The author of this article is attempting to define the Holocaust as a unique event in world history. Unfortunately, the rise of the Soviet state resulted in more than 60,000,000 murders over its 80 years of existence. When combined with the close 80,000,000 killed by Communist China, we have an almost unimaginable number of deaths carried out in the name of a state. To attempt to deny this cheapens not just the memory of these deaths, but also the memory of the 6,000,000 who died in the Holocaust. We, as a people, need to get away from Jewish exceptionalism.

these small nations hated their Russian communist oppressors more than they hated the Germans whom they saw as liberators. Why was that? It was because they were indeed genuine victims of communist tyranny just as they claim. Thats hardly ''rewriting'' history. Its well known historical fact.

It is not a lie, and it is not in competition with the Holocaust. It is a fact of history. What's the problem here?

Yes, Shoah was an exceptional atrocity, because for a Jew, unlike a Russian, a Pole, etc., there was no way out. Yes, Lithuanians exterminated most of their Jews themselves so viciously that even the SS were puzzled. But, yes, Commies were no better. They also executed people summarily based on their social status rather than ethnicity. And, yes, there were a lot of Communist Jews, which in part had precipitated the Holocaust. Be strong enough to face the truth. Otherwise who would believe that "Never again!" is not an empty phrase?

To the dead the small different between the two, matters little but to the surviving Jewish people there is a major gap. 10% of the people who died during WW2 were Jewish. To the Polish people it would be a close call, with half the Poles killed being Jewish but the Nazi death camps left a stain on the Polish soul that is hard to forgive.

The commies were very good at killing their opponents they just did it in a different way. The Nazis singled out Jews more than other groups, but the Commies had more enemies. If we could tally up the totals killed, the Communists (remember Stalin?) could very well top Hitler...

Obviously every innocent life is of equal value. How ever In my view Shoa is special in our history because it is founded on racist motives (religion, etnicity). During Nazism every Jew was a target even children and babies just because they were Jews. Communist prosecution was mainly politically motivated. It was not designed to.erase an etnic/religious segment of it's population and the population in it's power just because of their etnicity or religion. 'Never again' has to remind us we have a responsibility to resist racist ideologies and parties.

this is how they feel about "Soviet occupation" they should be allowed to make their case. Let see what it will lead to. I, for one, cannot make up my mind on who was the worst murderer - Hitler or Stalin.

Never expect an East European country to admit openly that they were involved in the Holocaust on the side of the mass murderers.Instead they resort to evasions,exuses.One of them is equating fascism and communism. Anyone who knows the two systems from within realizes that this is an absurd lie. Ragarding the viewpoint of Israel:they might have "condemned" the Prague Declaration,but those who signed would not understand a word of it. .After all the majority of them (if not all all them) are most probably far away in spirit from the Jewish tragedy.

it has nothing to do with "competing" with those two horrible totalitarian systems. There were absolutely abhorrent regimes like stalinism (even to some extent leninism), or what Pol-Pot did in Cambodja. Stalinism killed tens of millions of people!

Indeed a very embarrassing subject for Israel. Let us not forget that after the first World War, the Left Zionists (the majority) outdistanced themselves from Herzl's programme (the creation of the Jewish State) and were blinded by Communism. They disowned the resolutions of the League of Nations that unanimously recommended in 1922 the "Reconstitution of their (The Jewish People) National Home, in the area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, under a A Class Mandate, thus indeed a state. Rejecting the idea and creation of a Jewish State (to please communist ideology) was going to cost the Jewish People the worst tragedy of its history, the Shoah, that could have been prevented partially, or who knows, even totally, if a Jewish State would have existed before World War II.

An estimated 20 million murderd, robbed of land and assets and still today living as beggars on their own soil across both American continents? And lets not forget the great Australian genocide.

..but I am sure that the least worry of those who sufferd under a genocide is if it were greater or smaller than an other genocide. So there is obviously more to this genocide championship notion than the pure love of mankind.

The name "Lithuania" brings to mind several very different thoughts to the educated Jew. 1 - The Lithuania of Rabbinic Scholarship, including the Yeshivas of Greater Lithuania (which included Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, and parts of Russia and the Ukraine. 2 - Lithuania of the Holocaust - the country with the highest percentage of Jews killed in the entire world, with full cooperation of Lithuanians. 3 - A country that prohibits the kosher slaughter of animals. Consider 3 (the present) to be part of the legacy of 2.

is not interested about victims of genocide, but about utilising of their suffering for his political target.

