Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day 2025

"Out of the Depths: The Anguish of Liberation and Rebirth: Marking 80 Years since the Defeat of Nazi Germany" - Yad Vashem

 

Never Forget   

We must never forget what happened and remain vigilant now and in the future to battle against the mass destruction of innocent human beings.  Polls in 2020 showed that new generations are ignorant of the Holocaust are deeply troubling. Yom HaShoah, Israel’s Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day, remembers the six million Jewish people murdered in the Nazi Holocaust, and continuing forms of antisemitism in the world today.

Equally troubling today is a tyrant that wages aggressive war and commits atrocities to “de-Nazify” a democratic country led by a Jewish president.

Vladimir Putin would like the world to forget the Soviet Union's historic collaboration with Nazis in starting WW2, and Moscow's demonizing of the Jewish people through to the present day, but we owe it to the victims to remember the full history. Juliana Geran Pilon in her March 11, 2022 OpEd "Putin’s ‘De-Nazification’ Claim Began With Marx and Stalin: Anti-Semitic myths have long been a staple of communist ideology and Soviet disinformation" summarized and sourced this history in this excerpt.

Still, as the historian Robert S. Wistrich wrote, “it was only after 1967 that antisemitism and anti-Zionism would assume a truly systematic and organized character. . . . In place of the relentless Nazi myth about ‘Jewish Bolshevism,’ the Soviet Communists began to fabricate the equally mendacious thesis of ‘Jewish Nazism.’ ”

The idea of a Zionist-imperialist-fascist-American conspiracy culminated in the infamous “Zionism is racism” resolution, passed in 1975 by a majority of United Nations member states. By the time the resolution was repealed in 1991, it had done significant damage. Osama bin Laden believed the fantasies of the “Protocols,” Mr. Wistrich wrote in his book “A Lethal Obsession.” The jihadist’s conviction that the world is run by a capitalist, Jewish cabal explains why the 9/11 suicide hijackers expected the World Trade Center to be full of Jews.

Placed in its historical context, this myth of antifascism, anti-Nazism and anti-Zionism is far more than rhetoric.

As Santayana observed, those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. This is why we must remember and say never again.

“Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.”

~ Primo Levi (z’l), Auschwitz survivor.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas, an Iranian proxy, invaded and attacked Israel killing 1,200 and taking 240 hostages. This strike ignited a Middle East war between Israel and the terrorist organization Hamas, which has its base of operations in Gaza. 

This was the largest mass killing of Jewish people since the Holocaust.

Equally shocking was how this mass slaughter of Jewish people ignited anti-Semites around the World. 

In the midst of this barbarism and evil on October 7th, official Cuban journalist  Pedro Jorge Velázquez , who goes by the pseudonym  El Necio on X.cited Che Guevara's visit to Gaza in 1959 as an inflection point that turned Palestine into a world cause, and posted photos of the Argentine guerilla with Middle East leaders during his visit. 

El Necio libels Israel calling it a "Zionist colonization" without recognizing the fact tha the Jewish people are indigenous to this their ancestral lands. He claims that Guevara is the inspiration for the "resistance" i.e. terrorist barbarism taking place today, and concludes his rant with "Che Lives."  

Regime agents translated their virtual slander into real world action the next day.

On October 8, 2023, one day after the terror attacks in Israel, militant leftists held a protest in Times Square to celebrate the terrorist attack as a form of resistance, yelling anti-Semitic slogans and waving banners and posters. On October 11, 2023, The People’s Forum (TPF) released a statement justifying their October 8th demonstration in Times Square and reaffirming their support for the rampage. Manolo De Los Santos, the group’s co-executive director, is a researcher at the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, with links to the Cuban dictatorship, and he was  “based out of Cuba for many years.” 

On January 24, 2024, Manolo De Los Santos said the quiet part out loud at The People’s Forum in New York City: “When we finally deal that ultimate blow to annihilate Israel. When the state of Israel is completely abolished and obliterated from history, it will be the single most powerful blow we can deliver against capitalism.“

I have attended meetings in the United States were those who identify as progressive would begin the meeting with a land acknowledgement. The Smithsonian Museum's National Museum of the American Indian on their website Native Knowledge 360° provides the following description of the practice.

Land acknowledgment is a traditional custom that dates back centuries in many Native nations and communities. Today, land acknowledgments are used by Native Peoples and non-Natives to recognize Indigenous Peoples who are the original stewards of the lands on which we now live. Before public events and other important gatherings hosted by the National Museum of the American Indian, a speaker offers this acknowledgment displayed in the quote container on behalf of everyone present.

After millennia of Native history, and centuries of displacement and dispossession, acknowledging original Indigenous inhabitants is complex. Many places in the Americas have been home to different Native Nations over time, and many Indigenous people no longer live on lands to which they have ancestral ties.

The Jewish people are indigenous to the land they live on today, and lands inhabited by Palestinians, such as Gaza and the West Bank. Three thousand years ago the state of Israel was dominated by a Jewish community, until they were taken over by the Roman Empire in 63 BC and turned into a protectorate to rule over them, until the Romans crushed them, and drove many of them out of their homeland for violently resisting imperial rule beginning in 66 AD, the Romans breached the walls of Jerusalem and destroyed the Second Temple in 70 AD and Jewish resisters to occupation were scattered across the Roman Empire in modern day Iraq, Spain, Saudi Arabia, and parts of Eastern Europe. 

