Archive for October, 2011

Olga Zabludoff: Reply to Donatas Januta re Holocaust in Lithuania

I love and respect Lithuanians no less than I do my American friends, both Jews and non-Jews

Olga Zabludoff

Dear Donatas,

Thank you for your gracious opening paragraph to our discussion. I will try to comment on the points you raise in your letter.

I do not dispute Dina Porat’s finding that 99.5% of the Lithuanian population was neither directly nor indirectly involved in the killing of Jews. I would not dispute the findings of any reputable researcher/historian. But what I wish to point out is that one-half of 1% of the 1941 Lithuanian population equaled about 15,000 persons. Looking at the Jewish population of about 200,000 at the time, the ratio between killers and victims was 1: 13.
That can account for high efficiency. The real problem was that the other 99.5% of the population chose to close their eyes.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." This quote from Edmund Burke is the painful truth in the story of the Holocaust as well as other major tragedies. But to ask in hindsight why good men did nothing means not to comprehend the climate and the terror of the times.

No one is blaming innocent Lithuanians. I think the anger and the constant memory stem from the distortion of the history of what really took place. If only the true history were presented by teachers and texts, if only the Lithuanian people accepted the truth, I think the healing process would begin and an honest reconciliation would follow. Again I am not claiming that all Lithuanians do not accept the truth. There are certainly many notable exceptions.

Regarding the contributions of the Jews to the economy of Lithuania, if you choose not to believe Professor Dov Levin’s claims that Jews were an integral part of the economy, then let’s take a common-sense approach to the subject. The Jews were mainly merchants, traders, shopkeepers, craftsmen. They stimulated the economy with their businesses and provided a marketplace for farmers and others who needed to sell their produce and wares. Lithuania was one country and one economy. All of the participants in that economy made contributions, whether they were Jews, Lithuanians or other ethnic groups. They lived side by side, and even though the various groups carried on their individual traditions, there were still all part of one whole.

Contrary to what you are implying about my reaction to Bloodlands, I think it is an excellent book and everyone should read it. I went to Timothy Snyder’s presentation at George Washington University shortly after the book came off the press. It was extremely interesting and impressive to hear him speak and answer the myriad questions from the audience. I bought the book right there and later read it. Why would I have quoted from the book if I believed it is not a valuable work?

As for the Kazys Skirpa radio broadcasts reported in Bloodlands, if you say that this reference proved to be incorrect and has been deleted from subsequent printings of the book, I take your word for it. But that in itself doesn’t change the fact that there were bloody pogroms in Lithuania even before the Germans had arrived. This has been reported countless times in survivor testimonies and historical accounts. It ushered in the Holocaust in Lithuania. Another fact that has been reported for 70 years by survivors, witnesses and historical accounts is that the Germans received all the help they needed from Lithuanian locals who were eager accomplices.

I find it very sad when you say, “I still don’t know why the Lithuanians can’t simply grieve their own tragedy, and the Jews grieve  theirs.” All people should grieve over tragedies that involve the loss and suffering of others and should mourn the victims, regardless of their nationality or race. It seems cold and indifferent to separate out who should be mourned by whom.

During my three lengthy trips to Lithuania, I have made deep and lasting friendships with a good number of Lithuanians. I love and respect them no less than I do my American friends, both Jews and non-Jews. I cannot imagine that my Lithuanian friends could ever live in a different compartment of my heart.

In your final sentence you write, “The Lithuanians and the Jews both suffered greatly during World War II – or do you disagree with this as well?”

How could I possibly disagree with the truth? You can even go further and say the Lithuanians suffered beyond World War II during the second Soviet occupation that lasted almost fifty years. But there is one major difference: the goal of the Nazi regime was total annihilation of European Jewry – genocide. They came close to succeeding in Lithuania. The Soviet regime imposed deportations, imprisonment, death and suffering on the Lithuanian nation, but the majority of the Lithuanian population survived. While many perished in Siberian gulags, larger numbers eventually returned home to Lithuania. Both the Nazi and the Soviet regimes were heinous, but there was only one genocide. That fact should be acknowledged so that the history of World War II will not become distorted.

