Lithuanian Daily Newspaper. Photo: Defendinghistory.com.

On January 15th, the Lietuvos rytas website (Lrytas.lt) published an article by veteran Holocaust denier Petras Stankeras, who was forced out of his Interior Ministry post in November 2010 after writing in a popular weekly that the murder of six million Jews is a ‘legend’.  It was a republication of an article by Stankeras that had earlier appeared in the elitist magazine Kultūros barai.

A senior analyst for Holocaust watchdog website  DefendingHistory.com Geoff Vasil reported on December 27th, 2011, a similar sequence where a fascism-friendly article by Stankeras was reprinted in the mainstream daily on December 26th, 2011, after being premiered earlier in Kultūros barai.

After the turn of the year, on January 12th, an antisemitic article written by another author, also published in Lietuvos rytas, drew the rapid attention of a Facebook thread and was pulled. A reader who took screen-shots of all but the first page supplied them to DefendingHistory.com.

This follows last month’s three-page assault on the Jewish community of Lithuania in an antisemitic article featured on the front page of Lietuvos rytas’ December 3rd 2011 issue, it’s enlarged weekend edition.

Lietuvos rytas is widely considered to be one of Lithuania’s most respected daily newspapers.