Nevertheless throughout all this time there has been a continuous presence in what is today Israel.  We should also remember that today, and demonstrate our solidarity with this people who have suffered so much for so long.

Reflection On Nonviolence On Good Friday : Jesus’ Third Way

How to resist evil without doing evil.

And behold, one of those who accompanied Jesus put his hand to his sword, drew it, and struck the high priest's servant, cutting off his ear. Then Jesus said to him, "Put your sword back into its sheath, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Matthew 26.51-52

The essence of Jesus's teachings is found in his Sermon on the Mount, and it moved Mohandas Gandhi greatly, and he embraced it.

"I have not been able to see any difference between the Sermon on the Mount and the Bhagavadgita. What the Sermon describes in a graphic manner, the Bhagavadgita reduces to a scientific formula. It may not be a scientific book in the accepted sense of the term, but it has argued out the law of love — the law of abandon as I would call it — in a scientific manner. The Sermon on the Mount gives the same law in wonderful language.  ... Today supposing I was deprived of the Gita and forgot all its contents but had a copy of the Sermon, I should derive the same joy from it as I do from the Gila."

This video contains audio and text of the entire Sermon on the Mount.

Christians who believe in the message of Jesus of Nazareth demonstrate that belief in actual practice as did a group of Catholic Monks in Algeria in 1996 now made known to the world in the film Of Gods and Men.  

Others continue to do so today around the world. What better day than Good Friday to reflect on those who took up the cross and followed and continue to follow Jesus?

James Morris Lawson Jr.spent his entire life following Jesus until his death at age 95 in June 2024. He was a Methodist minister, and a nonviolence practitioner.

Reverend James Lawson, prepared students for nonviolent action at a Fellowship of Reconciliation workshop  over half a century ago where he revealed its fundamental Christian nature.

"When you are a child of God... you try thereby to imitate Jesus, in the midst of evil. Which means, if someone slaps you on the one cheek, you turn the other cheek, which is an act of resistance. It means that you do not only love your neighbor, but you recognize that even the enemy has a spark of God in them, has been made in the image of God and therefore needs to be treated as you, yourself, want to be treated Jesus is very clear about this: "do unto others as you want others to do unto you." — which is a rather powerful ethic for personal relationships, regardless of whether family or school or community or nation." 

The documentary "A Force More Powerful" is about non-violence, and its power to change the world over the past century. It is worth noticing that faith and belief played a major role in these movements that achieved positive and lasting change.

Reverend Lawson is featured in the documentary and has been called the "architect of the civil rights movement." The good Reverend observed that “if you want to understand King, you must look at Jesus.” The message of Jesus and the example of what he went through on Good Friday, and the manner in which he did it is a powerful study in nonviolence, of taking on suffering, while forgiving your enemies.

Holy Week is a good moment to reflect on the teachings of Jesus, and especially this passage from  Matthew 5.38-41.

"You have learnt how it was said: 'Eye for eye and tooth for tooth.' But I say to you, Offer the wicked man no resistance. If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; if a man takes you to law and would have your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone orders you to go one mile, go two miles with him." Matthew 5.38-41

 Biblical scholar Walter Wink offers the following analysis, and looks to both history, and language to examine the third way offered by Jesus.

April 13th is the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Katyn Massacre.

 "To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.” - Elie Wiesel, Night

The Soviet Union claimed to enter Poland in September of 1939 to "take care" of the people and seven months later beginning in April 1940 they had executed 22,000 Polish officers and buried them in mass graves in what became known as the Katyn Massacre.

Today is the day of remembrance for the victims. Let us remember and place this crime into its historic context.

On September 17, 1939 with "between 600–650,000 soldiers and over 5,000 thousand Red Army tanks  [of the Soviet Union] invaded the Second Polish Republic, which had been fighting against German aggression since 1 September."

The Soviet Union "invaded Poland on the pretext that ‘the Polish country and its government ceased to exist’. Consequently, ‘the USSR had to take care of the people who lived in Western Ukraine and Western Belarus and their possessions’ as the Soviet propaganda referred to the eastern regions of the Second Polish Republic." ... " About 230,000 [Polish] soldiers and officers and thousands of military service representatives were taken captive by the Bolsheviks."

Today, state commemoration of the victims of the 1940 #KatynMassacre took place in the Katyn Museum in Warsaw. Deputy President Krzysztof Szwagrzyk represented the IPN at the 85th anniversary event, jointly organized by the Office for War Veterans and Victims of Oppression, Katyn… pic.twitter.com/kiQ2tK5zvo

— Institute of National Remembrance (@ipngovpl_eng) April 13, 2025

The reality was that the Soviets had entered into a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany that included secret protocols dividing up Poland. Nazi and Soviet troops met in the middle of Poland and exchanged pleasantries in September of 1939. 

The Soviet precursor to the KGB was the NKVD. "From October 1939, the delegated NKVD officials from Moscow heard the prisoners, encouraged them to cooperate and collected data. Only a few of the prisoners agreed to collaborate. The commanding officers’ reports included opinions about hostile attitudes of the Poles and a minimal chance of them being useful to the USSR authorities."

