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EUROPE

my home & my castle

Text and photos:
Aage Myhre
aage.myhre@VilNews.com

The more I travel around the world the more I realize that I am European. Although I have had good, close friends and have experienced extraordinary things in all corners of the world. Maybe my mind is not sufficiently exotic. That's ok. I have grown older now. Europe does not lose lustre. Driving a car is the best way to experience Europe. Lithuania's border crossings to Latvia and Poland is no problem anymore. Within a day's drive you can reach most of the northern and central European countries. One more day and you can already stand and look out over the warm, slow waves of the Mediterranean Sea...

Over the next few weeks VilNews will present some glimpses of Europe ... A Europe that is now so close to everyone...

The Iron Curtain is gone, forever!

1 of 10: Exploring Europe
I love old towns. No matter how good a new suburb is. I, and many with me, prefer the old towns. It has something to do with the atmosphere. Details, ornaments. Human life. Sound and smell. Warmth. Joy.

Europe is the 'old town' for the entire world!

I think it primarily is about culture and history. All that Europe is so infinitely rich on. It is something about that feeling. The idea and the knowledge of the Roman Empire every time I'm in Rome. Recognition every time I visit a museum or gallery and see the many art treasures I feel is a part of my European self. It is more to Europe I never get tired of. For example, being able to walk, touch, feel, smell. Being a tourist here is like walking on the world stage as it has provided the basis for so much over thousands of years. Fortunately, European leaders long ago realized that the human being is more important than cars. Take Strøget in Copenhagen, bike paths in Holland and promenades along pretty much all The Mediterranean sea-coast as good examples of this.

Europe means walking around on cobbled streets. Between historic buildings.
To see. Listen. Experience. Feel. Smell.

Olga Zabludoff: Reply to Donatas Januta re Holocaust in Lithuania

. . . it was the “lucky Jews” who were deported [to Siberia] since they accounted for many of the survivors. . . . Jews could not return from the mass graves.

Olga Zabludoff

Dear Donatas,

I send New Year greetings to you and your family.

In response to your article of 20th December, 2011, I regret to tell you that your lengthy sermon on serfdom was irrelevant to our discussion. Let me remind you that from its onset this debate has been rooted in modern Lithuanian history. It has been labeled a discussion on “Holocaust in Lithuania” and has frequently traveled into the arena of current Lithuanian-Jewish issues and attempts at reconciliation.

I have tried to play by the rules and have told you time and again that I find it difficult to relate to medieval times in Lithuania or even to the period of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania – given the time frame of our topic. (Sure, sometimes one makes a reference to an earlier period but almost as a simple footnote.) So when I asked: “When were the Lithuanian people not allowed to have a hand in their country’s economy or barred from any particular occupations?” I was clearly not referring to the 18th century when most Lithuanians were indeed peasant serfs. I was talking about the period of Independent Lithuania (the interwar years), the era on which our debate is focused. Your digression into the earlier centuries makes about as much sense as if I would have cried to you that my Jewish ancestors had been Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt.

In one of my earliest responses to you I claimed that you twist your facts and figures to suit your arguments. Actually you go further than that. You constantly resort to periods in Lithuanian history that have little or no connection to our theme. Is this in order to deflect or distract from issues you would rather not address? You corrupt history by telling only half the story. For instance, in your 24th November, 2011 article, “Litvaks: Lithuania’s Warriors,” you state openly that Lithuanian Jews were a force in helping win an Independent Lithuania, fighting and dying alongside their Lithuanian brethren. In turn, the Jews were rewarded with rights and privileges for their participation in achieving their country’s freedom. But at that point you stop short, obviously preferring to omit the rest of the story:

After a few years of this “Golden Age,” all Jewish rights and privileges were harshly revoked, and the darkest period in the history of Lithuania’s Jews began to germinate: “Lithuania for Lithuanians!” Jewish signs on businesses had to be removed. Then they lost their businesses, their homes. Vitriolic Nazi propaganda was embraced in Lithuania. We all know the end . . .

Like an insidious drum beat you recycle and recycle your party line: Jews contributed “zilch” to the Lithuanian economy. Jews created a monopoly in the marketplace. Jews played no role in Lithuanian culture. Jews kept themselves distinct from the Lithuanians among whom they lived. Jews did not invite Lithuanians to dance with them. Jews did not communicate with Lithuanians in the same language. Jews did not worship the Lithuanian religion. Jews had separate schools and dressed differently from Lithuanians. Jews did not intermix with Lithuanians except in the marketplace. Their Litvak culture was totally separate and distinct from the ethnic Lithuanian culture.

In other words, you are chastising the Lithuanian Jews for not being ethnic Lithuanians. You are leading up in cunning fashion to the Nazi-inspired rhetoric that the Jews themselves were responsible for what happened to them, and that they deserved their fate. This is a devious Nationalist strategy to incite hatred and to rid Lithuania of guilt. And of course there is the eternal echo in your arguments that the Lithuanians were the victims of the controlling Jews. This is another diabolical tactic to reverse the roles of perpetrator and victim.

A prominent historian in the UK (a non-Jew) wrote me recently: “The double genocide argument is so fraudulent. Of course the word ‘genocide’ cannot be used exclusively for the Holocaust: there are other genocides as well. But the evidence set out clearly indicates that there was no such extermination of the Lithuanians – terrible suffering, yes, but not a genocide. You don’t have to look far for the reasons (not the reasoning) for the argument. It helps to reduce the sense of guilt. So instead of saying ‘Weren’t we terrible,’ they say, ‘We all suffered together.’ Which in turn reduces the need for a complete realignment of sensibility.”

I have read recent pieces in VilNews concerning the Soviet deportations of Lithuanians to Siberia. Among the responses to the articles are many which confirm that the deportees eventually returned to their home country – not all, but many. It is also important for readers to realize that the Soviets did not spare Lithuanian Jews from being deported to Siberia along with non-Jews. In fact, it was the “lucky Jews” who were deported since they accounted for a good number of survivors. Brutal as were the conditions of the deportees, the population statistics tell us that by 1951 more than 90% of non-Jewish Lithuanians had survived, after which year the population began to climb. In sharp contrast less than 5% of the pre-war Lithuanian-Jewish population remained alive at the close of 1941. Jews could not return from mass graves. The annihilation of more than 95% defines a true genocide. 

Donatas, I don’t believe we have made progress, however hard we may have tried. I cannot and do not want to keep repeating myself in reply to your cyclical charges of red herrings, Jewish monopolies, Jewishness, Zuroff & Co., and one-way streets. It is like a jingle you have created. We will not convince one another. I find it unfortunate that a man of your education has a distorted view of the very same facts that other educated Lithuanians or Lithuanian-Americans or historians in general see as historical truth. The seeds of reconciliation are probably sprouting in the minds and hearts of young educated Lithuanians who are able to confront their nation’s past with clarity and whose visions for their country’s future are not clouded by present-day Nationalist politics.

In closing, I wish you would read the articles I have linked below.

http://www.bernardinai.lt/straipsnis/2012-01-02-prof-saulius-suziedelis-svarbu-ne-svari-o-teisinga-istorija/74448

Dear Editor,

The recent article by Dr. Irena Veisaite agreeing with the antisemitic   
establishment's evaluation of the life's work of Dr. Efraim Zuroff,
Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Israel office and a leading historian of the Lithuanian Holocaust, has been a cause of great dismay
to us, the world's last active organization of Lithuanian Holocaust
survivors and their descendants.

We have been equally dismayed by her years of betrayal of her fellow survivors and willingness to serve a Lithuanian government PR agent
who is sent far and wide to help cover up for the policies of Holocaust distortion and toleration of antisemitism in Lithuania.

We wish Dr. Veisaite well, and at the same time we ask that the readers of VilNews.com remember that she represents her own views and perhaps
those of high Lithuanian government officials, but certainly not those of the international community of Lithuanian Holocaust survivors who will not remain silent.

Joseph A. Melamed
Attorney
Chairman, Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel

 
Susan Lucas Kazenas

White picket fences
Copyright 1991 by Susan M. Lucas (Now Susan Lucas Kazenas)

They came into my land
by the hundreds,
by the thousands.
They led their communist offenses
through my white picket fences
and hung their red iron curtains in my window.
They raped my pride
and murdered my children.
Those who escaped were not raped
but could not come home again.
Those left inside had nowhere to hide.
And I laid still in a cold, dead silence
while hot, burning tears
flooded my land.
It didn't go into the history books
of the many lives that they took.
It was a blood no one knew was shed;
because by the sickle it was led.
My beauty within is not seen without.
Do I have nothing to give the world?
My people are loyal,
but you see, I have no oil.
Nor do I have food on my plate
because the greedy bear sits and guards my gate.
Now I am his property when I was always MY OWN.
I belong to NO ONE
but the people who till my land
with their own bare hands,
And to my God to whom those hands are raised.
I have not forgotten my
White Picket Fences
torn down by your offenses.
I rebel against this prison called Fate.
I am the Baltic States.

(I wrote this in 1990 as Lithuania fought for its independence against the former USSR. This poem was hung on the wall by the TV tower in Vilnius after Bloody Sunday. I hope you enjoy it and welcome your comments.)

Susan Lucas Kazenas

Donatas Januta: Reply to Olga Zabludoff re Holocaust in Lithuania

History 101: Double standards, red herrings, and one-way streets will not lead to understanding or reconciliation

Donatas Januta

My dear Olga, in the past you were so generous in trying to give me lessons in what you called Logic 101, but it turns out that when History 101 was being taught you must have skipped class.  In discussing the Jewish monopoly in commerce and the trades and crafts in Lithuania, you say that it was the Lithuanians’ own choice not to go into those occupations, that they were free to select those occupations if they had so wanted.  I am surprised how you disregard basic historical facts – even after Tautietis pointed you in the right direction in his comment to your Nov. 18th posting.

