memorial in jerusalem and also the editor in chief of essence studies dr thank you very much for joining us here on. this seems to be and trained to quite communism with us as them what is driving that. i think that part of what's driving this equating communism and fascism communism and that nazi is a really is the issue. is post communist countries that are shaking free of communism and of what they would see in their own countries as soviet oppression over decades and they look back at the period of world war 2 and also after the war when they were under the soviet influence as a period of. great persecution and there were 2 kinds of totalitarianism that persecuted. i think that the 2 are not you can't equate them they are issues about the soviet union the crimes of soviet in committed it's not within all tasted what you agree that it seems to be part of the larger phenomenon of we right in history

and if yes how dangerous is this phenomenon rewriting history can be a dangerous thing if historians are constantly rewriting history in the sense that we come up with new questions there are new new documentation that comes to light that we didn't know about before or maybe was top secret until a certain point in time and that might change how we understand certain historical events and that's the natural process of researching history but what could be dangerous is marshaling history selectively for political goals ideological goals etc similar things where certain aspects of history ignored and other aspects of history are highlighted or even invented to a degree in order to achieve certain political goals when history becomes politics then it becomes dangerous what do you think is happening in the fullness soviet union states there's a combination of things that seems to be going on. part of it is some of these

countries that were actually part of the soviet union there some of them are trying to reclaim their national history they felt many of them under the russian heel when they were part of the soviet union that they were being rusa fide i mean think about it that in some of these countries russia have become the predominant language even though they have a national language right that things like that so that part of it is is them having a sense of shaking off that past and reclaiming whatever their past and their culture is and when a nation. is building its national history into something that has just been continuing over centuries been some house seems to have been disrupted or or pushed aside in some way then dangerous things can happen also so i think part of it is their reclaiming their their their history and their nations and their cultures and so on but within doing that. they're also saying we suffered we suffered under the

soviet union which many of them did in various ways. and we suffered so much that it's the worst thing that ever happened and then they start. saying equating things that are not really equatable i mean there are 2 things that are not the same naziism and communism and each one has to be studied understood in its own right and let's face it the soviet regime didn't go out and try to wipe an entire people off the face of the earth and in poland a law was possible makes it a criminal offense to criticize polish collaboration with the nazis during the holocaust and yet we know that many poles collaborated with the nazis so how was such a little able to pos and get support the the polish law. is in many ways. part of a pendulum swing. in politics and in poland and in how which

side of politics holds sway and now it's. ultra nationalist politics there are in power the 1st thing that the polish government current polish government claims that they didn't play it wasn't poland or the polish state of the polish people the plans are carried out the final solution is true they didn't the germans did it with all of the anti-semitism that existed in poland prior to world war 2 there was no hint that anything like this was in the offing that they were planning anything like this laws against jews limitations and not this kind of a thing that's not what we're talking about but. within poland there were there was . there were many people who collaborated with the germans some for economic reasons some out of anti-semitic reasons some for other reasons. and there are others who didn't but there weren't that many who were willing to help jews but

there were thousands that we know about and probably thousands more that we haven't yet discovered and part of poland try the current government trying to claim a certain place in history and also highlight poland's own suffering under the nazis which is genuine there really was extensive polish suffering under the nazis so here they're emphasizing a certain part of their own history and tried to deemphasize a different part of history those people who collaborated but then they criminalized something about that and that's the you can't legislate historical fact that's part of the problem there the law was revised and as far as i understand the criminalization aspect was for moved and the israeli prime minister has said he's happy with them it isn't but yes and is not so what are you still upset about under international pressure and pressure from israel as well and pressure from out beacham as well. in poland they were reconsidering the law in the

legislature and in the in the government they took away the felony part of it and left it as something that was criminal in a civil sense so there could be a civil case the change in the law didn't really solve the problem because it left government institutions in charge of deciding what's a historical fact and being able to. to hound historians or or other scholars anthropologist sociologists and others dealing with this is the subject scholars able to helm them and even hold them into court so. we came out against the revision other vision came along with a joint statement by the polish and israeli prime ministers that went not only a relief not only to the law it went beyond that and talked about all sorts of. perspectives on that history in world war 2 and a holocaust that simply were off base to the point of being

