Photo: John Englart

The memory of the Holocaust is one of the cornerstones of modern Jewish identity. This topic has always a part of the self-awareness of Soviet Jewry – despite the attempts of the USSR authorities to emasculate the predominantly Jewish character of this tragedy. At the same time, there are also attempts by outsiders, often hostile to Jews and Israel, to appropriate this popular topic in order to use the Holocaust and other Jewish narratives for their own political interests. It is even more problematic when such ideas are picked up by organizations that allegedly act on behalf of the Jewish people. Activities of the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention (LIPG), founded in 2021 in Pennsylvania, was a blatant example of such a strategy. The institute, which bears the name of Raphael Lemkin, a Jewish lawyer, Zionist, and author of the term “genocide”, uses his name and intellectual heritage for a brutal anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic propaganda. The distortion and appropriation of Jewish experience and memory requires a decisive response from the international Jewish community and the protection of historical heritage from anti-Semitic manipulation.

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