Yesterday, the European Court of
Human Rights rejected the complaint about the prohibition of the book “Ship of
Idiots” by Lithuania. The book is prohibited, since the author Vytautas
Petkevicius writes that the Nazi Government minister Vytautas Žemkalnis-Landsbergis
was a “friend of Hitler”, and co-operated with the KGB by the end of World War
II (case Petkeviciute v Lithuania). The
Nazi Minister is the father of Mr Vytautas Landsbergis who is a former President
of Lithuania.
Lithuania is the last country in the
EU, which denies holocaust.
The statement that Vytautas
Žemkalnis-Landsbergis was a “friend of Hitler” is based on the fact that he
indeed was a Minister of Communal Economy at the marionette Lithuanian Nazi
Government formed by Nazi Germany in the occupied Lithuania in 1941. The
statement that the Nazi Minister started to co-operate with the Soviet KGB by
the end of the war is based on the fact that he was allowed to live in the
Soviet Union after the end of the war, and he even built a successful career
under the Soviet rule.
In its judgment, the European Court of
Human Rights denies that the respective Government was indeed a Nazi one. This
is a factual mistake. Therefore, the family of the writer will lodge an appeal.
Professor Stanislovas Tomas, Russian foreign lawyer practicing in the Channel
Islands, will represent the interests of the writer.
On 25/06/1941, the Lithuanian Nazi
Government issued “The Word to the Nation” stating: “We assess the Eastern march of the
unstoppable German army with a particular gratefulness. […] This project of
Führer Adolf Hitler of the German Nation, this march of the brave army inspired
by National Socialism has huge importance in destruction of the
barbarian, anti-cultural and anti-human wave, which dropped 200 million people
down into poverty. […] This worldwide mission of Hitler and its meaning may be
very well understood, positively assessed and sincerely supported.”
The Lithuanian Nazi Government
issued the Declaration on Economic and Social Affairs. Its § 3 provides that
ethnic Jews may not have any private property in Lithuania. On 26/06/1941, the
Lithuanian Nazi Government addressed the German general von Pohl with a request
to intensify “clearing” Lithuania from the “Jewish gangs”. On 30/06/1941, the
Lithuanian Nazi Government issued the decision to create the Jewish
Concentration Camp. The administration of the concentration camp and the
ghettos was under the Ministry of Communal Economy headed by Minister Vytautas
Žemkalnis-Landsbergis.
On 01/08/1941, the Lithuanian Nazi
Government issued the Provisions on the Jewish Situation stating the following:
“The Cabinet of Ministers, having regard
to the fact that for centuries the Jews were exploiting the Lithuanian nation
economically, stomping us morally, and recently the Jews have largely extended
their fight against Lithuanian independence and the Lithuanian nation under the
Bolshevik mantle, seeking to stop the harmful Jewish activity and to defend the
Lithuanian nation from their harmful influence, legislates the current Rules”.
101
996 Jews were executed during the first six months of the Nazi occupation in
Lithuania.
The Lithuanian Nazi Government also
closed all theatres in the Polish language and started to treat ethnic Poles as
enemies.
The
current Lithuanian Government under President Dalia Grybauskaite supported by
the European Court of Human Rights (the Lithuanian judge Egidijus Kuris in
particular) denies that the Lithuanian Nazi Government of 1941 was Nazi, and
they also deny holocaust.