The uniqueness of the Shoa genocide never ceases to amaze any decently intelligent human being. We had the most "civilized" and technologically advanced society of the time (Germany) doing its utmost to exterminate a defenseless population from pregnant women and infants to the last breathing soul not to mention their own handicapped and gays. The others may have killed much more but even the "savages" of Pol Pot and Stalin didn't go as far as killing every living defenseless soul just for being born in "the wrong people". Sometimes the savages look more civilized :(

It is simply not true, as some here maintain, that Stalin has stopped short of genocide, or that ethnicity played no role in the crimes against humanity committed during his rule. The case of the Ukrainian famine and the Volga Germans, among other ethnic groups, have been widely recognized as a genocide, and the expulsion of more than 12 million Germans from Eastern Europe at the end of WW II constitutes the largest ethnic cleansing operation in modern history. The Holocaust was no doubt the greatest catastrophe in Jewish history, but not world history, including the bloodiest and most ferocious 20th century.

ethnicity. Russian (as in Federation) went through the same ordeal. Regarding Pri-Volga Germans, do not know and therefore do not dispute what you are saying.

is very thinly veiled in this article. While I understand the Jewish desire to maintain the monopoly for suffering as it still remains a very useful political tool of Israeli external policy, other nations do not have to share this notion. You do not recognize the Armenia genocide as such because you believe it would weaken your own trump card. Very recently, you were pushing Russia to designate an official day to commemorate your victims. I think the Russians should commemorate the 6 million Jewish victims of WWII on the same day when the Israelis commemorate 20 million Russian victims of the same military conflict. Remind me again, when do you commemorate non-Jewish victims of WWII? The victims of communist crimes need to be given due recognition because, if anything, their number was huge. You should not worry... although some perpetrators of these crimes were Jewish, nobody will hold it against the present-day Israelis or make any sweeping comments about your society and its human rights record.

just another attempt to de-legitize the jewish people , the jewish state and judaism itself. Another gentile inspired plot to undermine jewish status in the world, grt the heat off there backs for there crimes and get what ever they want, cart-blanch with out getting caught, noticed or blamed. Just more anti-semitism, and from the eastern bloc this time. It looks like all the jew haters are getting back on the band wagon, before you know it , they will be saying holocaust, what holocaust , Oh - that thing with the jews, we have our own agenda and problems. We must understand with these people, they will always bury things under the rug in the name of jew hatred.

Excellent article. There is no minimal comparison between the extermination of Jewish comunity in Lituania and the behaviour of the Soviet Union rulers in any given period of time. Every decent person knowing history should protest against this "Prague Declaration"

anybody with an ounce of understanding can see the difference between the two ideologies –also Communism and Nazism were both oppressive totalitarian systems , the Nazism was the humanity hating ideology , whose nature was obvious from the very start, where the evil in the Communist ideology –was not easily seen , especially at its birth. To the victims of these regimes –these subtle differences do not make any difference and if to tally up the numbers of victims –Commies will come ahead with the count. Yet , to equalize Nazism and Communism is to distort history, since one system (Commies) were totalitarian in the political way (and peoples of all nationalities were its executioners and its victims) and Nazism was the evil of the most basic denomination, according to it –some races had to die others be slaves –it was a clear cut evil , no buts or yeses . The problem with Lithuanians is that they lie about their history in WWII. If they would confronted it as Germans do , there wouldn’t be any issue.

I don't agree with mr. Zuroff. First because he is trying to make more fame by differentiating innocent deaths and sufferers. My grandfather was a school teacher. A respected man in a village. I would ask him, why is my grandfather killing by Stalin less criminal than killing a Jewish school teacher by Hitler? My grandpa wasn't the only to die or suffer in my family. Of my 4granduncles only 1 survived Gulag. etc. Estonia lost 20% of its prewar population along with its independence. Why is this loss less significant? Also I don't agree with statment that estonains were actively participating in killing of Jews. First of all, Estonia was occupied by other powers. Killing Jews wasn't Estonian official policy. It is shameful to attach crime of few to the whole nation. Estonia was one of very few countries before war, if not the only one, where Jews enjoyed cultural autonomy . This law grants minority peoples, such as Jews, a legal guarantee to preserve their national identities. All that ended with soviet occupation. Of Estonian 4000 Jew's most (75%)managed to escape before Germans arrived. There is a wikipedia article about Estonian Jews. I hope mr. Zuroff will read that before he makes his next arrogant statement. Zuroff is free to hunt down criminals, But with his arrogant statements he generates hatred instead of compassion. I am not lying if I say that right after gaining independence there was almost no antisemitism in Estonia. Israel was even an example for many Estonians how a small nation has survived all odds and created its own independent state. Since then anti semitism has risen significantly. There are some global factors not related to Estonia. Zuroff actions here have fueled antisemitism here great deal. Sad.

