One of the Wiesenthal Center’s most important and effective tools in the fight against the rampant Holocaust distortion in post-Communist Eastern Europe is the book Our People; Discovering Lithuania’s Hidden Holocaust, which I wrote together with popular Lithuanian author Ruta Vanagaite, who discovered and admitted that her relatives (grandfather, and her aunt’s husband) had participated in the persecution of their Jewish neighbors during the Holocaust.
The book was published initially in Lithuania, where it sold close to 20,000 copies and was a best-seller for several months, and the most-read book in public libraries for several years. In the meantime, it also has been published in Polish, Russian, Hebrew, English, Swedish, Japanese, and most recently Dutch.
The Dutch edition was published by Verbum, a very reputable publishing house, which has already published over 100 books about the Holocaust. Oddly, we authors were not informed about the appearance of our book, nor did the publisher send us the 4 copies each, which we were supposed to receive according to our contracts. Nor did the publisher inform us of any events to promote the book. So I decided to see if I could arrange a few lectures and events, through my contacts in the Dutch Jewish community, as well as with individuals connected to Holocaust issues.
Thanks to my activities as a “Nazi-hunter,” I was able to arrange three public lectures, one to the “Christians for Israel” organization, one for the Jewish community, organized by C.I.D.I. the Center for Information and Documentation on Israel, and a third lecture to a Jewish community and many non-Jewish friends in the town of Enschede in eastern Holland. Each of the lectures attracted a packed house, with highly-interested audiences. All the books we brought to the lectures were sold, and some of the audiences had to order the books which had run out.
One of the key factors which helped generate interest in the lectures and the books, was the media coverage which was outstanding. Practically every important newspaper (clippings are attached) interviewed me, as well as Dutch television and radio. I was lucky that a friend of mine, Arnold Karskens, a former military correspondent, with whom I worked a decade ago, on the case of a Dutch Nazi collaborator assassin, who escaped from a jail in Holland to Germany, had in the interim become a TV star, with his own very popular program. Arnold interviewed me for more than seven minutes at the Dutch National Holocaust Memorial, which lists the names of every Dutch citizen murdered in the Holocaust. And while in several cases, the interviews dealt primarily with the impending end of the trials of Nazi criminals, the exposure definitely helped bring many people to the lectures.
In addition to the lectures and interviews, I was able to attend the rally with the relatives of the hostages, who came from Israel to The Hague to sue Hamas for kidnapping their loved ones. By sheer luck, I found a poster with a picture of 23 year old Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was wounded by Hamas and taken forcibly to Gaza, whose family live two houses away from me on Naomi St. in Jerusalem. I was able to tell his story to several reporters, who published it in their stories on the rally.
In addition, I had the wonderful privilege of meeting the son of Jan Zwartendijk, the Dutch honorary consul in Lithuania in 1940, who gave fake visas to Curacao to hundreds of Polish Jewish refugees, which helped save their lives, among them practically the entire Mir Yeshiva, including the rabbis and the administration.
Hereunder the link to the item RTV Oost made of my visit to the synagoge in Enschede:
Hereby the links of the interview on Twitter (X):
https://x.com/ongehoordnedtv/status/1758088239066366296?s=20
Hereby the link of the program ‘Ongehoord Nieuws’. The interview was placed on different social media for maximum coverage:
https://ongehoordnederland.tv/2024/02/15/tv-programmas/ongehoord-nieuws-149-formatie-en-meet-justitie-met-twee-maten/ (from 33’28” short version with comments).
Regards.
Efraim Zuroff