"I ask you as European Commission President, monitoring among other things the control of the observance by EU countries, including its new members, of the fundamental norms of civilised behaviour, to give a principled assessment of the actions of the Estonian authorities who are trying to extol Nazi killers", Lazar's message reads. Its copy has been obtained by RIA Novosti.
The rabbi recalled that "a congress of SS men and collaborationists has recently been held in Estonia, one of the newly admitted EU members. It was officially announced there that a monument to accomplices of Nazism will be unveiled in the Estonian capital in two months".
"Preparations are being done. The particularly cynical is the fact that the Estonian authorities are putting the memorial to dead SS men and guards at concentration camps not far from the memorial complex opened in honour of soldiers who liberated the country from German occupiers", Lazar noted.
The Estonian authorities "are campaigning to extol those who waged war against the anti-Hitler coalition. It is especially insulting for us, European Jews. We have not forgotten that the people, now officially named 'liberators' and 'fighters against totalitarianism', had exterminated to the last man the Jewish community in Estonia", Russia's chief rabbi stressed. "There were death camps in Estonia where Nazis and their local accomplices destroyed dozens of thousands of Jews from Germany, Czechoslovakia and other European countries", he added.
Lazar also noted that Jews in Estonia had done everything possible to have the construction of the Nazi memorial ended. The Estonian chief rabbi has met top officials of the Tallinn city halland the Estonian president to discuss the matter. They have assured him that the monument would not be built. Their promises have not come true.
Berl Lazar hopes that "united Europe that is laying its foundation on the principles of antifascism and liberal values will be able to give a due rebuff to any actions to revise the results of WWII and its lessons no matter what country undertakes it".