a revision of history in various aspects and we came out against that and a point by point statement that you can find online in other shows website we challenge what they said the polish president refused to come to this week's 5th world holocaust for that and that commemorate 75 years since the liberation of auschwitz death camp the lithuanian president has also decided not to count standing instead his parliamentary speaker what do you make of that i think it's unfortunate that the polish president didn't come i understand that there's all this politics between poland and russia and the you know put in a speaking he's afraid of what putin might say. etc but the fact of the matter is that despite his anger at putin despite his sense of insult that he's not getting equal footing there are reasons why the people are speaking who are speaking or speaking and more of the reasons you know the allied country the main allied

countries are speaking and to be here in a vent where so many major leaders of countries around the world are joining in saying we remember the holocaust so we have to fight at the semitism and the current wave of anti-semitism that's happening all over the world over the last few years and we will fight against that to be part of such a state and i think is important he could have been here and been part of that and still say but i said about what he's upset about i think that that's unfortunate the way he and. i think is. simply joining him for whatever political reasons he's got historical fact is that the raid on liberated auschwitz and there 5 years ago during the commission of ation at the camp for the 70th anniversary of it says that the ration of russian president was not invited to attend so is that political or is that an attempt to revive history putin wasn't invited 5 years ago

because of clearly political political issues but there's no doubt that the red army liberated auschwitz and that's the historical fact and you know there are several 1000 prisoners in auschwitz the overwhelming majority of them who were there on the day of liberation were jews as in general at auschwitz what happened and had the red army come a few days later they might have died of cold of disease and the red army came and started to treat them so it is no doubt that you know it was liberated by the red army and i'll avoid the politics do you feel that the memory of the holocaust is being of the taken by politics. the member of the holocaust has had politics involved all the time. sometimes in a positive sense when i say positive i mean people trying to learn so-called lessons from the holocaust right. so you know we learn must learn from the

holocaust that we should be more tolerant and more you know and uphold democracy and all sorts of things like that which are good things to to strive for absolutely but you can also call that political but in terms of holocaust memory sometimes falling into. politics where what's important is as i said before marshalling facts to support a certain ideology or political position and therefore the facts are marshalled very very selectively and other facts are very carefully ignored that's going on that has always been around it's happening i would say. increasingly in certain places and i think part of what we try to avoid here at the shen we try to avoid that we try to deal with the subject itself and what actually happened and who is involved in what ways and what do they do and how do we teach it etc you know those kinds of things and. we certainly are not in favor of politicizing all

this i mean should be beyond politics it's people's lives we're talking about. this is a story about what happens auster a stray bullet kills a young girl in the street. what happens to her family and daughters in florida the other daughter is buried in a cemetery meaning this is your head what happens to the community the public was screaming for a scapegoat the police needed a scapegoat so why not choose a 19 year old black kid with a criminal record who better to pin this on than him and what happens in court. shot after shot as far. as i feel that we don't know

she'll just screw. the end of this unfortunately you. will still not know who killed just. operations understand that a cost of doing business is buying and building support in washington d.c. and that includes staffing up with former members of congress put them on your payroll you want to hire a chief of staff from a powerful senator or committee. member get their chief of staff put them on your payroll as a lobbyist this is what washington does on a bipartisan basis in fact i think it's the only point of true bipartisanship in d.c. is corporate influence over government. what

about what we see happening in the ukraine where there is a qualification of world war 2 figures next step and by deborah who was responsible for the mass murder of jews i think that in ukraine there is a problem with holocaust memory and ukraine is one of the examples of those post communist countries particularly those who were part of the soviet union who were reclaiming a national past in a sense and when you do that you look for heroes and unfortunately some of their heroes as in other places are the other. people who fought for liberation and fought for independence are also people some of them who participated in genocide and i think that that's problematic ukraine's law is similar to the original

version of poland's law actually precedes poland's law so if you or i were to walk down the street in vivre in key of or any oh anywhere else and say step on by darrow was or so much of which or any of these people who are named in the law were responsible for mass murder or participated in mass murder we could be prosecuted and i. i think that there's a problem with that and there are other countries that are talking about similar laws not necessarily with prosecutorial powers but still similar laws and that's it is a problem there's a problem in these countries where they have a conflict. to crash between the history of what happened during the holocaust at least aspects of that history and who their national heroes are the ukrainian government says that this is an internal issue and so the international community should not get involved what do you make of that i think that. yes the the

