Today, these collaborators — groups and individuals responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Jews — are being glorified and rehabilitated as part of the ultranationalism surging across Eastern Europe. Nationalists seek to rally around men who fought for independence against both Russia and Germany; unfortunately, the World War II-era figures being chosen had expressed their vision for independence by murdering Jews.

In 1947, Josef Tiso, a Slovak priest and Nazi collaborator, was hanged for crimes against humanity because of his eager deportation of Slovakia’s Jews. Today, he is celebrated with parades and memorials across Slovakia. Marches commemorating local SS units wind through Baltic capitals. With festivals, marches and street names, Ukraine has been glorifying paramilitaries responsible for slaughtering thousands of Jews. Hungary and Croatia are both whitewashing their World War II-era Nazi collaborationist governments. Lithuania has gone so far as to bring criminal charges against Jewish partisans who fought Nazi collaborators.

Today’s Eastern European states are, in their way, following in the Kremlin’s footsteps by recasting Nazi collaborators as “fellow victims” and “freedom fighters,” while whitewashing their anti-Semitism and participation in the Holocaust. Particularly ominous are recent steps taken by some governments, which emulate the Soviets by enforcing the official state narrative using censorship and the threat of imprisonment.

In 2015, Ukraine passed laws making it a criminal offense to deny the heroic nature of two World War II paramilitaries. Earlier this month, Kiev made headlines by banning “Stalingrad,” an award-winning book by Antony Beevor, an acclaimed British historian, on account of a single paragraph that mentions a Ukrainian unit killing Jewish children. Poland’s ruling far-right Law and Justice Party proposed legislation making it illegal to accuse Poles of participating in the Holocaust, and targeted authors and journalists for daring to say otherwise. Once again, the Jews of Eastern Europe may face persecution and censorship for honoring their slain.

During the Cold War, with Eastern European Jews incapacitated by Communist dictatorships, the American Jewish community was at the vanguard of Holocaust remembrance. One of the most touching revelations I had in the United States was learning that in 1982, when Babi Yar still had no plaques mentioning the slain Jews, Americans had built a Babi Yar memorial in Denver. Today, however, the American Jewish community — including Jewish lawmakers in Washington — is largely silent about the widespread Holocaust distortion being carried out by Eastern European allies.

Breaking that silence is imperative, especially given the current global rise of anti-Semitism and the disturbing correlation between Holocaust revisionism and violence against living Jews. American Jews are already waking up to Holocaust denial on social media and vandalism of Holocaust museums at home. They should not forget to cast their gaze to the Nazi killing fields of Eastern Europe, where old battles are still being waged, and the perpetually inconvenient dead can find no rest.