Olga Zabludoff

Donatas Januta: Reply to Olga Zabludoff re Holocaust in Lithuania

Why can’t the Lithuanians simply grieve their own tragedy, and the Jews grieve theirs?

Donatas Januta

Dear Olga:

Of the numbers of Lithuanian Jews that were killed in 1941-1944 I have seen several numbers, all of which were around 90% or more.   If you feel more comfortable with 95-96%, I won’t quarrel with you.   The fact is that any such number is an enormous number, and it was and is a great tragedy.   If there was anything that I could do to undo it, I would.   

But you don’t seem to dispute the Israeli historian Dina Porat that 99.5% of the Lithuanian population was neither directly nor indirectly involved.

As for your claim that the Jews contributed “enormously” to Lithuania’s economy and culture, you quote that wealthy Jews lent money to the “Lithuanian authorities” when they got into financial trouble.   But that was in centuries past, and those Lithuanian authorities were either individual warlords, or the Polish kings of the joint commonwealth, who got into personal financial trouble due to their extravagant lifestyles.   And all those Jewish loans then went into their own private pockets.  And, of course, the Jewish lenders did not act solely out of a sense of charity; they received more than a quid pro quo. The Lithuanian nation, i.e., the people of Lithuania, however, did not benefit at all from letting those same “Lithuanian authorities” continue living their extravagant lifestyles, at, ultimately, the people’s expense.    That's why those Jewish "contributions" to the Lithuanian nation's economy were, as I said, either ziltch, or perhaps less than ziltch.

And what about the “enormous” Jewish contributions to Lithuanian culture that you mentioned.   I am waiting to be enlightened on what it is you think they were.

Regarding your criticism of my “interpretation” of Timothy Snyder’s “Bloodlands”, all that I said was that it is a very good book, and everyone should read it.   So, are you saying that it is not a very good book, and people should not read it?  

As for your quote from “Bloodlands” (pp. 191-192) regarding Kazys Skirpa and his so-called radio broadcasts urging bloodshed, I understand that the author has acknowledged that that is incorrect, that he was relying on someone else’s research, who was either mistaken or simply falsified it.   The author has advised that in subsequent printings of the book, that reference has been deleted.   If you like, check with him yourself. 

I still don't  know why the Lithuanians can't simply grieve their own tragedy, and the Jews grieve theirs.  I did not start this dialogue, but was merely replying to Didier  Bertin and yourself.   As I said, before, the Lithuanians and the Jews both suffered greatly during World War II - or do you disagree with this as well?

Mr. Januta twists facts and figures
to suit his arguments

Olga Zabludoff

By: Olga Zabludoff
Washington, DC, USA

Mr. Januta’s article goes right to the heart of the problem: the tendency of critics like him to accuse others of being misinformed and of misstating facts. Indeed it is Mr. Januta who twists facts and figures to suit his arguments. Even when his facts are “correct,” they are simply half-truths.

For example: Yes, there is a Holocaust Museum in Vilnius, but to compare the pitiful little hidden building (the Green House) with the state-of-the-art Museum of Genocide located on a major street is like comparing a mouse to an elephant.

It hardly pays to argue with Januta because his reasoning is obviously skewed and his facts distorted. For example: 95-96% of the Lithuanian-Jewish population was murdered in the Holocaust in Lithuania. His figure is 90%.

In his book Professor Dov Levin speaks of two evils -- but of only one genocide, another confusion in Mr. Januta’s mind. Furthermore, his ridiculous claim that the Jews of Lithuania contributed “zilch” to the economy and culture of the country is contradicted by Dov Levin in his book: “The majority of the Jewish population worked at every possible trade, serving not only their own community but also the population at large.” (Introduction, p. 11)  Even going back to the Middle Ages, Dov Levin writes: “On more than one occasion, when the Lithuanian authorities got into financial (or other) difficulty, the country’s wealthiest Jews came to their aid with generous loans or grants of credit.” (p. 44) “The Jews’ deep penetration into the Lithuanian economy also created extra employment for the general population.” (p. 50)

Januta’s interpretation of Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands is an injustice to the author’s careful research and articulate writing. Here is an excerpt that Mr. Januta obviously missed:

“The Germans arrived in Lithuania with their hand-picked nationalist Lithuanians and encountered local people who were willing to believe, or to act as if they believed, that Jews were responsible for Soviet repression. The Soviet deportations had taken place that very month, and the NKVD had shot Lithuanians in prison just a few days before the Germans arrived. The Lithuanian diplomat Kazys Skirpa, who returned with the Germans, used this suffering in his radio broadcasts to spur mobs to murder. Some 2,500 Jews were killed by Lithuanians in bloody pogroms in early July.