international community particularly scholars with the backing of the international community has to have to. keep the story. of hearing to the facts all the time and there is no doubt about what. the people who followed bun darragh i mean but there himself wasn't in ukraine during the war we know that but he still was in contact with his people and with his units and there's no doubt that people who followed him and others were busy. were busy killing jews they also from their own point of view made a few major blunders because they were busy fighting at some points against jews poles soviets and germans all the same time which kind of left them without allies but that was their mistake at the time but i think we have to adhere to the facts and yes they choose their own heroes but they also have to face their heroes their

heroes problems and this is not a minor blemish it's not some small crime he wasn't jaywalking and this is something that is very serious and. i would say that you know. reflecting back on the polish law poland for now more than 20 years 25 years even has had an ongoing debate there's a struggle going on over memory of that period and they have a problem you know can the victims be also perpetrators as a possible because they've course they were victims in ukraine and in some other countries that debate has either not the gone or is only in an early stages although we have problems with the polish law i think the ukraine law the fact that there is not even a discussion about it is a problem. another country is lithuania where a genocide sent to has been criticized for trying to absolve lithuania of any responsibility of guilt for the holocaust in the 2nd world will how successful has

it been the genocide center speaks i think to the what is the mainstream understanding of history in lithuania as far as i understand it but in the thorny there is some discussion going on and some debate going on the genocide center emphasises a suppose a genocide that the soviet union committed against lithuanians in the. occupation attic sation that began in 1040 and then of course again from 1905 until it when you got independence and this genocide center has a museum and the museum used to be called the museum of genocide the change her name a couple of years ago and i apologize i don't recall the new name but that museum went to discuss genocide discussed only this genocide and kind of skipped the holocaust and went to 940 to june 41 and then 945 onwards and skipped june 41 until the end of world war 2 until the red army came through in the summer of 44 well that's the real genocide in lithuania the ruling party is discussing legislation to

absolve the nation of holocaust crimes it argues that the holocaust was carried out by thousands of private individuals it wasn't the state and that those individuals should be the ones who appear to trial how would you refuse that argument or force of all i'd like to see them put somebody on trial. what the lithuanian governments have done. more or less for the last 25 years is give. people who are accused of having been part of those crimes pensions or give their families pensions and so on so glorify some of them so when they put people on trial maybe that's you know a fair enough argument we know from research that there was widespread with the word. in participation in rounding jews up and murdering jews and so on we also know that there are 3 ways to rescue jews in the twenty's who didn't get involved you know clearly we know that in rural lithuania from research that. has been done

it is now ongoing by a number of scholars that in the world with the way in various places lithuanians were the main killers. lithuanians in those areas. but even in those areas there were lithuanians who evaded that or tried to help choose so they say it's several 1000 or something like that is historically inaccurate there was no with way instead all of the tried to create one under the nazis the nazis wouldn't allow it but there were lithuanians who were in charge who were still the mayors of cities and commanders of police there were germans above them but they had authority and in many places it's lithuanians who are passing laws and certainly lithuanians who are around dangerous up and off in the lithuanians who are shooting jews and i think they need to live up to that face up to that are you concerned that the memory of the 2nd world war in the holocaust will be revised to the point that future generations actually won't know what happened futures are actions already don't know what happened in many places there's research that was just done in

france that found that very significant percentage of young people are young adults not not children don't even know what the holocaust was on that happened. and there's been similar research in other countries that has found similarly disturbing. information findings about what local people know and this is where the holocaust happened let alone countries where it didn't happen i don't know what the uncertain asian countries were their experience of course was something else during the war. so i think that in some senses that future is already upon us and i think i think that only. emphasizes our need to redouble our efforts to teach about the holocaust remember the holocaust understand the holocaust it's one of the main reasons that world war 2 in europe happened because of how the germans the nazis in germany saw the world and understood the jewish

