged against the Lithuanian government’s energetic efforts to hide and/or minimize the activecomplicity of Lithuanians in the mass murder of Jews, as well as its promotion of the Prague Declaration which seeks to establish a historically-false equivalency between Holocaust and Communistcrimes.
According to Zuroff:
“Yad Vashem, which serves as the primary custodian of Shoa remembrance and the key guardian of the accuracy of the Jewish narrative of Holocaust history, is to be commended for fulfilling itshistoric function in a very courageous manner. Its decision is a crucial blow against the ongoing efforts of the Lithuanian government to distort the history of the Shoa in Lithuania and therole played by local Nazi collaborators in the mass murder of local and foreign Jews in Lithuania, as well as Jews in Belarus and Poland.”
The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 memberfamilies in the United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the OAS, the Council of Europe and the Latin American Parliament(Parlatino).
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