While serfdom began to disappear in much of Western Europe during the Rennaisance, in Lithuania serfs were freed only in 1861. My great-grandparents were born serfs. Serfdom under the Russian empire was no different than slavery in the US South before the Civil War. A serf was tied to the landowner’s estate where he was forced to live and work. Serfs were bought and sold like cattle. If a serf escaped from the estate, the landowner got the government’s help to catch him and bring him back. The stories in Russian literature of landowners winning or losing their serfs over a game of cards are based on real life of that time.

The majority of Lithuanians, well over 90%, were peasant serfs. The landowners in Lithuania at that time were often foreigners – Polish, German, Russian, and some Polonized or Russianized Lithuanians. The urban dwellers, the “freemen”, who were the ones free to choose their occupations, consisted mostly of Jews, with Poles, Russians and some Germans, depending on which part of Lithuania you were in.

The emancipation of serfs in 1861 did not free them. The large landowner estates were left intact, and the former serfs still remained impoverished and tied to the land because other opportunities remained closed to them. Landowners were and spoke mostly Polish or Russian, government officials spoke only Russian. After unsuccessful Lithuanian uprisings against the Russians in 1830 and 1831, whose activists were executed or exiled to Siberia: “The rebels’ landholdings were parceled out to court favorites and other Russians in a far-reaching colonization process that led to a large Russian influx. .” (The Jews of Lithuania, Masha Greenbaum, p. 176).  Russian was declared the official language of the country. 

Available education to Lithuanians was limited – books and newspapers in the Lithuanian language were prohibited until 1904. Of the few Lithuanians who were fortunate enough to get an education – in Kiev, St. Petersburg, or Moscow – they could not get a position in Lithuania. Tautietis gave you the example of Dr. Basanavičius (1851-1927), known as Lithuania’s patriarch, who after obtaining his medical degree had to spend his most productive years in Bulgaria. One of my great-uncles ended up being a judge - in Odessa, where he had gone to be allowed to practice law.

My parents were the first generation of Lithuanians in several hundred years who had opportunities to leave the land, to obtain an education, to freely choose a profession, a craft, or a career in commerce. My grandparents – who worked the land their entire lives - encouraged and urged their sons and daughters to pursue education, so that they could leave the hard life of being a subsistence farmer, an opportunity that they themselves had been denied. So, Olga, do explain to me how the Lithuanians themselves “chose” not to go into the fields where Jews ended up having monopolies in Lithuania.

But let's continue with History 101.  You quote from your uncle’s letters about the economic hardship his family was experiencing in Lithuania during the world-wide great depression. You also quote some selected parts from Schoenburg & Schoenburg’s Lithuanian Jewish Communities. Let me quote some other parts from Schoenburg & Schoenburg which relate to the Jewish economic condition in Lithuania in the latter part of the 19th and first part of the 20th centuries.  

 “One important manifestation was the phenomenal Jewish birth rate coupled with a relatively low infant mortality rate, which resulted in a large natural increase in the Jewish population.” (p. 29) “Within the Pale, the population [of Jews] was increasing so fast that Jewish competition among themselves was intense, resulting in less compensation and shoddier goods. * * * Job creation by new enterprises was insufficient to keep up with the rapidly increasing Jewish population. * * * The poorest portion of the Pale of Settlement was Lithuania.” (p. 31).

As a result of such economic pressures, many Jews emigrated, but so did many Lithuanians – including four of my great-uncles – because Lithuanian peasant farmers, the former serfs, were even poorer than the Jews. Nonetheless, in 1918, after much struggle, Lithuania gained its independence, and, as I noted above, that was the first time in several hundred years that Lithuanians had a free choice of occupations and began entering trades, professions and commerce. But, at that time, when Jews constituted about 7% of Lithuania’s population, “almost 90 percent of all Lithuanian trade was in Jewish hands.” (The Jews of Lithuania, Masha Greenbaum, p. 271).

So what do you think happened then?  Economic competition is what happened. As Schoenburg and Schoenburg state above, the economic competition within the Jewish community itself was already intense, and as Lithuanians, who had previously been denied the opportunity, began entering occupations previously occupied exclusively by Jews, the economic condition of the Jews did not improve.   And, to make things harder for everyone, it was happening in the middle of a world-wide depression. Yes, the government assisted in the establishment of farm cooperatives and related enterprises, just as the US government also has a department of agriculture with farm subsidies and the like.

I hope that the above History 101 lesson answers your question  “when were the Lithuanian people not allowed to have a hand in their country’s economy or barred from any particular occupations.”

I do not understand at all why you feel that my statement that I am disappointed in Lithuania’s vote against Palestinian membership in UNESCO is “ultra-nationalist”.  In essence, my comment was that I was disappointed that Lithuania in voting against the Palestinians chose political expediency over their previously stated consistent policy of support for self-determination for all peoples. And you say this also displays my “negative attitude toward Israel.” Not true. It only displays my difference of opinion from yours regarding one particular policy of Israel.  Are we required to agree with all of Israel’s policies to avoid being considered anti-semitic? When even Jews themselves don’t agree with all of Israel’s policies, are you saying that I need to be more Jewish than Jews themselves?

I did not speculate that Dovid Katz was removed from his position because he doesn’t speak Lithuanian. Quite the contrary. I expressly stated that we did not know why his contract was not renewed, and in reply to Bertin’s assertion, I merely mentioned several other possibilities.  Professor Šarunas Liekis, former director of the Vilnius Yiddish Institute where Katz was employed, however, has stated: “When his contract ended it was not renewed for professional reasons, the same reasons it was not renewed at Oxford.” (Jerusalem Post, Nov. 27, 2011).

As for Katz not knowing the Lithuanian language, Katz himself made that issue fair game by posturing himself as a self-appointed expert on present day Lithuania and present day Lithuanians, when he has no credentials, neither academic nor real world experience, on which to claim that.

Olga, your explanations to my two comments under your December 16th posting are just plain silly.

So what if, as you say, “Lithuanian Jews had been living and dancing in Lithuania for 700 years”?   That just shows how distinct and separate Jews kept themselves from the Lithuanians among whom they lived, since during all those 700 years of dancing in Lithuania, Jews did not invite Lithuanian goyim to dance with them. And we can find a clue to that in your Schoenburg and Schoenburg, where the authors write:  “The Jews felt superior to the ethnic peasant population . . .” (p. 41).

Writing about post World War I Lithuania, Masha Greenbaum writes: “Lithuanian Jewry was one of the least assimilated Jewish collectives in Europe. Jews in Lithuania displayed an unflinching will for autonomy and a united front in the struggle for [their own] cultural identity.” (p. 232)   Jews and Lithuanians communicated in separate languages, worshipped separate religions, had separate schools, differed radically in dress and appearance, they did not share any customs or traditions, did not share social activities, did not share a culture and definitely did not dance together.   Jews did not intermix with Lithuanians other than in the marketplace, and Litvak culture is a totally separate and distinct culture from ethnic Lithuanian culture.  

A few years ago, a self-promoting publicist in Los Angeles suggested that some unnamed, and as far as one can tell non-existent, Yiddish dancers be invited to a Lithuanian folk dance festival. He was told that the purpose of that dance festival was to promote Lithuanian ethnic culture, not other cultures. Immediately followed a damning story in The Jewish Journal of Los Angeles, complete with quotes and a large photo of that publicist, and quoting Efraim Zuroff who referred to the Lithuanian diaspora of my generation as being descendants of war criminals.

But that whole story, as I said before, is a total “red herring”, because no Yiddish dance group had asked to participate in the Lithuanian folk dance festival, just as no Yiddish group had ever invited any Lithuanian folk dancers to any Yiddish celebrations.  Lithuanians understand and respect Litvaks’ desire to retain their Yiddish culture as a separate and distinct culture in its own right, and we, the inferior “ethnic peasant population”,  would like the same consideration in return.   But you and Zuroff & Co. think that we are asking too much, even calling our request an anti-semitic act.   There's that double standard again. 

Your and Zuroff & Co.’s repeated argument that there can be no Soviet genocide in Lithuania, i.e., no genocide other than the genocide of the Jews, because that would be equating the two – that argument is even sillier and is simply intellectual dishonesty. It’s like telling a person who was raped that you can’t put rapists in prison because we are putting murderers in prison, and if you put rapists there as well it will diminish the crime of the murderers. Yet the rapist and the murderer are both criminals.  And genocide is genocide, whether it is against Jews, Armenians, Cambodians, Rwandans, Ukrainians or Lithuanians - "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group",

And as far as what you speculate that Zuroff or Bertin may or may not have meant when they spoke, their own words themselves speak very clearly.    They are both applying a double standard and for them it's strictly a one-way street:  it’s permissible to prohibit Holocaust denial, but it is not permissible to prohibit denying the tragedies of the 50 years of the Soviet occupation; it’s permissible for Israel to search the world for every last geriatric prison guard, but it is not permissible for Lithuania to question the actions of Jewish bandits who robbed, tortured and murdered innocent villagers.

As I said before, Olga, to successfully embrace Lithuanian and Jewish history and find understanding and reconciliation, you won’t find it on Zuroff’s one-way street.

Olga Zabludoff: Reply to Donatas Januta re Holocaust in Lithuania

It is most powerful when Lithuanians themselves stand up and speak out

Olga Zabludoff

Dear Donatas,

Please excuse my long delay in responding to you. I have been traveling but have kept up with my reading of VilNews. There is much catching up to do. And since “Tautietis” joined our discussion with his comments posted on 20th November, I am going to address his points here also.