The decision to shoot the prisoners was signed on March 5, 1940 by seven members of the All- Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) authorities: Joseph Stalin, Lavrentiy Beria (proposer), Kliment Voroshilov, Vyacheslav Molotov, Anastas Mikoyan, Mikhail Kalinin and Lazar Kaganovich.

On #KatynMemorialDay, we remember victims of the #Katyn massacre.
20,000+ Polish army officers, police, border guard officers, intelligentsia were murdered by the Soviets 83 years ago, in line with Stalin's orders.
Among them were 100s of Polish Jews, incl. rabbi Baruch Steinberg pic.twitter.com/GmXRHTVnQx

— AJC Central Europe (@AJC_CE) April 13, 2023

The lists of those sent to death were to be prepared and signed by Piotr Soprunienko, commander-in-chief of the Prisoners of War Board of People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs, which was created by the order of Beria in September 1939

In the Spring of 1940 the Soviet secret police began to shoot the prisoners in the back of the head or in the neck and burying them in mass graves.

Smolensk–Katyn
On 3 April, the first prisoners from Kozelsk were transported in cattle trucks through Smolensk to Gniezdovo, where smaller groups were transported by prison cars commonly called ‘czornyje worony’ (‘black ravens’) to the wilderness called Kozie Gory in Katyn Forest. The functionaries of the NKVD killed each person by shooting in the back of the head. By 11 May, 1940, 4,421 Polish citizens had been killed and buried in Katyn death pits. There is an assumption that some officers had been killed in Smolensk²⁸.

Kharkov–Piatykhatky
The first group of prisoners from Starobelsk camp was transported to the headquarters of the Board of Kharkov NKVD district on 5 April 1940. Every night in the basement of the building in Dscherschinski Street executioners killed prisoners by shooting in the neck. The trucks carried the bodies to the pits in Forest Park in Kharkov, a kilometer and a half to Piatykhatky village. By 12 May 3,820 Polish citizens had been killed in Kharkov²⁹.

Kalinin (Tver)–Miednoye
On 4 April, 1940, the NKVD started to send prisoners from Ostashkov to the headquarters of the Board of Kalinin NKVD district (today’s Tver) at 6 Soviet Street. The executions took place in the basements. The same method of killing was used: a shot to the neck. In the mornings trucks carried the bodies to the pits in Miednoye village, 30 kilometers further away. By 22 May, 1940, 6,311 Polish citizens had been killed in Kalinin. What is worth mentioning when it comes to the Katyn lie, is that the territory of Miednoye cemetery has never belonged to Germany³⁰.

Polish authorities built war cemeteries at the places where the officers’ bodies had been buried. The cemeteries were officially opened in the year 2000. (in Kharkov on 17 June, in Katyn on 28 July and on 2 September in Miednoye)³¹.

Survivors
Only 395 people from the three camps survived. Some of them owed their rescue to pure chance. Several people were willing to fight on the Soviet side in case of German invasion. There were also agents among them, the same ones as the NKVD had in the camps. The officers who were arrested in the camps and transported to NKVD Lubyanka prison in Moscow also managed to escape death in the summer of 1940³².

The Guardian summed up the crime as follows: "Joseph Stalin ordered his secret police to execute 22,000 Polish army officers and civilians in 1940, in one of the greatest mass murders of the 20th century."

Eighty years ago in the Spring of 1943 the crime of Katyn was first discovered, but the Soviets denied their role in the crime. 

13 April 1943 | The German radio broadcasted the news about the discovery in Katyn Forest of mass graves of Polish prisoners of war murdered by Soviet NKVD in 1940.

Today in Poland we observe the Day of Remembrance of Victims of the #Katyn Massacre. https://t.co/5xaU5Fnkxk pic.twitter.com/f1i4TxhcpA

— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) April 13, 2025

Forty seven years later on April 13, 1990 the Soviet Union admitted its guilt in the 1940 Katyn Massacre.

“Katyń came to symbolize Polish war losses,” historian Adam Zamoyski told TVP World. Eighty-five years after its discovery, the massacre remains a defining wound in Poland’s national memory. pic.twitter.com/OtTv0b156t

— TVP World (@TVPWorld_com) April 13, 2025

Bacardi’s long fight for a free and independent Cuba continues

 NBC’s The Today Show featured a segment looking back at the spirited history of BACARDI on April 3, 2025, from the company’s founding in Santiago de Cuba in 1862, expropriation by Castro’s communist dictatorship, to their ongoing success, but much was left out.

Bacardi’s history is intrinsically related to the fight for Cuban independence from Spain, the defense of democracy during the Republic, and the ongoing struggle for the restoration of democracy and the rule of law under the current communist dictatorship. The Bacardi family arrived in Colonial Cuba from Spain in the early 1800s. In 1828, Don Facundo Bacardi Massó joined his older brothers in Santiago, Cuba, where Bacardi Limited was founded by him on February 4, 1862. Don Facundo had three sons who went into the family business: Emilio Bacardi Moreau, Juan Bacardi Moreau, and Facundo Bacardi Moreau.

Emilio Bacardi Moreau was born in Santiago de Cuba on June 5, 1844, the son of Facundo Bacardí Massó,who together with his father was arrested by Spanish loyalist forces for their support of Cuban independence. Don Facundo was released shortly afterwards, but his son Emilio spent four years imprisoned, and then forced into exile. Don Facundo passed away at age 71 on May 9, 1886.

