Dr. Efraim Zuroff
Dr. Efraim ZuroffYossi Zamir/Flash 90

Dr. Efraim Zuroff, the head Nazi hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told Arutz Sheva on Tuesday in time for International Holocaust Memorial Day that the battle over the Holocaust lives on - and is being waged on the field of public memory.

According to Zuroff, aside from the widespread scourge of Holocaust denial, a new phenomenon has reared its head recently in eastern Europe, where there are attempts to minimize the genocidal horrors committed against the Jewish people and revise history.

"This phenomenon should worry the state of Israel and the Foreign Ministry," emphasized Zuroff. "In post-Communist eastern Europe, they're trying to play down the crimes of the Nazi cooperators and claim that the crimes of the Communists were just as bad, and that both of them committed genocide."

Zuroff elaborated "they're trying to reduce the uniqueness of the Holocaust, and even to claim that among the Communist criminals were Jews too."

The chief Nazi hunter reminds that the Prague Declaration of 2008 included an open attempt to connect the crimes of the Communists and the Nazis, and equate them.

"In Prague an established document in their view was written, in which they tried to spread the theory of two cases of genocide," he explained.

Detailing the extents of the historical revisionism, Zuroff said "they're trying to establish a European institution for memory and conscience, which will replace (the) Yad Vashem (Holocaust Museum), in which history will be presented in a spirit of equality with the Holocaust of European Jews."

Israel has avoided getting involved in this issue until now so as not to inject tensions in its relations with European nations that support it in the conflict with neighboring Arab nations, according to the Nazi hunter, but he says the time has come to change that policy.

"If not us, then who will guard the honor of the victims of the Holocaust?" posed Zuroff.