role in the world and saw and i think we need to remind people of that or else we risk increase the risk of terrible things like this how. opening again you know after all once the holocaust happened it can happen again and doesn't have to be germans and jews next time we don't want to see this happen again added to this is the fact that there are fewer holocaust survivors with every year that pos is does this hope revisionism trial of the presence of survivors is very significant in addressing holocaust denial and distortion although holocaust than oil. hit a peak in the eighty's 1980 s. in the 1990 s. when there were more holocaust survivors around simply saying these are old people who don't remember well they're inventing it i mean if you want to live which is a holocaust deniers are doing they're lying in order to achieve political ends if you want to lie you lie and doesn't mean you know the facts won't interfere with your life. but yes indeed when there will no longer be holocaust survivors no one

will be able to stand up and say i was there and here's what i experience and here's what i saw happening around me and these are the ones who did it then that will increase the possibility of deniers saying it's all an invention of those jews those zionists communists whoever it is they want to blame you say to stop this we need to educate about the holocaust but educate how what needs to happen i wish i had the formula put we've been educating about the holocaust a great deal in many countries i mean the international holocaust remembrance alliance araa. now has i think there are up to 33 members or 34 members they've added a few joined recently in the last couple of years and all those countries are committed that are members of ira government commitments to to devote government resources to holocaust education commemoration and research and in quite

a few of those countries actually do that quite seriously yet we find these this data of people don't know people are unaware or revisions of history alongside teaching the subject so i think maybe we need to figure out better ways to educate but i think education is our only tool what can i say i'm the only a product of humanist education where we believe that through education we can create better human beings not that the educated one is better than the an educated one but whoever gets this education can that himself or herself become a better human being and through that we can build a better world i think education is as is our best route yes legislation as well but education is our best route and i think that we need to keep pushing ahead with that and spreading it more and people need to know about the holocaust. and identify with victims and identify with rescuers and not heaven forbid identify with murderers duck to sell the kind of thank you very much for joining us here on

our team. thank you. as he should be. one of the people so you can be in luck because. what i mean i well me and i. see. what i was was a. double move. in school i'm. only

in the spirit in that these images that he said but watch music read some of these from the. winter with him and he that. and there have been and he moved can you hear michel i . him in ash transmission. geysers financial survival guide liquid assets not those that you can convert is exactly why it is silly. to keep in

mind no assets i mean to place an. order. from the us lead people by its own keep the slime due course knew the postal service to do so. click on it what. you see and dropped almost nothing because most would move it in. through. it all again when you don't let. the little. operations understand that

a cost of doing business is buying and building support in washington d.c. and that includes staffing up with former members of congress put them on your payroll you want to hire a chief of staff from a powerful senator or a committee. member get their chief of staff put them on your payroll as a lobbyist this is what washington does on a bipartisan basis in fact i think it's the only point of true bipartisanship in d.c. is corporate influence over government. we've also discovered that there are genes in our bodies that protect us from a gene we call these longevity genes and there's a set of genes that we work on in my lab at harvard called the search and for those to work effectively to slow aging and prevent us from getting diseases they need a molecule called an 80.

what politicians do usually to. put themselves on the line to get accepted or rejected. so when you want to be president or injury. or something i want to be honest i. have to try to be close it's like that before 3 in the morning can't be good that i'm interested always in the waters in the house. there should. show some same wrong all right old roles just don't call. me goldberg yet to say proud disdain it comes to educate and in games from an equal betrayal. when so many find themselves worlds apart. she's to look for common ground.

my uncle with the kids same company saying oh boy tonight nobody will even know who they can. go into. the. noise on which i didn't get showed up to move this because i'm listening to the going to be i didn't show up on my list. i thought it was not so much of a thing with my hands it is a constant you laugh i'm a huge thank you. dozens

of world leaders arriving in these crazy city of jerusalem to remember the holocaust and what will be its largest ever political event some holocaust historians about the past be politicized certain aspects of history ignored and other aspects of history are highlighted or even invented to a degree in order to achieve certain political goals when history becomes politics when it becomes dangerous. award winning journalist glenn greenwald just charged with the cyber crimes in brazil off reports of a high profile corruption scandal media and human rights activists from around the world are calling his case a blatant violation of press freedoms. china to europe washington is on the brink of another.