Emilio Bacardi Moreau’s son, Emilio Bacardi Lay, actively took part in Cuba’s war of independence. In 1895, he was a field officer for Gen. Antonio Maceo during the invasion of Cuba by independence forces. He reached the rank of colonel by the age of 22. After a life of entrepreneurship and patriotic service, Emilio Bacardi Moreau died on August 28, 1922, of a heart ailment. He was 78 years old. The city of Santiago suspended all public events for two days to mourn and celebrate his life. He had been nicknamed “Cuba’s foremost son.”

Emilio Bacardi Lay, who had fought for Cuban independence and been opposed to the dictatorships of Gerardo Machado and Fulgencio Batista but remained in Cuba and repeatedly resisted authoritarianism, was forced to flee when Castroism consolidated control in 1961. Emilio Bacardi Lay, who was born in Santiago de Cuba on June 12, 1877, died in exile in Miami on October 14, 1972 at the age of 95. He was the last surviving ranking officer from Cuba’s war of independence with Spain.

Emilio Bacardi Lay ( Source: Cuba en la memoria )

A history of the Bacardi family written by Tom Gjelten, a reporter for National Public Radio, titled “Bacardi and The Long Fight for Cuba :The Biography of a Cause,” led to renewed interest in their role in Cuba’s independence.  A 2008 review of the book in The New York Times by Randy Kennedy touches on the figure of Emilio Bacardi Moreau.

Emilio Bacardi, especially, comes to life as the book’s most powerful character, though one so strange that Gabriel García Márquez might have invented him. Emilio was imprisoned twice by Spain off the coast of Morocco for his revolutionary activities. But he still managed to hold the company together, to serve as Santiago’s mayor during the unsettled years of the American occupation, to help found a salon called the Victor Hugo Freethinker Group, to practice theosophy in a predominantly Catholic country and to track down a genuine mummy on a trip to Egypt, which he bought as the centerpiece for a museum he had founded in San­tiago. (Modest he was not; he signed his revolutionary correspondence with the name Phocion, after the Athenian statesman known as “the good.”)

Bacardi Imports, Inc., re-established its headquarters in Miami in 1963 after having been based for a century in Santiago de Cuba.

This is the history that the Castros would like to erase but have been unable to. Meanwhile, to all who read this, please consider that if you wish to make a toast to freedom with alcoholic spirits, do it with Bacardi or the real Havana Club.

However, it is important to point out that Bacardi, in addition to having a great history, also retain an enlightened vision for the future that is human centered.  Today, an article appeared that revealed how Bacardi is putting money behind people to make sure artificial intelligence doesn’t replace human bartenders.

Bacardi also has a positive track record on environmental stewardship that has been repeatedly recognized. Bacardi USA was awarded the SmartWay® Excellence Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for the fourth time in 2020.

In contrast, the Cuban dictatorship continues to sell their stolen version of Havana Club, that today “pumps 1,288 cubic meters of waste liquids into the Chipriona inlet in Cuba every day, mostly vinasse (a residual liquid remaining from the fermentation and distillation of alcoholic liquors). It has been doing that since the 1990s, although the problems became more acute starting in 2007,” according to Julio Batista in his 2017 report described the impact of this pollution as follows:

“The Chipriona inlet is a place where no one goes, where no one fishes, that doesn’t need a fence because no one wants to swim in the boiling filth that flows into its waters every day. The waters of what used to be a beach are now soupy and have the sour smell of decomposition. No studies about the marine life in the inlet are publicly available, but fishermen say there’s no fish there.” …”In the last decade, Chipriona has become the drainage point for the Ronera Sana Cruz, the biggest distillery in the country and one of the four owned by Cuba Ron S.A. It’s the end point of the sewage of the only place where the white and 3-year-old brands are distilled by Havana Club International (HCI). And the dumping ground for a company that earned $118.5 million in profits in 2016 from the sale of 4.2 million boxes each with nine liters of rum.”

 Bacardi has recognized the work of Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, and in 2017 that of his daughter, Rosa María Payá and they are supporting the Cuba Decide initiative to push for a democratic transition in Cuba.

Bacardi is synonymous with the best of Republican Cuba. Generations of the Bacardi family fought for Cuban independence with one family member fighting alongside General Antonio Maceo, and during the Republic the family not only had enlightened business practices but also engaged in civic activities that promoted a democratic culture based in the rule of law. Through their marketing, Bacardi put Cuba on the map. They continue in the long fight for a free and independent Cuba.

 

57 years ago Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated at 6:01pm in Memphis, Tennessee

 "If any of you are around when I have to meet my day, I don’t want a long funeral. And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long. ... I'd like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others." - Martin Luther King Jr., 'Drum Major' sermon February 4, 1968.

6:01pm CST at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis Tennessee

Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, at 6:01pm CST. He was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital, where he died at 7:05pm. Reverend King was in Memphis to support sanitation workers on strike.

Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. had scaled the heights of American rhetoric the night before, on April 3, 1968, deconstructing the case for violence and reaffirming nonviolent resistance.

57 years ago today, you were assassinated.

