As Hitler’s Mein Kampf again becomes a bestseller in Europe, Russian-American journalist Mikhail Klikushin writing in the New York Observer, owned by Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner who is scheduled to leave publishing in order to devote all his time as president Trump’s senior advisor, wonders why Lithuanian politicians haven’t come forward to condemn former MP Asta Baukutė’s strange behavior on Lithuanian state television.
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Lithuanian Official Gives Nazi Salute on Live TV Show
by Mikhail Klikushin
Ex-MP grins, yells “Jew! Jew! Jew!” while saluting the führer as tensions mount to Russia’s west
This year, Mein Kampf, Hitler’s autobiography, in which he laid the groundwork for a policy of extermination against the Jews, became a bestseller in Europe.
Having taken a look at what has been going on within recent additions to the European community—including former Soviet republics that broke loose from Russian dominance—one begins to see why the brutal dictator is experiencing a renewed wave of popularity.
Last Saturday, for example, it became known that the Lithuanian Radio and Television broadcasting corporation (LRT), funded by the Lithuanian government, temporarily took off the air the popular TV show Guess the Melody after a scandalous video surfaced causing public outrage, Delfi reported.
According to LRT assistant director Rimvydas Paleckis, on Friday night during a live broadcast of the show one of the participants—popular Lithuanian movie and theater actress Asta Baukutė—having recognized the melody, became so excited that she victoriously shouted “Yeah! Yeah!” and jumped up from her seat.
She was about to win the contest.
Standing to her full height in her leather coat and dancing out of excitement, she put both the index and middle finger of her left hand to her upper lip—to indicate Hitler’s mustache—and raised her right hand in a Nazi salute high into the air.
She could not contain herself.
“Žydas! Žydas! Žydas!” (Jew! Jew! Jew!) she yelled in Lithuanian—letting it be known to the cheering studio audience and the show host that the melody in question belonged to Lithuanian composer Simonas Donskovas.
Donskovas, as readers already might have figured out, is a Jew.
“I am in shock,” LRT assistant director Rimvydas Paleckis said the next day.
“Such behavior does not correspond to the values promoted by LRT. As a person in charge of the channel’s programs and as assistant director, I ask our viewers for forgiveness. There will be no shooting of the show on Saturday. The show is done,” Paleckis said.
There was no immediate condemnation from the Lithuanian artistic or political class to which this 49-year-old actress and mother of three belongs. From 2008 to 2012 Asta Baukutė was a member of the Lithuanian parliament representing the Party of National Revival.
Baukutė is also a recipient of the Golden Cross of the Stage award from the Lithuanian Ministry of Culture.
In neighboring Latvia she might have found a sympathetic ear in one of the leading Latvian politicians, member of Latvian Parliament Karlis Serzants. Last March during his interview on Latvian Radio 4’s Day after Day program, the Latvian MP blamed representatives of “the clever ethnicity” and “lawyers” for subversive anti-Latvian activity and propaganda taking place in Latvia, Regnum reported.
In parliament Serzants represents a coalition of the Green Party and the Party of Peasants to which the current Latvian president belongs.
At the time of the interview, Serzants was working on a law to limit freedom of expression in Latvia in the face of looming Russian aggression. When asked what nationality did he mean, Latvian MP gave a straightforward answer: “I meant the Jewish ethnicity. They read laws, they always walked on the edge, not stepping over it. For them, it will become more difficult to continue now [with alleged anti-Latvian subversive activities once a new law is passed].”
Among the people who reacted angrily to Asta Baukutė’s Nazi salute on Lithuanian TV were those who immediately recalled the ugly advertisement by a local gas equipment company from another Baltic state, Estonia, in 2012. The gas company promoted its equipment with a picture of the gates of Auschwitz and the caption “Gas heating—universal, comfortable and effective.”
In another campaign, a picture of emaciated and dying prisoners of the Buchenwald concentration camp was used by the Estonian newspaper Eesti Ekspress to advertise diet pills. “Eins, zwei, drei … and magic pills from Dr. Mengele will do the work for you! In Buchenwald, there were no fat people,” the caption read.
The paper was apparently untroubled by the detail that Josef Mengele, the notorious Nazi murderer-physician who experimented on Jewish victims, worked at Auschwitz, not Buchenwald.
These three nations are in the European Union now and are NATO members.
Meanwhile, Ukraine, mired in revolution, hasn’t quite gained admission to the European club. But it can still do the anti-Jewish thing pretty convincingly. On January 1 on the main streets of the Ukrainian capital of Kiev during a torchlight procession commemorating the birth of Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera, hundreds of his followers shouted “Juden giet! Juden giet” (Jews-out)!”
The same Saturday morning the Guess the Melody show was canceled on Lithuanian national TV, actress and former member of parliament Baukutė provided her own assessment of the situation. “If you are looking for conflict where there is none, look someplace else,” she was quoted by Delfi. “This is an entertainment program, not a political one.”
The actress said she was surprised the show was canceled.
Full story here.