It is weird to discuss about who has suffered more. And arguing about who was worse, communists or nazis, is like comparing cannibals' eating habits. Zuroff wants the Holocaust to have a special place in history. This is subjecting history to one's ethnic group's interests: history is full of racist crimes, and the Holocaust is not the first. Whether it was the worst is a meaningless question. There is a naive but widespread belief that Communism was basically a humane ideology. It was not. Extermination of some classes of people was an inherent part of it: so communist crimes were not mistakes by imperfect people but a systematic part of the regime. Some people say that communist crimes had nothing to do with ethnicity. These people are deliberate liars: the communist regime deported *several* ethnic groups (e.g., Crimean Tartars, Chechens); Jews were widely discriminated (e.g. there were even quotas of how many Jews were allowed to be admitted in universities); etc. The Holodomor in Ukraine is another example. This famine was purposefully organized by the Soviet govt, as the country was *exporting* cereals at the same time (!!!), and goods were taken away from Ukrainian peasants who had produced them, at the cost of their survival. This was a genocide - even if the percentage of people killed was not the same as in Holocaust, the method was very cruel and inhuman, to say the least. I don't understand why Zuroff would not like a true and impartial account of communist crimes -- this woud in no way diminish what the Nazis did (and, if you have any doubts about my opinion, Nazis were the worst kind of bastards, but then again, this does not makes the Soviets more humane). It is well known that there were a number of Lithuanians Latvians and Estonians [as well as Russians and Ukrainians, etc.] participating in Nazi crimes, under the Nazi occupation, and these people deserve to be taken to the court. However antisemitism has never been official policy in the Baltic states -- the states simply did not exist during the Nazi occupation. Soviet Union, however, had some official friendship with Nazi Germany during 1939-1942.) In conclusion, I do not understand Zuroff's hate campaign against the Baltic states. His motivation is clearly not bringing about the truth: for example, saying that Lithuanians collaborated with the Nazis in the mass murder "to the widest extent possible" is simply not true. Literally, he is saying that every Lithuanian killed as many Jews as he could, and this is plain nonsense. In lack of actual data (how many Lithuanians actually collaborated? how many of them still in freedom? how many of them were not prosecuted by the Soviets?), all this is just promotion of hatred against Lithuanians.

Zuroff's argument that investigation of communist crimes somehow diminishes the Holocaust is an appalling strawman . This is not some kind of odious zero sum game where investigating one crime diminished the heinousness of another. Oddly enough there is no criticism by Efraim Zuroff of Timothy Synder for his book "Bloodlands", Norman Naimark for his book "Stalin's Genocides" or Daniel Goldhagen for his book "Worse than War", yet these eminent writers are comparing Stalinist crimes with Nazi crimes. The Holocaust was a heinous crime, but it seems this so called "double genocide" idea is a strawman argument created by those who wish to white wash Stalinist crimes. Apparently Zuroff has allowed himself (and the Holocaust) to be co-opted into effectively being apologists for Stalin.

Thank you Comrade Zuroff! Now I will know that a Estonian child (or any child in Baltic`s or Eastern Europe - before, during or after World War II) who was killed or deported by Communist's is not the same kind victim or victim at all as Jewish child killed by nacional socialist.

To openly state that the Commun ist system & its orchestration of the murders of 30 milllion humans prior to WW-2's end is insignificant in comparison to the death of 6 million Jews in the holocaust speaks volumes.What is this opinion based on other than Zuroff's belief he and his countryman are somehow superior and significant than non Jewish humans.The Soviets had pogroms targeting racial minorites & religious groups too. They exterminated millions of Cossocks,Moldavians,Volga Germans,Tartars & Chechens.Murdered Catholics,Russian Orthodox,Muslim,Buddhists & Mennonites. Starved 22 million peasants then 4-6 million Ukranians.Zuroff makes clear his belief thatthe horrific pain & suffering of these 30 million dead & that of those living who surved to mourn them & eak out a hand to mouth existance under communism is simply incomparable to the Jewish sufferings from the holocaust.Therefore anyone who suggests to differ with this is certainly an anti-semite.Only the murders committed by non Jews to holocaust victims deserves top billing as a "unique historical tragedy in the annuals (sic) of mankind ! " I was taught that "all men were created equal" & all men suffer equally the horror of losing loved ones.Therefore a comminist system that systematically starves,tortures & murders 30 million of its subjects regardless of whether they are Jewish or not,is no less evil than a Gov't that murders 6 million Jews.To even argue such a ghoulish point is antisocial bordering on sociopathic .I cannot fathom how a fellow human can claim his right to grief & pursuit of those who killed his countryman surpasses all other victims of murder simply because of his race. Wow,sound familiar?Ideals of the Ubermensch,We Are More Than You.We have the monopoly on grief & suffering & those who dare to disagree are Antisemetic.Honestly Mr. Zuroff it is people who espouse such racist rants as yours, that are turning Americans by the thousands wholeheartedly against wanting to ever send another dime to Israel .