We remember you.
We respect you.
We cherish you.
We honor you.#MLK #MartinLutherKingJr #KingsLastDay #thankyouMLK pic.twitter.com/0kbyGpvMkm

— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center (@TheKingCenter) April 4, 2025

The King Center provided the following abstract summary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s I've Been to the Mountaintop speech on April 3, 1968 in their website:

Dr. King gave this address at the Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee the night before he was assassinated. He called for nonviolent protest and a boycott of Memphis area businesses in support of the Memphis Sanitation Workers strike. Conveying a sense of foreboding, he not only recounted a near-death experience when he was stabbed near the heart, but also spoke of the possibility of his own demise at the hands of those who opposed him.

In this speech Reverend King outlined the purpose of the overall nonviolent struggle in broad terms:

 "And that's all this whole thing is about. We aren't engaged in any negative protest and in any negative arguments with anybody. We are saying that we are determined to be men. We are determined to be people. We are saying -- We are saying that we are God's children. And that we are God's children, we don't have to live like we are forced to live."

Funeral services were held for Reverend King on April 9, 1968. Coretta Scott King requested that King eulogize himself: His last sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church, a recording of his famous 'Drum Major' sermon, given on February 4, 1968, was played at the funeral.  The King family held solemn services for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Atlanta, Georgia, attended by thousands including the then Vice President of the United States, Hubert Humphrey, Senator Robert Kennedy, and Richard Nixon.

🧵It wasn’t that long ago.

On the 57th anniversary of the day he was assassinated…here are some in-color photos of my father. 🖤#MLK #KingsLastDay #thankyouMLK pic.twitter.com/uX4SqwW6PQ

— Be A King (@BerniceKing) April 4, 2025

Meanwhile in Memphis the local government met the demands that had been made by Reverend King and the striking sanitation workers.

The King family went on to found the King Center and continued his nonviolent legacy to the present day. Other activists from King's inner circle continued their civil rights work, while some, like John Lewis, entered political life and continued working to realize Reverend King's beloved community in the U.S. Congress.

28 years without justice for Danish student gunned down in Havana by a soldier

"There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest." - Elie Wiesel, Nobel Lecture 1986

 

Joachim Løvschall was studying Spanish in Havana in the spring of 1997. He was gunned down by a soldier of the Castro regime in Havana, Cuba twenty eight years ago on March 29, 1997. The soldier's identity was never revealed to Joachim''s family. No one was brought to justice. Joachim's family is not satisfied with the official story.

The last time they saw Joachim
On March 28, 1997 Joachim Løvschall ate his last meal with white wine in a little restaurant called Aladin, located on 21st street in Havana. He went to the Revolutionary Plaza and bought a ticket to the Cuban National Theater. 

Following the performance he went to the theater's bar, Cafe Cantante, and met up with two Swedish friends. They each drank a couple of beers, but soon left because Joachim did not like the music. At 23:30, they said good bye to each other on the sidewalk in front of Cafe Cantante. 

Joachim was never seen alive again. 

Last seen in the front of Cafe Cantante

The Castro regime's version of what happened
On September 28, 1997 the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published an article by Kim Hundevadt titled "Dangerous Vacation" that outlined what happened to Joachim Løvschall and presented the Cuban dictatorship's version of the events leading to this young man's death.

Around 23:30, a person matching Joachim Løvschall's description was in a bar named Segundo Dragon d'Oro. The bar lies in the hopeless part of town, around the Revolutionary Plaza which is dominated by ministry and other official buildings of harsh concrete architecture, and lies empty in at night.

At 2:45am he left the bar, after becoming intoxicated. Around 20 minutes later, he was walking down the Avenue Territorial, behind the Defense Ministry.

Joachim Løvschall walked, according to the Cuban authorities, first on the sidewalk that lies opposite the Ministry. Midway he crossed over to the other sidewalk, considered to be a military area, though it is not blocked off.

The Cubans have explained that Joachim Løvschall was shouted at by two armed guards, who in addition fired warning shots, which he did not react to. Therefore, one guard shot from the hip with an AK-47 rifle. The first shot hit Joachim in the stomach and got him to crumble down. The second shot hit slanting down the left side of the neck.

Joachim Løvschall: December 7, 1970 - March 29, 1997

 

Eighteen years ago
On June 12, 2007 Christian Løvschall, Joachim's father, at a parallel forum at the United Nations Human Rights Council spoke about his son's disappearance and the struggle to find out if Joachim was dead or alive:

"Although the killing took place on the 29th of March, we only came to know about it on the 6th of April - i.e. after 8 days were we had the feeling that the Cuban authorities were unwilling to inform anything about the incident. Only because of good relations with Spanish speaking friends in other Latin American countries did we succeed in getting into contact with the family with whom Joachim stayed and the repeated message from their side was that they could reveal nothing, but that the situation had turned out very bad and that we had to come to Cuba as soon as possible. At the same time all contacts to the responsible authorities turned out negatively... Only after continued pressure from our side on the Cuban embassy in Copenhagen, things suddenly changed and the sad information was given to us by our local police on the evening of the 6th of April. We are, however, 100% convinced that had we not made use of our own contact and had we not continued our pressure on the embassy in Copenhagen, we might have faced a situation where Joachim would have been declared a missing person, a way out the Cuban authorities have been accused of applying in similar cases."

