The Burning of Pirčiupiai… Lest We Forget What Rightwing Racism Leads To

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On 3 June 1944, the fascist occupiers burned the village of Pirčiupiai in Lithuania, killing 119 people, burning them alive. Amongst the victims were 5 elderly persons over 65, 1 pregnant woman, 49 children under 15 years of age, 14 children under 5 years of age, and 4 nursing infants.

In 1960, the young Lithuanian sculptor Gediminas Jokūbonis created a memorial at the site of the tragedy, including the statue “Mother”, with a wall with decorated reliefs carved with names of the dead. The central monument portrays a tense image of a mother, the anger and sorrow of the old Lithuanian peasants, as well as severe generalised images, harmonising the architecture and memorial space with the surrounding countryside. In 1963, Jokūbonis received a Lenin Prize for creating the memorial. A Memorial Museum is also in Pirčiupiai.

In 1981, the Lithuanian cinema studio LKS filmed the movie Fakt (Fact) directed by Steponas Almantas Grikevičius, telling the story of the destruction of the village by the fascists. It won the main prize at the 14th all-Union Film Festival in Vilnius and represented the Soviet film industry in the competition at the Cannes International Film Festival, which it won the award for Best Supporting Female Role for actress E Ya Solovey.

2 June 2018

СССР. Прекрасная страна, в которой мы жили

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Ukrainian Jewish Committee Warns Kiev About Glorifying World War II Murderers of Jews

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On Friday, Eduard Dolinsky, Director of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, told golos.ua:

The veneration of World War II-era Nazi groups and surging anti-Semitism in the Ukraine will inevitably affect relations with Israel. Currently, both countries enjoy a good relationship. However, the Ukraine’s glorification of the murderers of the Jewish population will eventually come back to haunt Kiev in its relations with Israel. This’ll happen shortly. This’ll depend on how the Ukraine acts. For example, Poland, as you know, banned entry for (the director of the Institute of National Memory) Vyatrovich as well as some of his allies and nationalists. Israel may also take similar measures. Besides, ultra-right sentiment and extremist groups will grow in the Ukraine if the government remains idle. The whole world is witnessing mounting rightwing extremist sentiment and stepped-up activity by radical groups in social life. If they take no action to counter this, this’ll build up day by day. In addition, their numbers would increase, eventually making the fight against them more difficult.

According to the Israeli Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, the number of anti-Semitic incidents doubled in the Ukraine in 2017 year-on-year, which comes against the backdrop of a glorification of nationalist leaders responsible for the murders and expulsion of Jews during World War II. It noted:

For a second successive year, the Ukraine saw the biggest number of anti-Semitic incidents among the former Soviet Union republics. There was anti-Semitic propaganda in politics, vandalism targeting Jewish cemeteries, buildings, and social centres, as well as monuments to Holocaust victims. However, they don’t take any effective action against vandals, with anti-Semitic incidents qualified as just hooliganism and not as hate crimes.

In May 2015, Ukrainian President P A Poroshenko signed a law glorifying the OUN (Ukrainian nationalists) and the UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army), a terrorist group outlawed in Russia, labelling their activity as a struggle for the country’s independence. Statues to nationalist Nazi collaborators S A Bandera and R I Shukhevich arise across the Ukraine, memorial events and torchlight processions occur in their memory, and they name streets after them.

1 June 2018

TASS

http://tass.com/society/1007559

Stjepan Stevo Filipović (1916-42): His Spirit Will Never Die

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102 years ago, Stjepan Stevo Filipović was born on 27 January 1916. Filipović was a Yugoslav communist, a partisan, and People’s Hero of Yugoslavia, the “Yugoslav Che Guevara”. He was born in Opuzen in Croatia, then part of Austria-Hungary. He was a locksmith by trade. He graduated from primary school, then, his family moved to Mostar (Bosnia-Herzegovina), where he graduated from the second level at the gymnasium. After that, he studied in Sirmii and Kragujevac (Serbia).