I must say that it is exceptionally trying to find logic in Tautietis’s arguments as he leapfrogs from 19th century Tsarist Russia into the “so called ‘Golden age’ for Lithuanian Jews,” as though the two historical periods were simultaneous. Only during Independent Lithuania (the period between the two world wars) did the Jews of Lithuania experience anything resembling a golden age, and that was very short-lived. (More on this later.)

Tautietis writes: “It is no secret that Jews accepted [the] Russian language and culture more readily than Lithuanians – and were better positioned to take advantage of the opportunities that were there in Imperial Russia.”

I quote from Lithuanian Jewish Communities by Schoenburg & Schoenburg, 1991: “Russia, a country that had always excluded Jews, suddenly found itself sovereign over the largest concentration of Jews in the world. In addition to the innate hostility toward Jews held by most Russians, especially the nobility, the problem was compounded by the fact that Jews and the Jewish communal structure did not fit the feudal structure of Russian society” (page 28).

In the Russian Empire Jews were forced to live in the Pale of Settlement and were excluded from many occupations. They had few choices of how to earn their living. “The poorest portion of the Pale of Settlement was Lithuania. As economic conditions deteriorated, Litvaks moved to better areas . . . Some settled in Latvia. Others went to the Ukraine, northeast Poland, or to other parts of the Pale. . .  (pages 31-32).

“With the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in March 1881, all pretense of liberalism ended and the repression of the Jews intensified . . . Between 1880 and 1914, over two million Jews had emigrated to the West . . . The emigration was heaviest from Lithuania” (page 32).

Your statement referring to supply and demand is sheer nonsense: “If you own the market, you are in position to set the demand.” No one can set the demand, and the Jews were mainly small-scale entrepreneurs, not monopolists who “owned the market.” No need to waste any more words on that subject.

Donatas, in your 22nd November post, you write: “. . . But if the Lithuanians themselves had been allowed to have a broader hand in the economy, it [the economy] might have been a lot better, too.”

When were the Lithuanian people not allowed to have a hand in their country’s economy or barred from any particular occupations? Even before Independent Lithuania the Lithuanian people were free to select their occupations. It was their choice, not their mandate, to earn their livelihood mainly through farming. It was a tradition, not a law imposed against them. There seems to be a trend, among those who take your side of the debate, to switch roles, to create the impression that the Jews were the controllers and the Lithuanians, the underdogs. Please, let’s not mangle history to that extreme. It is too reminiscent of the anti-Semitic propaganda during the 1920s and 1930s that lit up the stage for the horrors that were to follow.

I am frankly stunned by your statement that Lithuania’s vote against Palestinian membership in UNESCO “was an example of Lithuania’s cowardice in succumbing to pressure from Israel and Israel’s ally the United States.”  In one ultra-nationalist sentence you managed to damn both your ancestral land and the land you live in. To say nothing of your apparent negative attitude toward Israel.

I remember well the incident you refer to when the Los Angeles Lithuanian Community refused to permit a troupe of Yiddish dancers to perform at a folk dance festival. I guess they didn’t want the Yiddish presence because it might have been symbolic of a time when Lithuania had a Jewish population . . . and all that that memory entails. I agree with Efraim Zuroff that this was an anti-Semitic expression, but I don’t think it would happen today.

As far as the statement you attribute to Zuroff that “the Lithuanian émigré community consisted largely of descendants of war criminals,” I think Dr. Zuroff knows better than to hold the children responsible for the sins of their fathers. What he may have meant was that since many of the Lithuanian war criminals did flee after the war to the US and Canada, fearing reprisals from the Soviets, their children could have been indoctrinated with anti-Semitism. Children learn from parents and often adopt the same values. That’s why education of the young is so important.

I do not know Irena Veisaite or Yves Plasseraud (other than through their brief writings I have read recently in VilNews), so I cannot judge their politics or their characters. But let me say that I seem to understand and feel more connected to people like Dr. Saulius Suziedelis and Didier Bertin. I believe they are every inch as sincerely interested in reconciliation between Jews and Lithuanians as Veisaite and Plasseraud. They lay the issues on the table; they believe the problems of the past and present must be confronted (or embraced) and thereby overcome, and then it will be possible to start with a clean slate. I believe in that kind of common-sense, organized and open approach. It defines Democracy.

Yes, I reiterate: the majority of the Soviet partisans in Lithuania during World War II were not Jewish. There were approximately 5,000 Soviet partisans in Lithuania operating in the forests around Vilnius. Your numbers of Jewish partisans total about 300, and the units they were in were the Jewish partisan groups which of course had the largest numbers of Jews.

I will stand by my statement that there was inconceivable savagery when hate and greed overwhelmed love and loyalty in Lithuania in 1941. And I do mean to imply that most of the Lithuanians were guilty to various degrees. I still maintain that 99.5 % of the local population did not participate in the murder of Jews. But the 0.5 % who did actively participate totaled at least 15,000 people. The ratio was 1:13 – one killer for every 13 Jews. The rest of the “good” people turned a blind eye. There were a small number of saints – those Lithuanians who risked their lives and their families to do what they considered the right thing, the Christian thing. To say that they were heroes does not do sufficient justice to the magnitude of their deeds.

During my trips to Lithuania I have befriended as many non-Jews as Jews. My dear friend Domicele, who died a few years ago at age 91, told me the story of the Holocaust in her small town. Many men and women, even with children in tow, went as spectators to the killing site to watch the executions. Once all the Jews were in the pits, the looting began. The killers were given first choice of the spoils. Very few did not participate in the frenzy of stealing whatever they could from Jewish homes. They felt “entitled.” Even the priest came with a wagon and loaded up furniture and other Jewish possessions. All this was going on while the earth at the mass graves was still moving. At night thieves came to the graves to extract gold teeth from corpses.

If this isn’t savagery, what else can you call it? It happened in towns and villages throughout the country. I heard the same stories from Jewish survivors and non-Jewish witnesses. It is documented heavily in books, memoirs and oral testimonies.

Your closing paragraph of your 22nd November article reads: “. . . What I would also like to see is to have the Soviet inflicted tragedies, including the “Kaniukai” slaughter, be recognized and acknowledged in the West for what they were, just as the German inflicted tragedies have been, and to have their perpetrators judged as the criminals they were and are. And I don’t see how this is disrespectful of the Jewish dead or the Jewish survivors, or how it has anything to do with the Holocaust.”

In theory your request does not sound unreasonable, but look at it this way: First of all, surely you accept by now that the “German” inflicted tragedies were inflicted mostly by the Lithuanian collaborators. In Lithuania the Germans did not have or need much manpower because they had all the help they needed from the locals. Secondly, Lithuania has not brought to justice a single Lithuanian war criminal, not even the ones deported from the US. Yet you would like to see the former Jewish partisans “judged” as war criminals?

Your article of 24th November is a detailed account of the relationship between Lithuanians and Jews during the period of Independent Lithuania which began at the close of World War I. Your closing paragraph: “The Jews of Lithuania in 1918-1920 contributed financially and politically to the re-establishment of Lithuania as an independent sovereign state. And they also fought and they died as warriors with weapons in their hands, next to their Lithuanian comrades. . . .”

Let me take the theme of Independent Lithuania to its conclusion by quoting from Lithuanian Jewish Communities:

“The Jews supported Lithuanian aspirations for independence. In 1919, the Lithuanian delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference sent a letter guaranteeing the Jews of Lithuania the ‘right of national-cultural autonomy.’ This was followed by laws allowing Jewish autonomy and a constitutional provision protecting the rights of large minorities. Jewish communal institutions were established and national conferences were held. The period 1919-1922 was the Golden Age for modern Jewish autonomy. Thereafter it decayed due to pressure from reactionary clerical groups and because the Jews were no longer needed to further Lithuanian nationalism.

“In the economic sphere, Lithuanian cooperatives were formed under governmental auspices which had the effect of cutting the Jews out of their traditional middleman merchandising positions. Many Jews earned their livelihood in crafts, some in the professions and a number in the import-export trade. As time passed, the numbers in each declined with the places taken by Lithuanians. The slogan was ‘Lithuania for the Lithuanians.’ . . . The Jews lived in poverty. Many Jews emigrated” (pages 38-39).

“Elections in May 1926 gave a majority to the left wing which was followed in December by an army coup d’état which instituted an extreme nationalist government and totalitarian rule. The constitution was soon abolished and with it many democratic provisions and rights.

“The program of the nationalists was based upon xenophobic nationalism and the church. Education was controlled to further these ideals. One of the objects of derision were the Jews who were considered foreigners. Lithuanian newspapers in the 1930s were so anti-Semitic, they easily rivaled Nazi publications in vitriolicity” (page 37).

“Most Jewish leaders welcomed the creation of a Lithuanian state in which Jews were promised relative autonomy. . . . it seemed that the Jews would have an opportunity to develop their national life. However, these minority rights were abrogated starting in 1924. The Lithuanian government encouraged the development of an ethnically Lithuanian urban middle class to compete with, and ultimately to displace, Jewish businesses” (The Litvak Legacy, Mark N. Ozer, 2009, page 81).

Excerpt from a letter dated 1 October 1924 from my uncle Dovid Shlomo to his brother who had managed to get to Havana a year earlier [translated from Yiddish]:

“Times are very critical here. There are many bankruptcies in Kovna, and this is spreading to us. They chased out the national council. They are requesting that Jewish signs be removed from businesses. We feel like we’re being driven out – like we’re being exiled.