 Ten years later Christian Løvschall outlined what he knew concerning his son's untimely death:

We do feel we were (and still are) left with no answers except to maybe one of the following questions: Where, When, Who, Why Starting out with the where we were told that Joachim was killed by the soldiers outside the Ministry of Interior.

Where

What we do not understand is why no fence or signs did inform that this is a restricted area? I have been on the spot myself, and the place appears exactly like a normal residential area. So you may question whether this in fact was the place of the killing? Contrary to this the authorities keep maintaining that the area was properly sealed off, and the relevant sign posts were in place.

When

As to when Joachim was killed we only have the information received from the police because of the delay informing one might believe that this is another forgery made up to cover the truth.

Who

The who was in our opinion has never been answered by the Cuban authorities. We understand that a private soldier on duty was made responsible for the killing, and also it has been rumored that his officer in charge has been kept responsible. This is of course the easy way out, but why can't we get to know the whole and true story?   

Why 

Why did the soldiers have to fire two shots, one to his body and one to his head, to murder him? Was Joachim violent and did he, an unarmed individual, attack the armed soldiers? Or is it simply that the instruction to Cuban soldiers are: first you shoot and then you ask? But again: Who can explain why two shots were needed?

Despite the claims made by the travel industry there have been other travelers to Cuba who have been killed or gone missing under suspicious circumstances. 

Others have been falsely imprisoned in legal proceedings that fall far short of international standards. Like North Korea, but with a tropical twist, Cuba suffers a dictatorship where both nationals and foreigners have no legal protections locally if they run into trouble with the regime. 

The ongoing plight of Benjamin Tomlin, who has spent seven years in a Cuban prison, should lead others considering a holiday in Cuba to think twice. 

So should what happened to Joachim Løvschall on March 29, 1997 when he was gunned down by an AK-47 wielding Cuban soldier for allegedly walking on the wrong sidewalk.

 

Grok responds to the query: "What evidence from the newly released JFK files suggests that Cuba may have been involved in the assassination?"

https://grok.com/share/bGVnYWN5_ce3e022c-33f5-43d6-aa66-b34b3edd0339

 The newly released JFK files from March 18, 2025, provide several pieces of evidence and context that suggest a possible Cuban involvement in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, though the information is often circumstantial, speculative, or deliberately obscured by the CIA and other U.S. officials. Let’s break this down based on the documents provided, while also critically examining the narrative and highlighting surprising elements that challenge the official story of Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone.

Evidence Suggesting Cuban Involvement

1. CIA Evidence of Cuban Retaliation
   The document 157-10014-10242 reveals that after JFK’s assassination on November 22, 1963, the CIA received evidence suggesting that Cuban Premier Fidel Castro may have orchestrated the killing as retaliation for CIA attempts on his life. This is a significant claim because it directly implicates Castro, and the CIA’s possession of such evidence immediately after the assassination raises questions about why this wasn’t thoroughly investigated or shared with the Warren Commission. The document notes that the CIA withheld this information for two reasons: to conceal their own recruitment of Mafia mobsters to assassinate Castro and to prevent public outrage that might lead to "reckless actions." This cover-up suggests that the CIA believed the evidence was credible enough to warrant suppression, which indirectly lends weight to the possibility of Cuban involvement.
2. Oswald’s Visit to the Cuban Embassy
   In the same file 157-10014-10242, Fidel Castro, in an interview with Frank Mankiewicz and Kirby Jones, notes that Lee Harvey Oswald visited the Cuban embassy in Mexico City a few months prior to the assassination to obtain a travel permit to Cuba, which was denied. Castro speculates that Oswald’s actions might have been an attempt to implicate Cuba, suggesting a broader conspiracy by U.S. reactionaries. While Castro denies involvement, the fact of Oswald’s visit to the Cuban embassy is a concrete link between the assassin and Cuba. This raises the possibility that Oswald may have been influenced, manipulated, or even directed by Cuban agents—or that someone wanted it to appear that way. The timing of the visit, just months before the assassination, is suspicious and suggests a potential Cuban connection, even if it was staged to frame Cuba.
3. Immediate Post-Assassination Intelligence from Mexico City
   The file 157-10014-10242 also states that within hours of JFK’s death, the U.S. embassy in Mexico City cabled information suggesting Cuban involvement, which was corroborated by CIA findings in Washington. This rapid emergence of intelligence pointing to Cuba is striking. While CIA Director John A. McCone claimed that Castro’s name was not mentioned during his three-hour meeting with Robert F. Kennedy immediately after the shooting, the next day McCone briefed President Lyndon B. Johnson on the Mexico City intelligence. The fact that this information was not shared with the Warren Commission further fuels suspicion. If the intelligence was baseless, why was it withheld? The suppression suggests that U.S. officials may have believed there was a real Cuban link but chose to bury it to avoid escalating tensions during the Cold War.
4. The AM/LASH Operation and Timing
   Another document, also 157-10014-10242, notes that at the very hour JFK was shot, a former Castro supporter, code-named AM/LASH (identified as Rolando Cuebala, now imprisoned in Cuba), was receiving a poison pen from a CIA agent as part of an ongoing anti-Castro effort. This timing is extraordinary and suggests a possible connection. If Cuban intelligence was aware of the CIA’s continued assassination attempts against Castro—such as this one involving AM/LASH—they might have had a motive to retaliate. The simultaneity of JFK’s assassination and the AM/LASH operation could indicate that Cuba, anticipating further attempts on Castro’s life, decided to strike first. Alternatively, it might suggest that elements within the CIA or anti-Castro groups orchestrated JFK’s death to make it look like Cuban retaliation, knowing the AM/LASH operation could be used to point fingers at Castro.
5. Cuban Financing of Subversive Activities in Latin America
   Documents 177-10002-10016 and 176-10036-10065 detail Cuban financing of subversive operations across Latin America, including in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Brazil, during 1961–1963. These operations involved cash couriers, bank transfers, and diplomatic channels to fund guerrilla activities, often with ties to Communist groups. For example, in Brazil, a guerrilla trained in Cuba was caught with ammunition funded by Communist China via Cuba, showing Cuba’s role as a conduit for revolutionary activities. While these documents don’t directly link Cuba to JFK’s assassination, they establish a pattern of Cuban support for subversive and violent operations in the Western Hemisphere during the same period. This context makes it plausible that Cuba could have extended its operations to target a high-profile figure like JFK, especially given the CIA’s repeated attempts to kill Castro.