He was an active revolutionary since 1937, actively involved in demonstrations and strikes, for which he went to prison for a year in 1939. In 1940, he joined the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. Filipović then did party work on the local level in Kragujevac; after the occupation of Yugoslavia by German troops in April 1941, the Party transferred him to Valjevo. There, he helped to set up clandestine radio stations and trained the first partisan groups. His personal courage and bravery in combat made him the commander of the local unit. On 15 August 1941, in an attack on Lajkovac, Filipović, armed only with a gun and grenades, put to flight a German machine-gun detachment squad. In this battle, his unit killed and wounded around 40 German soldiers. He received a commendation from Tito, the commander of the partisan forces. He received such again for his attack on Krupan.

At the end of September 1941, he was commissar of his unit for a short while. When his unit received reinforcements, he became a battalion commander. On 24 February 1942, the Chetniks ambushed Filipović… they wounded him and took him captive. The Chetniks handed him over to the Germans in Sabac, they transported him to Valjevo and tortured him for two months. A court sentenced him to death, with the execution date set for 22 May 1942. The Germans made all the locals come to the execution. In his last moments, Filipović spoke about the partisan movement, reminding them that the Red Army’s victory was inevitable and that the cruelty and bestiality of the fascist invaders would bring a prompt and just punishment to them. A photographer managed to capture the moment when Filipović spoke the words that became the slogan of the antifascist movement in Yugoslavia… “Death to fascism, freedom to the people!” Unable to stop the “communist propaganda”, the executioner decided not to wait for the appointed time, but to execute Filipović immediately. The execution took place 15 minutes earlier than planned.

On 16 February 1949, Filipović won the highest Yugoslav award, People’s Hero of Yugoslavia. On 28 October 1960, they dedicated a monument to Filipović in Valjevo. In the 1980 s, a monument existed in Filipović’s hometown of Opuzen, but in 1991 Croatian nationalists destroyed it. The modern Yugoslav left respects Stjepan Filipović, “our Che Guevara”, for his bravery, honesty, fearlessness, and internationalism.

27 January 2018

Yevgeny Ivanov

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11 June 2016. The 74th Anniversary of the Massacre of Lidice… An Enormity Repeated Many Times in the Third World by the Neoliberal USA

This memorial represents the 82 Czech kids from Lidice gassed at Chelmno (what does that tell you about the Holocaust Denier Patrick Buchanan and his drooling disciples Dreher and Whiteford?)

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On 10 June 1942, in present-day Czechia* (then, the German-run Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia), the fascists destroyed the village of Lidice. The Germans killed all 192 men present (one man was in prison and two were in the Czech forces in the UK; they survived), they deported 213 women to concentration camps (153 returned after the war) and gassed 82 children at Chelmno (6 more kids died in German orphanages and 17 other children passed to German families returned after the war). The fascists even killed all the pet and farm animals. This made the death-toll of Lidice stand at 340 out of 513 total inhabitants (that’s two-thirds of all the souls present in the village)… sounds like a present-day American drone bombing, doesn’t it?

• Czechia: I’d say that this is the best Englishing of the Czech “Česko”… “Czech Republic” is overly pretentious and a bit “over-correct” (in the linguistic sense); it identifies a nation-area with a particular form of polity and a particular state. It’s why we prefer “Germany” to “German Federal Republic”, amongst others.

Here’s a point to ponder… American “conservatives” (both Repugs and Dems) protected the German killers in their portion of postwar Germany. They allowed them high positions in the government, military, and intel apparats. Now, why doesn’t it surprise us when we see the USA acting like Nazi Germany on the international stage? Note well that the more-unbalanced members of the American apparat want to repeat Operation Barbarossa! We all know how that ended… give heed to the fact that Chilly Hilly wants such an invasion. What does that tell you about her? What does that tell you about her backers?

There is an Orthodox tie-in to this… Bishop Gorazd Pavlík of Praha took the blame for the Czech murderers of the fascist hangsman Heydrich holing up in his cathedral. Of course, that meant that the fascists killed him. He’s a Martyr, the Church of Serbia glorified him in 1961; his feastday is 22 August/4 September.

BMD