“Dear Brother, maybe you have a way to get us out of here. It would be very good because things are getting worse, not better. . . .”

From a letter dated 15 February 1939 from Dovid Shlomo to his brother now in the US [translated from Yiddish]:

“The news from us is not cheerful. Firstly, they are not giving Jews any permits for restaurants. Just imagine: what will I be able to do? My mind is already drying up. Secondly, there is even a worse problem here: they are telling us to tear down the house. This is already underwritten by the powers-that-be. I can still appeal to the interior minister, but who knows what his thinking is. In the best case, if they would allow us to keep the house, then they would demand a renovation which would cost as much as 4,000 litas. So you can see how I can allow this.

“Now there are Christians who want to buy the house. They won’t be subject to any hardship. So I don’t know what to do. If you would bring us over, then I would sell the house. . . .”

First they were pushed out of their business, then out of their house, then marched to the ghetto and from there to the mass grave. That was the fate of my uncle Dovid Shlomo, his wife Tsila, their two little daughters and my grandmother who lived with them.

In regard to your post of 2nd December, I find your denunciation of Dr. Dovid Katz (a scholar you formerly admired) truly offensive and a strong case of public character assassination. It is the same tactic employed by the Soviet regime which you so abhor. If one expresses an opinion contrary to the party line of the government, the message must be crushed and the messenger discredited and denounced.

You speculate that Professor Katz was removed from his position at Vilnius University after 11 years because he doesn’t speak Lithuanian. It makes no sense that after a successful tenure of 11 years, Dr. Katz would suddenly be discontinued for not speaking Lithuanian. This is a ridiculous trumped-up charge. It is more likely that Katz’s efforts to tell the truth is the unspoken but real reason for his dismissal.  Long live Democracy in Lithuania!

Meanwhile there are encouraging signs from bold young Lithuanian voices. See
http://defendinghistory.com/%E2%80%98day-and-night%E2%80%99-is-an-epoch-making-play-for-modern-lithuania-by-birute-usinskaite/26186#more-26186

Both the reviewer, Birute Usinskaite, of a stage play which opened recently in Kaunas and the playwright of Day and Night, Daiva Cepauskaite, are to be applauded for their brave, clear messages.

See also:
http://defendinghistory.com/why-i-am-translating-rozka-korczaks-vilna-ghetto-memoir/26294

Says Evaldas Balciunas of Siauliai: “The Vilna Ghetto memoir of Rozka Korczak-Marle  . . . is unfortunately completely unknown to Lithuanians today. I have therefore decided to translate the book into Lithuanian.”

It is most powerful when Lithuanians themselves stand up and speak out. Let’s hope the examples set by courageous pioneers for truth and openness will trigger others to follow their lead. The country will benefit enormously from the sound of enlightened voices.

“Reconstructing our Lithuanian family”
at the Lithuanian Embassy in the U.S.

First joint Hanukkah –
Lithuanian Kucios Party

One bishop, four rabbis.

On Sunday December 11 at 2 pm, four Rabbis, a Bishop and members of the local Jewish and Lithuanian communities celebrated together at the first annual joint Hanukkah and Lithuanian Kucios Party at the Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania in the U.S.. The joint party was hosted by The Jewish Lithuanian Heritage Project and The Lithuanian-American Community of D.C. at the invitation of His Excellency Ambassador Zygimantas Pavilionis. The celebration is part of The Sunflower Project, an international effort to bridge the Jewish and Lithuanian communities through open dialogue, youth exchanges and shared cultural events.

Ambassador Pavilionis welcomed the crowd of over 130 people, “Lithuania has a rich history of many peoples and cultures, and today we are reconstructing our Lithuania family.”

Diana Vidutis, the President of The Lithuanian-American Community of D.C. introduced the children from the Lithuanian School, Kristijono Donelaičio Lituanistinė Mokykla of Washington, D.C., who performed Lithuanian Christmas songs and shared their Kucios traditions. Children from Congregation Har Shalom and other local synagogues performed short readings, taught the game of dreidel (spinning tops) and conducted a menorah lighting ceremony, central to the celebration of Hanukkah all over the world. Rabbi Elhanan "Sunny" Schnitzer, Spiritual Leader of Bethesda Jewish Congregation led the entire group in a Hanukkah sing-a-long.

Rabbi Deborah Bodin Cohen, the Director of Congregational Learning at Congregation Har Shalom, read from her newly published children’s Hanukkah book, “Engineer Ari & the Hanukkah Mishap.”

The Most Reverend Bishop Barry C. Knestout of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington and Rabbi Adam Raskin, Spiritual Leader of Congregation Har Shalom, jointly blessed the meal of traditional Hanukkah treats of latkes, doughnuts and gelt (chocolate coins) and Lithuanian Kucios. Bishop Knestout, explained his Lithuanian roots go back to his great grandfather who came from Lithuania to America.

Also attending were Rabbi Ken Cohen, Founder of the Vine and Fig Project, and Arthur Berger of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The Founder of the Sunflower Project, Harley Felstein, summed up the afternoon, “The First Annual Joint Hanukkah Kucios Party was a great success in bringing together the Jewish people and the Lithuania people in a united, positive celebration, deepening the roots of the Sunflower Project.”

Harley Felstein’s son, Benjamin, presenting a dreidel to Ambassador Pavilionis.

For more information:
Adrienne Oleck    aoleck@comcast.net or 240-305-7831

Harley Felstein     harleyfelstein@yahoo.com or 503-421-2848

Donatas Januta: Reply to Didier Bertin re Holocaust in Lithuania

Didier Bertin forgot to blame Lithuania for global warming

Donatas Januta

Didier Bertin forgot a few things in his list.   Global warming, the Greek financial crisis, and  the price of fish in Denmark, are just a few of  the things that come to mind, for which he could equally blame Lithuania.  But let’s look at what he included in his list.

He first objects to the fact that Lithuania desires to question, not to persecute or prosecute, but merely to question, witnesses to admitted criminal acts, and has in some cases asked Interpol for assistance.  What are these criminal acts?   Here is testimony of some of those Jewish  partisan bandits, about the indiscriminate murdering of civilian villagers, whose only crime was occasionally defending their homes from robberies:   

Abraham Zeleznikow:  “Partisans came around the village, everything was torched, every animal, every person was killed.”     

Paul (Pol) Bagriansky: “In a small clearing in the forest six bodies of women of various ages and two bodies of men were lying around in a half circle.  All bodies were undressed and lying on their backs.  One man at a time was shooting in between the legs of the dead bodies.  When the bullet would strike the nerve, the body would react as if it were alive.  It would shiver, quiver for a few seconds.  All men of the unit were participating in this cruel play, laughing, in a wild frenzy.”

Abraham Zeleznikow:  "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.”

Contrary to Bertin’s false statement, Lithuania is seeking to question these witnesses not because they are Holocaust survivors, nor because they were simply members of  Soviet .partizan groups, but because they were witnesses or participants in criminal acts.  While Israel searches the world over for the last geriatric former prison guard, Lithuania, according to Bertin, is not entitled even to ask questions of persons who have admitted to having witnessed  criminal acts or been members of groups which committed criminal acts.

As far as Lithuania not outlawing the Swastika and not forbidding neo-Nazis or others with whose views Bertin or even myself might not agree, all that is permitted and protected by the constitution in the USA as well, as pointed out by  Evan Zimroth, professor of Jewish Studies at the City University of New York.    But Bertin would have Lithuania grant freedom of  speech and freedom of expression only to those who agree with his views.    I assume that Bertin is not displeased with statutes in Israel and other countries, including in Lithuania, which prohibit Holocaust denial,  but he condemns Lithuania because it also prohibits denying Lithuania’s painful 50 year occupation by the Soviets.  Of course, Bertin is not the only one in the world who is seeking to impose a double standard here.

Bertin refers to the non-renewal of Dovid Katz’s  contract at Vilnius’ University and speculates  that it was so done because Katz did not agree with the opinion of  the government.  But Bertin  does not know the reason for the non-renewal.   Dovid Katz’s previous employment with the Yiddish Institute at Oxford was also terminated, and at that time Mr. Katz claimed that he was a victim of anti-semitism.  But that was not true.   Eventually Mr. Katz  withdrew that claim of anti-semitism, and indicated that he knew it was an untrue claim even when he made it.   See  Dan Cohn-Sherbook’s article of January 16, 1998.   And previous to that,  Dovid Katz’s employment with Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies was not uneventful either.  See the Dec. 21, 1994, article in The Guardian about his suspension from that institution for financial irregularities.

So we really don’t know the reason for Dovid Katz’s leaving Vilnius’ University.   For example, Mr. Katz  taught and lived in Lithuania at a Lithuanian University for 11 years, but never acquired any sort of competence in the Lithuanian language.  That might have been a factor as well.    In fact, it is ironic that Mr. Katz has for some time now presented himself as a knowledgable expert on present-day Lithuania and Lithuanians.   He has even postulated a theory, with suitable academic jargon, that the “common people” of Lithuania are good, but it is the “elite” who are the problem because they are the ones who do not agree with Mr. Katz’s  opinions regarding the German and Soviet atrocities in Lithuania during World War II.

But how can Mr. Katz possibly have any insight into Lithuanians, be they “common” or “elite”, when he does not know their language?  When I met with him in Vilnius,  he freely admitted that he does not speak Lithuanian.  So, he could not read Lithuanian newspapers to see what they were saying.   He could not watch and understand Lithuanian television.  He could not mingle with Lithuanians, whatever their social class.  He could not even understand what persons on the street, or in Lithuania’s sidewalk cafes or bars or restaurants were saying. Mr. Katz spent 11 years in Lithuania in a self-imposed cocoon, isolated from the people among whom he lived. Under such circumstances, it seems that Mr. Katz probably knows as much about present-day Lithuania and Lithuanians, as the average Lithuanian peasant knows about the tribal culture of the Watusis in  Africa.