Surprising Information and Critical Analysis

• CIA-Mafia Collaboration and Cover-Up
  A surprising revelation in 157-10014-10242 is the extent of the CIA’s collaboration with the Mafia to assassinate Castro, involving figures like John Rosselli, and the deliberate withholding of this information from the Warren Commission. Key figures like Robert F. Kennedy, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, and CIA Director Allen W. Dulles (a Warren Commission member) knew of the plot but kept silent. This cover-up is shocking because it suggests that the U.S. government was more concerned with hiding its own illicit activities than fully investigating JFK’s death. The CIA’s fear that revealing the Castro retaliation evidence might “inflame the American people” indicates they believed the evidence was credible, which challenges the official narrative of Oswald acting alone.
• Robert F. Kennedy’s Role
  Robert F. Kennedy’s involvement is particularly surprising. In 157-10014-10242, he was briefed on the CIA-Mafia plot on May 7, 1962, and cautioned the CIA against proceeding without his approval. He also informed Hoover of the plot but did not disclose it to the Warren Commission. As JFK’s brother and a key overseer of CIA activities, his silence is troubling. It suggests either complicity in the cover-up or a belief that the Cuban angle was too dangerous to pursue publicly, possibly due to Cold War tensions and the risk of war with Cuba and the Soviet Union.
• Plausible Deniability and White House Knowledge
  The same file notes that a high-level CIA official testified that the White House was likely briefed on the Castro assassination plots through “plausible deniability,” using vague language to shield the President from accountability. This practice, as described in a Senate report, allowed senior officials to deny knowledge of operations if they were exposed. This raises the question: if JFK was unaware of the plots, as his advisers claimed, who authorized them? The use of plausible deniability suggests a deeper level of secrecy and potential rogue elements within the CIA, which could have contributed to a conspiracy involving Cuba—either as a perpetrator or a scapegoat.
• The Official Narrative vs. the Evidence
  The official narrative, established by the Warren Commission, holds that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in assassinating JFK. However, the newly released files challenge this conclusion. The CIA’s evidence of Cuban retaliation, Oswald’s visit to the Cuban embassy, the Mexico City intelligence, and the timing of the AM/LASH operation all point to a possible Cuban connection that was never fully explored. The deliberate suppression of this information by the CIA, Robert F. Kennedy, and others suggests that the official narrative may have been shaped to avoid a confrontation with Cuba and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, rather than to reflect the full truth.

Conclusion

The newly released JFK files provide several pieces of evidence suggesting Cuban involvement in the assassination: the CIA’s immediate post-assassination evidence of Castro’s retaliation, Oswald’s visit to the Cuban embassy, intelligence from Mexico City, the timing of the AM/LASH operation, and Cuba’s documented support for subversive activities in Latin America. However, this evidence is largely circumstantial and speculative, and the CIA’s cover-up of its own actions complicates the picture. The suppression of information by key figures like Robert F. Kennedy and the CIA indicates that there may have been a concerted effort to bury the Cuban angle, either to protect U.S. interests or to hide a more complex conspiracy involving anti-Castro elements, the Mafia, or even rogue CIA operatives. These revelations challenge the official narrative of Oswald acting alone and suggest that the full truth about JFK’s assassination remains elusive.

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#StandUp4HumanRights: International Day for the Right to Truth about Human Rights Abuses

"As we inaugurate this new international observance, let us recognize the indispensable role of the truth in upholding human rights – and let us pledge to defend the right to the truth as we pursue our global mission of human rights."

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon 24 March 2011

 

El Salvador's Msgr Oscar Arnulfo Romero slain 3/24/1980. Poland's Fr Jerzy Popiełuszko murdered 10/19/1984.