“As a result of trained collaboration and local assistance, German killers had all the help they needed in Lithuania.”  (pp. 191-192)

No need to say any more. fdfdg says it all in his Comments.

By Donatas Januta

Mr. Didier Bertin is either woefully misinformed or intentionally misstates facts in his “reply” to Yves Plasseraud’s article “Lithuania and the memory of the Shoah (Holocaust)”.   

He refers to the crimes of Hitler and Stalin as the “Double Genocide” theory, states that the comparison of the two is initiated by Lithuania and/or its government, and that the reason for it is to somehow minimize the tragedy which the world’s Jews suffered during the Second World War.   But the comparison between the tragedies brought by those two psychopaths, Hitler and Stalin, is not of Lithuanian origin or usage at all.  

Mr. Bertin chooses not to give credit where credit is due.  The comparison between Hitler’s and Stalin’s crimes was first made and thoroughly analyzed by the prominent Israeli historian Dov Levin, in his book “The Lesser of Two Evils”.   Three things are clear to anyone who has read Dov Levin’s treatise:   (1)  Levin was definitely and scrupulously comparing the two, as he inevitably had to do to arrive at his conclusion which of the two was the lesser evil.   (2)   He was evaluating the two evils solely from the Jewish perspective, and in his conclusion he uses the word “lesser” not in the universal sense, but only with respect to the effect upon Jews.    (3)   Because Levin, even in the title of his book acknowledges, that there was not one but two evils – if there was only one, there would have been nothing he could have compared it to –  that still leaves two for analyzing their effect on the rest of the world.  

Levin did not use a modifier to describe  the effect of the two evils on non-Jews i.e., he did not state whether as to non-Jews the two evils of Hitler and Stalin were or were not equal, or similar, or equivalent.   But neither does Lithuania.   I have not run across the Lithuanian government or Lithuanians using the term  “Double Genocide”. 

Lithuania’s position is simply – you grieve for your tragedy, and we will grieve for ours.  Just as every person, every family, so every nation, every ethnic group, is entitled to grieve for their own separately from the grief of others, so are the Jews, the Ukrainians, the Cambodians, the Armenians, and others.  So are the Lithuanians.  

Bertin further states that Lithuanians are not entitled to use the word “genocide” at all in reference to their own tragedy  because “Lithuanian people still exist and are active in Lithuania”, i.e., that Hitler’s, and Stalin’s,  attempts to wipe them out were not successful.  Yet, he refers to the killings of Armenians, Rwandans, and Cambodians as being “real genocides”.  But  Armenians in Armenia, Rwandan’s in Rwanda, and Cambodians in Cambodia also still exist and are active in their countries, are they not?   (Bertin conveniently forgot to mention the genocide of the Ukranians, which, of course was perpetrated by that “lesser” of the two evils.)

Yes, 90% of Lithuanian Jews were killed during World War II.   And, yes, there were some German-organized Lithuanian militias or “Lithuanian auxiliaries” who participated in some of those actions.   But how many Lithuanians were in those “Lithuanian auxiliaries”?    The Soviets during that period also had a Division, the 16th Rifle Division, which they referred to as the “Lithuanian 16th Rifle Division.”    But because most soldiers in this “Lithuanian” division did not speak Lithuanian, the commands were given not in Lithuanian, but in Yiddish and Russian.  So, just how “Lithuanian” was this 16th Soviet Division were commands were given not in Lithuanian but in Yiddish and Russian?    And how “Lithuanian” were those “Lithuanain auxiliaries” which partook in German-organized and German-led killing of Jews?

