Robert Singer — World Jewish Congress — 17 March 2019 "All those who glorify Nazis and their collaborators by marching or otherwise are inciting hatred, plain and simple."
Lowenberg provides a link to an article on the World Jewish Congress site, retrieved and reproduced here for commentary.
World Jewish Congress calls for decisive government action after neo-Nazis march again in Lithuania and LatviaMarch 17, 2019
NEW YORK – World Jewish Congress CEO and Executive Vice President Robert Singer on Sunday voiced concern and condemnation after veterans of Latvia’s WWII-era Waffen SS wing and their allies marched through the capital Riga to honor their fallen comrades, and more than 1,000 neo-Nazis paraded through the Lithuanian capital Vilnius chanting ‘Lithuanians for Lithuania’.
“All those who glorify Nazis and their collaborators by marching or otherwise are inciting hatred, plain and simple. 1They are celebrating the darkest moments of modern history and espousing a contemporary agenda that calls for the destruction of anyone deemed ‘other’. This cannot be countenanced under any circumstances, but especially not after the murders committed by like-minded individuals in the Christchurch mosques two days ago, and at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh only a few months ago. It is incumbent on the authorities in Latvia, and any other country in which such disgusting displays take place, to do all in their power to firmly put a stop to these demonstrations,” Singer said.
“The 2mass neo-Nazi demonstrations that took place in Riga and Vilnius in recent days are not isolated incidents,” Singer continued. “Marches celebrating a similar agenda take place on a weekly and monthly basis across Europe, including in Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, and elsewhere, terrifying Jewish citizens and undermining any semblance of democracy and tolerance in these countries. There are steps being taken to counter these manifestations, but the authorities must be vigilant in taking decisive government action to stifle the worrying growth in Holocaust revisionism and glorification of perpetrators of Nazi crimes. A legal mechanism must be put in place a for halting this scourge once and for all.”
Examination
Robert Singer, born in 1956 in Chernivtsi, Ukraine, is a Jewish organization leader and former Israeli government official. Singer served as the Chief Executive Officer and Executive-Vice President of the World Jewish Congress from May 2013 until July 2019, the most senior professional of the international Jewish NGO.
Unfortunately, everything Singer states about the commemoration in Latvia, about Latvian participants being cut from the same cloth as neo-Nazi terrorist murderers, is false.
Singer makes his sentiments clear. The Latvians who commemorate the Legion think just like terrorists. In the Christchurch mosque shootings, an "alt-right" white supremacist killed 51 Muslims and wounded 40 at a mosque and an Islamic center. In the Tree of Life synagogue shooting, an anti-Semite gunned down 11 Jews and wounded 6.
Comparing the commemoration of the blameless Latvian Legion, which fought only against Soviet re-occupation, to xenophobes brutally murdering innocents is morally reprehensible. Singer's position as a Jewish leader does not confer the right to engage in what — objectively, listening to the words themselves and not considering who is saying them or about whom — would be denounced as hate speech in any other context.
Singer goes on to compare Latvian Legion commemoration to supposedly similar "mass neo-Nazi demonstrations" elsewhere. Looking at events elsewhere in the year prior, it is true that genuine neo-Nazis marched through the streets of German cities. Rising intolerance became such a problem that the city of Dresden was forced to declare a "Nazi emergency."1 In Hungary, neo-Nazis vandalized a Budapest cultural center.2 In Bulgaria, ultra-nationalists held a pan-European neo-Nazi conference in Sofia3, where an annual celebration also takes place commemorating general Hristo Lukov — Nazi Axis supporter and most prominent Bulgarian anti-Semite of his time.4 As with the horrific shootings Singer invokes against Latvians, these events have no relation to commemoration of the Latvian Legion, or to what the Legion stood and still stands for in the minds and hearts of Latvians.
| 1 | See article at BBC website: link |
| 2 | See article at romea.cz website: link |
| 3 | See article at Reporting Democracy website: link |
| 4 | See article at Deutsche Welle website: link |