“DOUBLE GENOCIDE”

The "Double Genocide theory" is a concept about the equality of the Holocaust and Communist crimes against humanity. The term was used by associate professor of political science Dovilé Budryté in 2004 in a study of Lithuanian memory politics with regard to Soviet and Nazi repression, where the view held by a segment of that country since before the restoration of independence in 1991 was that Lithuanians similarly suffered genocide under Soviet rule. Recent critics of this Lithuanian viewpoint, Dovid Katz and Efraim Zuroff, have argued that the country has presented a false “double genocide” thesis and its argumentation obfuscates the Holocaust.

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Roger Cohen

‘The Suffering Olympics’

By ROGER COHEN
Published: January 30, 2012

VILNIUS, LITHUANIA — The “double genocide” wars that pit Stalin’s crimes against Hitler’s are raging in wide swathes of Europe and every now and again along comes a gust from the past to stoke them. The 70th anniversary this month of the Nazi adoption at Wannsee of annihilation plans for the Jews provided one such squall.

Yes, the past is still treacherous beneath Europe’s calm surface. Memory swirls untamed in the parts of the Continent that the American historian Timothy Snyder calls “Bloodlands,” the slaughterhouses from Lithuania to Ukraine that Hitler and Stalin subjected to their murderous whim.

To mark the Wannsee anniversary, over 70 European Parliament members, including 8 Lithuanians, signed a declaration objecting to “attempts to obfuscate the Holocaust by diminishing its uniqueness and deeming it to be equal, similar or equivalent to Communism.” It also rejected efforts to rewrite European school history books “to reflect the notion of ‘double genocide.”’

All of this was too much for the Lithuanian foreign minister, Audronius Azubalis, a conservative, who blasted the Lithuanian social democrat signatories as “pathetic.” His spokeswoman declared that the only difference between Hitler and Stalin was the length of their mustaches. She said legal qualifications of the crimes they committed were “absolutely the same”: genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

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Three major flaws mar
Mr. Cohen’s attempt

Boris Bakunas

By: Dr. Boris Vytautas Bakunas, Ph.D.

 "Mr. Cohen may appear to make a sincere effort to present a balanced view in his article; however, three major flaws mar his attempt. First, the article is based on the logical fallacy of false dichotomy, also known as the either-or fallacy. Second, the scales of balance in Mr. Cohen’s presentation waver as a result of his failure to present all the relevant facts related to the establishment of The Museum of Genocide Victims in Vilnius. Finally, Mr. Cohen obfuscates two crucial terms: Holocaust and genocide.

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