There are other points where Mr. Bertin is totally off the mark, but I have covered most of those other issues in my previous postings in this series, and I will leave for another time the defense of Lithuania with respect to such matters as global warming and the Greek financial crisis.  But, I do have one more question.

According to The Holocaust Education Trust of Britain,  out of  168,000 Jews in Lithuania,  140,000  or 83% were killed, and in Poland 2,900,000 Jews, or 88% of Poland’s Jews were killed.   Other sources, e.g., “Atlas of the Holocaust” show similar relative figures.   According to Israeli historian Dina Porat, 99.5% of Lithuanians were neither directly nor indirectly involved in the German organized killing of Jews. So why is Lithuania being repeatedly demonized by Efraim Zuroff, now also by Dovid Katz, and their followers, while Poland is being given a relatively free pass?   Are the lives of the 2,900,000 killed Polish Jews worth less than the 140,000 killed in Lithuania?    Or is it simply that Poland being ten times the size and population of Lithuania has ten times as many resources – financial, political, and media access - with which to respond to false and exaggerated accusations, while the small country of Lithuania is an easier target because it has fewer resources with which to defend itself?

Donatas Januta: Reply to Olga Zabludoff re Holocaust in Lithuania

Litvaks: Lithuania’s warriors

Donatas Januta

Dear Olga,

You and I disagree on a number of issues, including the contribution or non-contribution of Jews to Lithuania's economy.  But please don't take that to mean that I am not willing to acknowledge real and important Jewish contributions to Lithuania.    I wrote and published much of the following material in the Lithuanian language as an article in a Lithuanian newspaper a few years ago.  As I send this off to VilNews, we are heading into Thanksgiving, and I wish you and your family a pleasant holiday.  I will look forward to continuing our dialogue next week, including about our differences and about our common ground.

*       *       *

For 600 years in Lithuania Jews and Lithuanians lived side by side, but separate. Lithuanians were peasant farmers. Jews were urban merchants, traders, craftsmen. Of all European Jews, those of Lithuania interacted the least with the people among whom they lived.  When they met, it was almost exclusively in the marketplace. This separation allowed the Lithuanian Jews, who called themselves “Litvakes”, to develop and maintain their unique and rich culture with little outside influence.

But there were times when the two groups consciously and earnestly supported each other for the common good. One of those times was at the beginning of the Lithuanian Republic in 1918-1924.  Lithuanian Jews fought and worked for Lithuanian independence, and they also obtained significant autonomy in the country.  A Ministry for Jewish Affairs was established.  Jews had their own representatives in Lithuania’s Parliament (“Seimas”), and by law the Jewish community was given the power to impose taxes, as well full rights over education and religious matters of their community.   This article is a small glimpse into that time when Jews and Lithuanians fought and worked together to achieve all those goals.

*     *     *

Citizens! Take up arms, donate money, goods, everyting that can help the army, that can strengthen the country in battles against its enemies.

Those are the words, addressed to the Lithuanian Jewish community, in Yiddish and Lithuanian, of Ozeris Finkelšteinas, an attorney in Kaunas, an active member of the Lithuanian Jewish community, a member of the Lithuanian Founding Parliament, on October 9, 1920, after Želigowski’s Polish division invaded Vilnius and threatened the rest of Lithuania.

Jews were among those who, in the 1918-1923 wars of Lithuanian Independence, with their blood and suffering won Independence and freedom for Lithuania. In an honored place in the Kaunas choral synagogue, there used to hang a large black marble plaque, with the names written in gold letters of approximately 60 Jewish youths who had died fighting for Lithuanian indpendence.

One of those names was that of Robinzonas Leizeris, who was killed in the autumn of 1920 in battle with Poles near Druskininkai. Leizeris’ comrade, who fought alongside Leizeris and was captured by the Poles, spoke about Leizeris’ last hours. When it was suggested to Leizeris that they withdraw from the much larger Polish force, Leizeris replied: “The outcome is clear – it’s either death or captivity. . . . I’d rather die than end up in the hated Poles’ clutches.”

All who retreated then continued to fight in the new location: “We fought until it was no longer possible, and so . . . we end up prisoners. They disarm and line us up. We continue to hear thunderous gunfire. Comrade Robinzonas Leizeris has not lost hope and is  still shooting. A Polish officer hit by his well-aimed shot fell at our feet. Robinzonas Leizeris was approximately 50 paces from us. Holding his rifle at his chest, his face aflame and aiming at the enemy, he yelled: one, two, three . . . . Furious Polish officers ran towards the unknown warrior yelling ‘pšiakrėv’. Our Robinzonas Leizeris was shot dead by them with their Brownings, and left to lie where he fell.”

*       *       *

Lithuanian Jews, calling themselves “Litvakes”, towards the end of the First World War, just as Lithuanians, did not wait for compulsory mobilization, but on their own initiative joined partisan groups to defend Lithuania – in the Panevėzys partisan group, 14 Jews fought against the Poles. In 1919 in Joniškis, when Lithuania still did not have its own army, the Jews themselves formed, outfitted and fed a batallion of Jewish volunteers.  When mobilization was finally announced, this already formed Jewish batallion was one of the first groups of soldiers of the Lithuanian army.

J. Šapiro, a Jew from Joniškis, in 1934 wrote about the forming of that batallion: “The joint historical fate of Jews and Lithuanians, having dragged the same czarist yoke for centuries, awakened in us Lithuania’s Jews, a consciousness of the same fate for our peoples, and a resolve to win, together, an indpendent nation. . . . I initiated a broad action to recruit Jewish volunteers. For that purpose I visited several places, explaining and persuading, and the Jewish youth came out in droves. . . . Some of those early volunteers fell in battle, and their graves are scattered throughout Lithuania’s fields.

Volfas Kaganas, distinguished in battle multiple times – against the Bolsheviks, against the Bermontists, and again against the Poles – was twice awarded the Vytis Cross for bravery.  One of his deeds is described: “On November 23, 1919, in combat against the German Bermontists near Radviliškis junior officer Volfas Kaganas, attacking the enemy in the town, was injured by artillery shrapnel, but he did not abandon the formation. Quickly, he bandaged his own wound, and continued the attack with his corps, in that manner encouraging others. The enemy was ejected from Radviliškis.

Later, Lithuanian Jews established an association of Jewish soldiers who had fought in the wars of Lithuania’s Independence, which in 1933 had chapters in 33 locations.  The association had over 3,000 members. Among them were volunteers from the very beginning and participants in the liberation of Klaipėda.   19 Jewish warriors were awarded the Vytis Cross and other medals for distinguishing themselves in battle.   Two Jewish Vytis Cross warriors, who were
cut to pieces by the Poles, rest somewhere in the Alytus cemetery.   All of Lithuania’s Jewish burials suffered during the German and Soviet occupations, and attempts are now being made to find those two warriors’ burial places. 

During the wars of Lithuanian Independence, the Lithuanian army had 9 Jewish officers.  Among the first class of graduates from the Lithuanian Military Academy were six Jews:  Goldbergas, Goniondskis. Gotlibas, Gensqas, Krisknianskis, and Mogilevskis.

Historian Dov Levin, born in Kaunas, Lithuania in 1925, and living in Israel since World War II, who is, in general, not kindly disposed towards Lithuanians, writes that after World War I, Lithuanian  Jews understood and knew that life in Lithuania was  better for them than for Jews in the neighboring countries, and for that reason “it is easy to understand their general willingness  to serve in the Lithuanian army, and such patriotic associations as the Vilnius Liberation Commettee, and why the students of  Kaunas’ Hebrew gymnasium offered themselves as volunteers to serve in the Lithuanian Riflemen’s Association (“Šauliai”) against the Polish legions which were marching towards Vilnius.”

*       *       *

During the Lithuanian Wars of Independence, supplying weapons to the Lithuanian Army was not an easy task.   At that time Lithuania was surrounded by enemies on all sides – Poles, Bolsheviks, Bermontiks, and, of course, Germans who were still there and were the masters of  the land.  Though Lithuania may have had funds to buy armaments, it was difficult to find anyone who would sell them to Lithuania.    Boris Šeinas, a Jew from Kaunas, agreed to support the army on credit, in other words, to risk his economic existence and his life, on the gamble that Lithuania would succeed against its enemies.  And so, he provided weapons,  horses, wagons, clothing, boots, bread.

In the beginning, the Germans prohibited the Lithuanians from establishing their own army, and a state of war existed  between Poland and Lithuania.  On one trip Šeinas illegally crossed into Poland to buy some horses for the Lithuanian army.  He was herding 25 horses back to Lithuania and the Poles caught him.  The Poles grabbed the horses, but Šeinas managed to escape – if he had not, he would have faced a military tribunal and been executed.   After hiding out for a week, Šeinas, with his helpers one dark night grabbed the horses from the Poles’ stables and eventually led them into Lithuania. They say that along the way, the Kaišiadoris pharmacist Morkunas, offered Šeinas 7,500 marks for each horse, but Šeinas turned it down and sold all the horses to the Lithuanian Army for the agreed price of 5,000 marks per horse.

One of the founding volunteers of the Lithuanian Army, genereal Vincas Grigaliūnas-Glovackis, himself  distinguished in battles, evaluated Šeinas’ and other Jewish merchants contributions to the wars of Independence:  “To keep benefical for us contacts with the Germans, to buy up weapons, to maintain secret warehouses with war material, to transport and deliver weapons .  .  .  Šeinas, Zisle, Frenkelis, Aronsonas and others carried out special assignments with true love of  their country, placing their live in danger, not  begrudging either money or labor.”