Here is a quote from testimony of an ethnic Pole,  a member of one of those “Lithuanian Auxiliaries”, also referred to as “Special Detachments”, which testimony is in the possession of the US Justice Department’s “nazi hunting” department, the Office of Special Investigations (OSI):  

The Pole, Jan Borkowski, testified how the Russian Dolgow recruited him into the German organized “Lithuanian Auiliary”:    „Dolgow and I entered the building through Wilenska Street and went to the second floor... In my presence [someone] personally filled out my name in the questionnaire in Lithuanian and I signed it after Jan Dolgow had translated it to me. My name in the questionnaire was written in Lithuanian as Jonas Barkauskas, son of Ignas. The questionnaire also included my date of birth, rank in the Polish army, and similar information. That day I also received a certificate stating tha I was employed in the Special Detachment and that I had a right to possess a firearm... I received an identification card, filled in Lithuanian.”  (Protocol of Interrogation of a Suspect – Jan Borkowski, 29 January 1973, U.U. v. Dailide, Document 580–655, Bates No. 07821–07823.”

Borkowski further admitted that he participated in executing Jews at Ponary, that he has no remorse in having participated, but he expressed regret for having worn a Lithuanian uniform while doing so:  „I was ashamed, however, that I was a Pole and had to put on the uniform of the bourgeois Lithuanian army.” (Bates No.07882).

And should the fact that Lithuania was one of the few, and perhaps the only, German occupied country where the Germans, despite repeatedly trying, did not succeed in establishing a local ethnic SS, should that not give pause for thought as well?

Just a bit more of statistics.   According to Israeli historian, Dina Porat, about 0.5%, i.e., half of one percent, of the entire population of Lithuania was involved directly and indirectly, i.e., whether prison guards, drivers, etc., in the killing of Jews. (And how many of your French, Mr. Bertin, were involved in rounding up France’s Jews and shoving them into railroad cars heading straight for Auschwitz?) Porat does not however state how many of that 0.5% were Jan Borkowski, Jan Dogow, and similar “honorary” Lithuanians.    The number of Lithuanians who have been identified as having, at the risk of their own lives, saved Jews from the Holocaust, is on the same order of magnitude.

Bertin’s statement that Lithuania is the sole country that “tries to prosecute Holocaust Survivors and members of the resistance against Nazis” flatly contradicts the facts. In 2007, the Polish government  forwarded information and asked the Lithuanian government to investigate the slaughter, on January 29, 1944, by Soviet partizans/bandits of Polish and Lithuanian civilian villagers at Kaniukai (“Koniuchy”).  Those partizans/bandits were not just anti-Nazis, their main goal was to bring Stalin’s communism, with its demonstrated terror, back into Lithuania.

Here is testimony of two of those “anti-Nazi” Soviet Jewish partisans regarding their actions at Kaniukai.  Abraham Zelesnikow:  “Partisans came around the village, everything was torched, every animal, every person was killed.  And one of my friends, acquaintances, a partisan, took a woman, put her head on a stone, and killed her with a stone.”    Zalman Wylozni:  “the entire village of 80 farmsteads was burned to the ground and its inhabitants were murdered.”

The villagers were slaughtered because they defended their and their families’ lives and livelihoods, as the partizan/bandits have themselves admitted:  Joseph Harmatz:  “We came in like bandits and, after all, we were robbing the local peasants of their livelihood.  .   .   .   Gradually the villagers ...  became our enemies.”  Rakhil Margolis:   “I could not stomach going to [these “requisitioning”  expeditions].  I was so ashamed of entering a cottage and demanding from the peasants potatoes, flour, especially livestock – sheep, cows.  The women cried, the men cursed.  .  .  .   there were many “underworlds” types in our detachment – former thieves and swindlers for whom robbery was an habitual thing.”

So, on the basis of Poland’s request and this type of information, the Lithuanian government sought to question, not to prosecute, but merely to question as witnesses,  some of the admitted witnesses in that indiscriminate slaughter of civilian villagers.   The result was an almost hysterical reaction from Efraim Zuroff and his followers, claiming that Lithuania was persecuting Holocaust survivors.