 On December 21, 2010, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed March 24 as the International Day for the Right to the Truth concerning Gross Human Rights Violations and for the Dignity of Victims. According to the proclamation the purpose of this day is to:

• Honor the memory of victims of gross and systematic human rights violations and promote the importance of the right to truth and justice;
• Pay tribute to those who have devoted their lives to, and lost their lives in, the struggle to promote and protect human rights for all;
• Recognize, in particular, the important work and values of Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, of El Salvador, who was assassinated on 24 March 1980, after denouncing violations of the human rights of the most vulnerable populations and defending the principles of protecting lives, promoting human dignity and opposition to all forms of violence.
  

It also seems appropriate today to honor and pay tribute to Father Jerzy Popiełuszko, of Poland, who was kidnapped, tortured and assassinated on October 19, 1984 by sharing an excerpt from his February 28, 1982 sermon:

"The church always stands on the side of truth. The church always stands on the side of people who are victimized. Today the church stands on the side of those who have lost their freedom, whose conscience is being broken. Today the church stands on the side of Solidarity, on the side of the working people, who are often placed in one line along with common criminals. Dedication to freedom is tightly knit with human nature and with mature national awareness. This dedication is intertwined with the law and duty. It is intertwined with the law, and thus every man and every nation must experience the suppression of freedom as painful and unjust."

Both Archbishop Romero and Father Popiełuszko were victims of gross and systematic human rights violations and sadly over the past forty five years there have been many more:

• Scores of Germans were murdered trying to cross the Berlin Wall between 1961 and 1989;
  
• In June of 1989 thousands of Chinese were massacred at Tiananmen Square for nonviolently defending human rights and freedom;
• In July of 1994 thirty seven Cuban men, women and children were massacred for nonviolently trying to seek freedom. 
• In February of 1996 four men were murdered in international airspace by Cuban government agents as they sought to save the lives of Cuban rafters in the Florida Straits;
• There are over 120,000 Mexicans registered as missing. In March of 2024 an extermination camp with secret ovens, and human remains were discovered on a ranch in the Mexican state of Jalisco.

15 years, one month and one day ago Cuban prison officials announced the death of prisoner of conscience Orlando Zapata Tamayo at 3:00pm. He had suffered beatings, torture, and years added to his unjust prison sentence because Orlando continued to denounce human rights abuses in prison. He refused to look the other way and remain silent. The secret police and prison guards drove him to the last recourse of a non-violent activist: the hunger strike. Even there the regime sought to torture and humiliate denying him, a man on a water only hunger strike, water. It is believed that act of torture contributed to the failure of his kidneys and to his death. Oswaldo Payá said that Orlando died for the dignity of all Cubans. Following his death the dictatorship and its apologists continued to attack and smear this human rights defender. It is for that reason that especially on this day that Orlando Zapata Tamayo be remembered.

 

Orlando Zapata Tamayo, tortured and denied water, while on hunger strike murdered on Feb 23, 2010 

On July 22, 2012, Havana's secret police murdered Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero Escalante. In 2023, following a ten year investigation, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights confirmed that the two human rights defenders were killed by Cuban government agents.

Oswaldo Payá  was sixty years old when he was assassinated. He was a family man and lay Catholic from Havana, an engineer who, in September 1988, founded the Christian Liberation Movement with fellow Catholics in the El Cerro neighborhood, and over the next 23 years would carry out important campaigns to support human rights and a democratic transition in Cuba.  Oswaldo would speak out against human rights breaches and demand victims' dignity, even if it meant denouncing the United States for mistreating Al Qaeda prisoners at the Guantanamo Naval Base prison in 2002. Oswaldo was a consistent defender of human rights, but not the only one.

Harold Cepero  was 32 years old when he was extrajudicially executed alongside Oswaldo. He was from the town of Chambas in Ciego de Ávila.  Harold began studying at the University of Camaguey when he was 18 years old, and in 2002, he and other students signed the Varela Project. It was a legal measure inside the existing Cuban constitution sponsored by the Christian Liberation Movement. Despite this, Harold and other students were expelled from the university for signing it and sharing it with others. The secret police would organize a mob to "judge", scream at, insult, threaten and expel the students who had signed the Varela Project. Following his expulsion on November 13, 2002, Harold wrote a letter warning that "those who steal the rights of others steal from themselves. Those who remove and crush freedom are the true slaves."  Expelled from university for signing the Varela Project with fellow students. He enrolled in a seminary and began studying for the priesthood before leaving to join the Christian Liberation Movement, embracing a new vocation as a human rights defender. 

This is not an exhaustive accounting, there are thousands of Cuban victims alone.

The right to the truth and the defense of the dignity of the victims are crucial elements in the process of obtaining justice. 

There are over 1,100 political prisoners today in Cuba. 

In Miami, on March 28, 2025 starting at 6 p.m., a march will begin at the Brigade 2506 Monument, at the corner of 8th Street and 13th Avenue in Little Havana, and will travel down 13th Avenue to the Museum of the Cuban Diaspora. The idea is to hear the names of all the remaining political prisoners on the island along the trajectory of the march. 

We must remember both the dead and the living, not for revenge, but for truth, memory, and justice.

It is a long known fact recorded in history by the great Roman statesmen Marcus Tullius Cicero that "The hope of impunity is the greatest inducement to do wrong." 

Exposing the truth about these crimes and defending the dignity of the victims while seeking to hold those responsible accountable both under the rule of law and by the judgment of history will provide the greatest amount of justice that humanity can provide limiting impunity and the repetition of these crimes.