Jews also worked in the political arena in support of Lithuania’s Independence.  Simon Rozenbaum, having wide influence in  Europe’s Jewish community raised and promoted Lithuania’s Indpendence at the Versailles Peace Conference.    Also, in the 1919-1920 negotiations between Lithuania and the Soviet Union it was not a coincidence that Lithuania succeeded in getting favorable terms – representing Lithuania, one of the negotiators was Simon Rozenbaum, while the chief Soviet negotiator was the Jew Adolf Yoffe, and his superior was the Litvak Maxim Litvinov, who was from a Jewish family in Byalistok. 

The Jews of Lithuania in 1918-1920 contributed financially and politically to the re-establishment of Lithuania as an independent sovereign state.   And they also fought and they died as warriors with weapons in their hands, next to their Lithuanian comrades.    It is an enormous tragedy, and a most sad tragedy that two decades later, both groups – Jews and Lithuanians – were to suffer greatly, and separately.  But for the brief few years at the start of the 20th century, they fought and worked together, shoulder to shoulder.

Didier Bertin: Reply to Yves Plasseraud re Holocaust in Lithuania

No more excuses for the policies and provocations of the Lithuanian authorities!

20 November 2011

By Didier BERTIN
President of the Society for the Promotion of the European Human Rights Model

I want to thank my (French) compatriot, Yves Plasseraud for taking the time to reply to me. He also mentions in his reply that he had helped the organization of Lithuanian-Jewish events in the early 1990s, a most laudable achievement for which we are all in his debt. But being rooted in an earlier milieu can truly rob one of the perspectives needed to see when unwanted changes occur.

What Yves Plasseraud saw at conferences in the early 1990s does not harmonize with what has been happening in Lithuania in the last few years.

As Yves Plasseraud knows Lithuania from period after the end of Communism he had probably witnessed the fact the Lithuanian citizens expelled from USA from the years 1990 because they were war criminals were all left free when they went back to Lithuania after having being stripped of US citizenship. I read and was told that many received hero’s welcomes. What did Yves Plasseraud think of these events?

What does Yves Plasseraud think of the defamation campaign that started from 2006 and proceeds until now against Holocaust survivors? On August 30th 2011, Interpol was sent by Lithuanian authorities to disturb an 86 year old Holocaust survivor and veteran of the anti-Nazi resistance.

I am glad to learn that there exist museums making reference to the Holocaust other than the green house, but the Holocaust was unknown for the Genocide museum when I visited it. And now, there is just one little cell in the basement opened last month after the very campaign by human rights experts that so upsets Plasseraud. The new basement “Holocaust cell” (unannounced on the main floor from any visible place) does indeed mark the Holocaust while distorting or denying completely the important local complicity that led Lithuania to have the highest extermination of all Europe (more than 95%).

Yves Plasseraud tries to excuse the Lithuanian authorities in pretending that the situation is worse in neighbouring countries in the region; this is not accurate and Lithuanian authorities have generated a unique phenomenon on seven lamentable counts:

1―No other countries in the EU have sent the police or Interpol to chase Holocaust survivors because they wrote what they saw during the war and what they wrote in their memoirs or published books.
2―No other countries in EU have sent prosecutors or police to look for Holocaust survivors because they survived by joining the anti-Nazi (i.e. Soviet) resistance during the years of the alliance against Hitler in World War II.
3― No other countries in EU have legalized the Swastika as Lithuania did in 2010.

4―No other countries of the EU threaten of two years of prison for those who do not share its opinion on the Holocaust and on the so called “Soviet genocide of Lithuanians”. This threat is more typical of such dictatorial States as the former the communist countries. Even Hungary, now ruled by a far-right government, will limit in 2012 the threat for similar reasons to the exclusion of educational systems.
5―No other countries of the EU have discontinued or fired professors at university as Lithuania did because they did not agree with the opinion of the government.

6―No other countries of the EU have declared a year of commemoration and honour for members of militias who participated in the perpetration of the Holocaust (let alone for groups like the Lithuanian Activist Front that began the butchery in many locations before the Germans even arrived).
7―No other countries of the EU authorize neo-Nazi parades on the main boulevards of their capital during their National Day.

Yves Plasseraud, as a friend of Lithuania owes to the fine people of this country to abandon apologetics and hold this country to the same high standards he would desire for our own country –France – or any other European country.

Membership of the EU involves rights ― in particular the European subsidies and duties ― in particular in respect of its Charter of Fundamental Rights especially since the treaty of Lisbon signed in 2009.

The European Union is still under construction and has not yet the bodies, which would permit it to efficiently monitor the harmony of the application of democratic rules in each of its numerous member states, but we do think it will come soon. It is vital for the EU to be not only an economic association. Human rights must remain high on the agenda.

For more information on these topics, please see  www.DefendingHistory.com, www.OperationLastChange.org, and WWW.EURO-SOCIAL-HR.ORG.

Donatas Januta: Reply to Olga Zabludoff re Holocaust in Lithuania

Embracing history between Lithuanians and Jews can’t be a one way street

Donatas Januta

Dear Olga,
 
You are very eloquent in stating your position.  But even people of good will and good intentions can have honest differences of opinion, and sometimes are simply wrong.  I am glad that you and I agree on the very basic matter of our debate, i.e., that the Holocaust was the worst  genocide in European history, and that Jews and Lithuanians both suffered terribly during World War II and its aftermath.  

I sincerely try hard to find common ground on the issues under discussion, until I finally have to admit that perhaps on some of them, it is not possible.  As I said in my first post in this series, there are some details that we may never agree on, because Lithuanians and Jews each view those events from separate experiences, from a separate history, from a separate reality.  Over the years, there has also been inaccurate information disseminated on both sides – some intentionally, some perhaps unintentionally due to inevitable human biases, and some as wishful thinking.

Speaking about your perceived contributions by Jews to Lithuania’s economy, you say if Jews had not been present in Lithuania, the country’s economy may have been even worse.  True.  But if the Lithuanian’s themselves had been allowed to have a broader hand in the economy, it might have been a lot better, too.  That’s also true.  We simply don’t know.  So, I am not sure that this type of speculation is helpful.  In replying to you I was merely speaking of what was, not what might or might not have been.
Let me respond further to your “Logic 101” lesson about the rules of supply and demand.   Even in the case of  low prices due to the under-demand or over-supply that you refer to, if  there is no monopoly and no price-fixing, there is still competition and bargaining, even though it happens at low price levels.   My point was that there was no competition, no bargaining, all the buyers had agreed on the same low price.   That’s what’s called price-fixing in a monopoly. 

Please recall that when I wrote about the Jewish traders all offering the same below-subsistence  low price for farmers’ entire year’s labors, I expressly stated that I was not passing judgment on how that situation came about, meaning I was not putting blame on anyone. That would be a separate issue.  I was simply responding to your comment, by saying that it is not easy to evaluate the contribution of Jewish merchants to Lithuania’s economy, and that  it is generally accepted that monopolies have a negative impact on a country’s economy. 

You ask what has changed to alter my earlier favorable impression of  Dovid Katz.  I thought I illustrated that in one of my previous posts in this discussion, when I referred to Katz’ article with its screaming headline claiming that Lithuania’s vote on Palestinian membership in UNESCO, i.e., Lithuania’s vote in support of  Israel’s position, was, according to Katz, simply an example of Lithuania’s “duplicity”.  If anything, it was an example of Lithuania’s cowardice in succumbing to pressure from Israel and Israel’s ally the United States.  But, if Lithuania had voted against Israel’s position, Katz would then have called it an example of  Lithuania’s “anti-Semitism”. Lithuania can’t seem to do anything right, as far as Katz  is concerned.  Katz has gone from being a respected scholar and is now becoming simply another pamphleteer. 

As for Zuroff, I still remember what he said when the Los Angeles Lithuanian Community  declined an ill-conceived suggestion by a self-serving publicist to invite some non-existent “Yiddish dancers” to a folk dance festival.  Zuroff attributed it to Lithuanian anti-Semitism, and said that it was to be expected, for the Lithuanian émigré community consisted largely of  descendants of war criminals.  

So Zuroff   blames not only an entire ethnic group, but also later generations.  Demonizing entire ethnic groups - where have we seen that before?     Am I being “ultra-nationalist” when I take exception to that?       I can partially understand Zuroff.  He has a constituency to satisfy and a mission, and keeping people emotionally worked up rather than viewing things rationally and objectively, is part of his fundraising tactics.   But both,  Zuroff, and now Katz, are simply sowing more discord between peoples.

Is Irena Veisaitė, who in her post here states she agrees with what I said about Zuroff – is she one of the “far-right ultra-nationalists” in Lithuania that you refer to?   Is  Yves Plasseraud, who in his article here decries the “demonization” of Lithuania, one as well?   Or are they, intelligent, thoughtful,  rational and well-informėd people, who sincerely hope for  a reconciliation, rather than further discord, between Jews and Lithuanians?   

Consider this about the  Kaniukai village slaughter.  You say that  the Jewish partisans attacked a heavily armed village, and that there was a battle.  Some of the Jewish partisans who participated in their early memoirs did boast of a “battle” and of “house to house” fighting.  No one disputes that whatever happened there, that except for those who escaped,  the entire village was wiped out – every man, woman, child, farm animal, and dwelling.  But in a January 31, 1944 radiogram, the head of the Soviet partisan movement in that area, Genrikas Zimanas, informed Antanas Sniečkus, the head of the Lithuanian Communist Party, that the partisans had suffered no casualties.  This is confirmed by other sources as well.