If someone wants to learn historical facts, and not just listen to political polemics based on red herrings like the so-called “Double Genocide” theory,  you should read professor Timothy Snyder’s “Bloodlands” about the conditions in Lithuania and Easterm Europe during World War II.   Or better yet, start with Israeli historian Dov Levin’s “The Lesser of Two Evils.”

At the end of his article, Bertin, reminds us that many Russian soldiers died fighting the Nazis, as if Lithuanians should be thankful to the Russians.   But if Russia’s Stalin had not signed the infamous non-aggression treaty with Hitler in 1939, where Stalin gave Hitler free hand to invade and occupy Poland, and to thus start World War II, those Russians would also not have needed to die.   And the tragedy of the Holocaust might not have occurred either.  So, go ahead, Mr. Bertin, do thank the Russians.

There are other incorrect and misleading claims in Didier Bertin’s, as well as in Olga Zabludoff’s, “reply” to Yves Plasseraud.  Like the simple fact that in addition to the Genocide Museum of the Lithuanian tragedy, there is also nearby in Vilnius a Jewish Holocaust Museum, which is funded by the Lithuanian government and administered by the Lithuanian Jewish Community, and which covers exclusively the Jewish tragedy of World War II.  

And, please, Olga, spare us your crocodile tears under your fancied claim that the “contributions” of Jews “to Lithuania’s economy and culture were enormous” and that the Lithuanian government is ignoring it.  The contribution of Jews to Lithuania’s economy and culture, over the 600 years that they lived in Lithuania, was either zilch or less than zilch.   Let me explain.

Lithuania, on the eve of World War I, was as backward a country as the rest of the Russian Empire.  Due to the Czarist Russian empire’s occupation and oppressive colonialism policies for over 100 years, Lithuania’s economy was depressed, it was an agricultural economy, but with Lithuanians being barely more than subsistance farmers.   Its culture was marked by almost total illiteracy, due to Russia’s restrictions on the use of the Lithuanian language.  I have no idea what Olga Zabludoff has in mind when she refers to the “enormous” economic and cultural contributions of the Litvaks to the Lithuanian nation.  There were none.  Lithuania was economically and culturally exploited and oppressed.     

For 600 years Litvaks lived side by side with, but separate from, Lithuanians.   Indeed, Jewish historians have noted that of all of Europe’s Jews, those of Lithuania interacted the least with the ethnic people among whom they lived.   And they have further noted, that this self-insulation allowed the Jews to maintain, preserve and develop their unique culture with the least amount of outside influence.  A number of Jewish scholars note that the Jews in Lithuania were able to do this, because they considered the Lithuanians inferior to them.  

Zabludoff also laments that Lithuanians are striving to preserve and extol their own history without simultaneously extolling the history of its Jews.  And how much time do Jews devote to preserving or extoling Lithuania’s history when they extol their own?    If the small country of Lithuania doesn’t beat its own drum, there is noone else who will do it for them.   

Litvaks, are certainly neither unknown, nor ignored, nor hidden from the world, nor do they lack anyone to beat their drums.  Litvaks’ vast contribution to world knowledge, science and the arts over the last 100 years probably has no parallel in any other group.  And we have all benefited from their talents and intellect.    But this has happened in the last 100 years in the West.  It was not the case in Lithuania for the 600 years up to World War II.  Lithuanians were peasant farmers, Jews were urban merchants and tradesmen.   Their cultures did not intermix. 

And certainly it should not be surprising if the small country of Lithuania, as Zabludoff says, cannot appease far-right extremists, if such a prominent scholar like professor Timothy Snyder is unable to do so.  Just look at the attacks by Efraim Zuroff and his followers on Snyder’s book “Bloodlands”, which otherwise has received an extremely favorable reception throughout the world.

The Jews of Lithuania and the ethnic Lithuanians both suffered terribly during World War II.  But, just as they had lived for 600 years, side by side but separate, so they suffered their tragedies separately.  Thus, it may be that Lithuanians and Jews will never agree on the events of World War II, because they are each viewing them from a separate reality.    But that should not be cause for playing fast and loose with historical facts, as Diedier Bertin and Olga Zabludoff, have done.