So, how  is it that in this “battle” against this “heavily armed” group,  with “house to house” fighting, there were no casualties on the partisan side?  What kind of  battle could that have been?   Wiping out an entire “heavily armed” village and not suffering a single casualty – that’s a miracle akin to the parting of the Red Sea.

 The archival records about Kaniukai, mostly Soviet and Polish but some Lithuanian, show that this was an attack on a simple village, like any other village, where a few men might have had some old hunting rifles for self-defense.  Many of  the victims were burned to death alive in their homes.  Others were slaughtered in unspeakable ways.  The Jewish partisans who had boasted about the “battle” in their early memoirs, after being questioned about some of the facts,  even they backed off  from those early claims.  This was simply a total criminal slaughter of ordinary villagers who had in the past tried to defend their livelihood against the partisans/bandits.  So, Olga, you are simply wrong on your facts. 

In assessing the Jewish partisan movement in Rudninkai forest, from which the attack against Kaniukai came, Israeli istorian Dov Levin, a former member of one of those partisan units, explains these kinds of actions by stating that in those partisan units there was “wide-spread social anomie”, i.e., the collapse of the social structures governing society, which included “open hate and hostility towards the local population”.   How else could you explain former partisans’ Rachel Margolin’s, Abraham Zelnikow,  Zalman Wylozni’s, and Joseph Harmatz’  admitted acts that I cited in my October 26, 2011  post here.  Those were and are criminal acts against civilians.  Those were  not “battles” against Nazis. 

You say that the majority of Soviet partisans were not Jewish.  I can’t speak for the Soviet partisans on all fronts, but here are some statistics of the ones in Rudninkai forest.    The partisan group “For Victory” had 106 Jews out of a total 119 members;  “Avenger” had 100 Jews out of a total 106 members;  “Struggle” had 58 Jews out of 76 total; and “Death to Facism” had 39 Jews of a total of 60.   There were others.

Why are you against investigation of, as you put it, “unproven” crimes?   That is the purpose of an investigation – to verify or to find evidence which would either “prove” or “disprove” a crime.  If the crime has already been “proven” there is nothing to investigate.

You make the generalized statement that in Lithuania in 1941 there was “inconceivable savagery” when “hate and greed replaced love and loyalty”, as if that applied across the board to all Lithuanians.  Yet, previously you agreed that 99.5% of Lithuanians were neither directly nor indirectly involved in the killings. You previously blamed the 99.5% for standing by doing nothing.   The Germans announced that anyone harboring Jews would be killed together with their family.  And everyone had seen that the Germans were serious about killing.   It is a wonder that as many Lithuanians did risk their own lives and those of their families to shelter Jews.  What could the others of  the 99.5%  have done that would have changed the German organized  outcome?   

There are other points on which you and I disagree – the very definition of what constitutes genocide, the so-called “double genocide” red herring, the  June 1941 uprising against the Soviets,  but at this point it is not entirely clear what our discussion has accomplished.  We seem to have arrived at an impasse.
Saulius Suziedėlis, another contributor to VilNews, says that Lithuanians should embrace the history of 1941.  But which one?  Do we embrace Irena Veisate and Yves Plasseraud’s version, or Zuroff and now Katz’ version?   That’s where the disagreements lie.   I personally find a lot to embrace in Dov Levin’s version, who is not only a historian, but who also was there.

You say you want the history of the Holocaust presented truthfully.  So do I.   But it should not be a one way street.   What I would also like to see, is to have the Soviet inflicted tragedies, including the “Kaniukai” slaughter, be recognized and acknowledgment in the West for what they were,  just as the German inflicted tragedies have been, and to have their perpetrators judged as the criminals that they were and are.  And I don’t see how that is disrespectful of the Jewish dead or the Jewish survivors, or how it has anything to do with the Holocaust.

Dear Olga, 

I find your discussion with Donatas very interesting. While I leave to Donatas to answer your other points, there is a couple of side issues that I do not completely agree with. 

I find your Logic 101 and the discussion about the supply and demand not quite accurate. Let me explain why. 

In the part of Russia that used to be Lithuania the resistance to Russification was very strong. So strong that the Tsarist authorities banned the written Lithuanian in 1864 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithuanian_press_ban) and exiled many local noble families to Siberia. Those families owned mills and controlled some of the trade - so that was lost. At the same time - the Lithuanian Jews had the so called "Golden age" - conditions for their trade improved, and as the local educated people were not allowed to return to their native country (e.g. the 'father' of modern Lithuanian nation J. Basanavicius was assigned to Bulgaria - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basanavicius), various additional business opportunities arose. It is no secret that Jews accepted Russian language and culture more readily than Lithuanians - and were better positioned to take advantage of the opportunities that were there in Imperial Russia. So for Logic 101 - could one say that some of the Jews took economic advantage of the circumstance by accepting the foreign (Russian) regime more readily? So for Logic 102 - where does that put them with respect to the local population - that was Catholic and rabidly anti-Russian? 

In addition to this, I would like to give the following quote from soc.culture.baltics 

"Even in the late 19th - early 20th century, when the Black Hundreds instigated and carried out pogroms throughout the Pale, the old Grand Duchy was far behind the Ukraine and Bessarabia in those, and I haven't ever read of any major pogroms on the territory of today's Rep. of Lithuania (if anyone knowns of one, please let us know). In the interwar period, the situation of the Jews in the Rep. of Lith. was one of the best in Eastern Europe. While probably not completely equal, they did not suffer such humiliating discrimination as, e.g., in Poland after Pilsudski's death (I have heard enough personal recollections of that from a relative of mine who lived in the 1930ies Wilno). There is little reason to talk about a "country with anti-Semitic tradition" in the case of Lithuania. That is, before WWII, when things abruptly changed. " 

As for supply and demand - this applies to a free market. If you own the market - you are in position to set the demand. As simple as that, no?

Tautietis

Olga Zabludoff: Reply to Donatas Januta re Holocaust in Lithuania

Let me try once more to convince you.

Olga Zabludoff

Dear Donatas,

The ball is now in my court and I am happy to continue the discussion. It might be that you and I have an irreconcilable difference of opinion on the subject of Jewish contributions to the Lithuanian economy, or -- as you maintain -- the lack of Jewish contributions. Let me try once more to convince you.

You point out that on the eve of World War 1 the economy of “Mother Russia,” which had an insignificant Jewish population, and the economy of Lithuania, which had a substantial Jewish population, were pretty much equal – depressed and backward. You emphasize that in spite of the fact that Jews participated in Lithuania’s economy but did not participate in the economy of czarist Russia, there was no virtual difference in the two economies.

Logic 101: If Jews had not been present in Lithuania at the time and therefore had not participated in its economy, perhaps Lithuania’s economy might have been even weaker than that of “Mother Russia.” Participating in a nation’s economy does not mean controlling the economy of that nation, let alone an entire region. Conditions in Eastern Europe during that period were what they were; the result was a weak and undeveloped economy.

Your grandfather in Ylakiai obviously was a kind and generous man to have opened his home to a Jewish family whose house had burned down. Good neighbors helped less fortunate ones. Just as your father held fond memories of the time the Jewish family had lived in his house, my father told me stories of how his mother, a widow with eight children, had been beloved by most of the Lithuanians in her town.

My grandmother owned a grocery-and-whatever store – the front room of the house. Often Lithuanian neighbors would come without money to pay for what they needed. It was known that Rochel-Leah never turned anyone away. She gave them “credit.” Sometimes she collected her debts; more often they just accumulated.

Stories like these of their daily lives – Lithuanians helping Jews and Jews helping Lithuanians – drive home the point that these two peoples could live side by side in harmony and friendship for many centuries, each maintaining its distinct traditions and religious beliefs. Which makes even more inconceivable the savagery of the summer of 1941 when hate and greed replaced love and loyalty.

But now, back to the subject of monopolies and price-fixing. Supply and Demand is one of the most fundamental concepts of economics. It is the backbone of a market economy. Perhaps the Lithuanian farmers in the first half of the 20th century did not understand this, but surely an educated man like you knows all about supply and demand. You make it sound like a conspiracy of the Jews to cheat the farmers and producers by paying them lower prices. In some years over-production of crops created a staggering drop in prices. The Jewish shop-keepers did not buy at criminally low prices in the market and sell at criminally high prices in their shops. The farmers themselves, whether they realized it or not, were creating the market, the cause and effect, or supply and demand. Ignorance can be very dangerous. The theory that the Jews were creating monopolies and fixing prices could easily have fueled the rage of the Lithuanians against the Jews in the summer of 1941. All they needed was the Nazi propaganda to ignite the fuse.

Yes, I know that politics can be false and politicians can deliver gratuitous speeches because it serves their agendas or pleases their hosts. So I concur that Mr. Kubilius may have been generous in his praise of Jewish involvement in Lithuania’s development of science, economy and culture. But, on the other hand, I doubt very much he went as far as total fabrication. While Lithuania may not have developed space scientists or nuclear physicists, certainly they had their share of physicians, physicists and chemists. And I can assure you that Jews were in the highest percentages per capita in these scientific fields. That’s because education was among the highest values in Jewish culture.

You mention that Dovid Katz impressed you as thoughtful and helpful in your meetings and communications with him. But lately he has “gone off the deep end.” What has happened to alter your former favorable impression of him? If you will visit
http://holocaustinthebaltics.com/7-solutions 
written just one month ago by Dovid Katz, you will read a concise and perfectly lucid recommendation for improved relations between the Lithuanian government and the Jewish community. While anyone is free to disagree with Professor Katz’s views, is it unconscionable that a witch hunt is currently in effect against those who dare to have a second opinion in a European Union NATO democracy. It is my understanding that the problem is not between most Lithuanians and most Jews but between the Jewish community and the Lithuanian government which appeases the ultra-nationalist element.

Likewise, regarding Efraim Zuroff’s viewpoints on the subject of Lithuanian-Jewish relations, I see no reason to malign him. It is a sad symptom of the ultra-nationalist influence in Lithuanian politics that the image of an evil Zuroff is perpetrated against a man who spends his life representing the victims of the Holocaust. He asks only that suspected war criminals be given a fair trial in their own country. Is it not a cause for pause for Lithuanians that Dr. Zuroff was awarded a medal by the president of Croatia for the same work for which he is so vilified by the far-right in Lithuania?

While, as I stated in my last post, I see no reason to have to defend Professor Katz, let me make a few points about his character so that he can be judged fairly. After decades as an acclaimed educator – the first eighteen years at Oxford University followed by a year at Yale, where he turned down a multi-year offer in favor of a position at Vilnius University, remaining there for eleven years – he was discontinued. No reason was given for his termination other than informal boasts that he should never have spoken out in the Western press about the persecution of Holocaust survivors who had joined the partisans.

Does it not give cause for pause that the country's last Jewish professor, and its only Yiddish professor, was dismissed because he had published articles in respectable Western publications protesting the government's campaign against Holocaust survivors who joined the resistance? Is this how Lithuania is going to build a civic society where free debate and disagreement are nurtured among the younger generations?

I have never heard the argument that the Green House is the only Holocaust Museum in Lithuania. But it is the only Holocaust Museum in Vilnius. The Museum of Tolerance, while a part of the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum, is more of a cultural museum than anything else. I recall that the exhibits are displays of the works of Jewish artists and sculptors and other similar genres. The Museum of Genocide, which should not be called a “genocide” museum, is of course dedicated to Soviet crimes in Lithuania. Despicable and cruel as were the deportations, imprisonments, executions and tortures, the Soviets did not commit genocide on the people of Lithuania. So why is this museum called a genocide museum with not a word of mention of the Holocaust? That is, until last month when -- thanks to Dovid Katz, Efraim Zuroff and others who brought the issue to the attention of the world -- a small exhibit was finally added in the cellar.

Concerning the alleged slaughter of the Kaniukai villagers by anti-Nazi partisans, let me be very clear: IF there is a single specific charge of willful action against a civilian by veterans of any side, then of course that person should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. But that is not what happened here. Yes, the Soviet partisans attacked a village whose occupants had been heavily armed by the Nazis and who were killing off partisans over many months. Yes, there was a battle. But in recent years, prosecutors have started a campaign against only Jewish survivors of the anti-Nazi partisan movement without an iota of evidence, without any charge, with a horrific campaign of defamation that is a disgrace to modern Lithuania. The majority of Soviet partisans were not even Jewish.

How dare a state prosecutor target survivor-partisans as war criminals when these same prosecutors have failed to bring a single Lithuanian murderer to justice? How dare they “investigate” unproven “crimes” while the government and parliament honors the memory of the killers with the white armbands (the Lithuanian Activist Front)? And while courts legalize the display of swastikas in public? Dovid Katz has spoken out against this gross abuse of prosecutorial powers in the country, putting the issue into the public arena and into history. Now, of course, Lithuanians who would like to speak out are afraid to do so because they too would lose their jobs and careers.

Please walk with me through the barbed wire of the double-genocide concept. As I have noted in earlier posts, clearly there was only one genocide. If history teachers throughout Lithuania will teach students about two concurrent genocides; if textbooks will be slanted to teach that same concept to children and youth, their education will be a jaded version of the true history of the World War 11 era.

Children are not born with evil. Unless they are taught to understand the consequences of hatred and bigotry, unless they are taught and shown what pain and suffering does to others, they simply won’t know how to make judgments or how to choose values. If the Holocaust is taught with a view to protecting youth from the truth, the authors of a distorted history will bear the responsibility of their contrivances.

Donatas Januta: Reply to Olga Zabludoff re Holocaust in Lithuania

The ‘Green House’ has been
used as a red herring*

Donatas Januta

Dear Olga,
 
You are absolutely correct that the Jews had little choice but earn their living as merchants and traders.  I was not judging how they got there.   But regardless how they got there, I was only responding to their activities there, to your claim regarding Jewish contribution to the Lithuanian nation’s economy.  
 
Let’s examine it from another perspective.    During czarist Russian times, Jews were excluded from Russia major, or “mother Russia”, and were relegated to what was considered the Pale of Settlement, such as Lithuania.   So, rather than comparing the economies of Eastern Europe to Western Europe (though German Prussia, very much part of Western Europe, was right next door to Lithuania) let’s compare the economies of that part of Eastern Europe which had a substantial Jewish population, i.e. Lithuania, with that part of Eastern Europe which did not have any significant Jewish population, i.e., “mother Russia”. 
 
So, Jews participated in Lithuania’s economy, and in mother Russia’s they did not.  Yet the economies of both places were pretty much the same on the eve of World War II  -  depressed and backward.    I.e., I don’t see that the Jewish contribution made any difference.    I agree, Jews kept their part of the economy in Lithuania running, but there were no noticeable gains or progress comparing to that very backward part of Eastern Europe which was without any significant number of Jews, "mother Russia".   Again, I am not assigning any “fault” here, but merely trying to state my understanding of life in that time and place.
 
You are also absolutely right that the majority of Jewish businesses were mom-and-pop operations run out their front rooms, which usually faced the town’s market square.   And I have read poignant stories of Jewish families – parents, children, old folks – waiting anxiously to see what the weather would bring on market day.   If it rained it would be a poor market day, and much of their livelihood depended on market day sales.    This was true in the inter-war years as well as earlier.
 
But let me say a thing about monopoly, and also share a personal part of my family’s history as you shared yours.   My father’s family comes from Ylakiai region (Yiddish:  “Yelok”).   During World War I, the entire town, consisting of wooden houses as most towns were then, burned down.   While it was being rebuilt, a Jewish family - parents, a grandfather, and a small boy about my father’s age - lived for about a year and a half in my grandparents’ house.   Their grandfather died in my grandfather’s house.  My father used to play with the Jewish boy, and he used to speak fondly of that year and a half.   My grandfather at that time had served six years as a conscript in the czar’s army in the Crimea, and had come back to take over the family farm from his own widowed mother, my great-grandmother.
 
My father also told me how, riding in their horse-drawn wagon with my grandfather from the marketplace about twelve years later, my grandfather, a former soldier and rugged hard-working farmer, was in tears, because the price he was able to get for the entire year’s crop was not enough to even pay his hired help, much less feed his own family.  My grandfather did not have much hired help.   He worked the farm mostly with his sons, and hired some extra hands at harvest time.   All the traders, the crop buyers, at the market were Jewish, and they all offered the same low price for the crop.  These type scenes repeated in marketplaces throughout Lithuania.  I think that qualifies as a monopoly and price-fixing.    Again, I am not seeking to place fault here on how such a situation came about, but only trying to state how life was in that time and place. 
 
I think that Kubilius’ statement that you quote, was simply an attempt on his part to  build bridges and to show that he came to Israel in good faith.  His talk about Jewish involvement in Lithuania’s development “of science, economy and culture” is simply him being courteous to his hosts.   (Come on, Olga, how much science was developed in Lithuania, anyway?  Neither Lithuania’s Jewish merchants, nor Lithuania’s farmers built any cyclotrons in Lithuania, as I recall.  Or did I miss that?)  
 
As for Dovid Katz, I had the pleasure to meet him a couple of times in Vilnius a few years back, and have had other communications with him.   Back then I found him to be thoughtful and helpful in commenting on some information I needed.   But I really feel that, especially recently, he has gone off the deep end and joined Zuroff’s followers on the issue of Jewish and Lithuanian relations.   I also note that Yves Plasseraud also makes the point that the much maligned Green House, that is so often and so prominently trotted out by Zuroff and his followers, is not the only Holocaust museum in Lithuania.   The Green House is really not that significant of itself, but it has been used as a red herring, and is representative of the less than total honesty in some of the dialogue on these issues. 
 
I would also comment a bit on Irena Veisatė’s note, some of whose writings I have enjoyed in the past.    Ms. Veisaitė is absolutely right that the fight of the Jewish partisans against the Nazis was and is completely justified.   The atrocities that some of them committed, such as the slaughter of the Kaniukai (“Koniuchy”) villagers, however, were and are criminal.    If Ms. Vesaitė reads my first article carefully, I did not refer to the 16th  Soviet Lithuanian rifle division as “bandits”.    I was merely using that Soviet division as an example that not all groups labeled “Lithuanian” were composed only or even mostly of Lithuanians.   The word “bandits” was used by one of the Jewish partizans himself to describe his own partizan group:    Joseph Harmatz:  “We came in like bandits and, after all, we were robbing the local peasants of their livelihood.”
 
Dear Ms. Vesaitė, my suggestion that Jews and Lithuanians each grieve separately was not intended to mean that each should ignore the other’s tragedy.    I was trying to address the two separately because speaking of them together, i.e., even  mentioning them in the same article, causes some people to claim that one is equating the two.   I was merely trying to find a way to avoid the discord which so often arises from that.

* Red Herring:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_herring

Dr. Irena Veisaite : Re Holocaust in Lithuania

We have to build bridges

Dr. Irena Veisaite.

Dear Aage,

I fully share with you the view that people are thinking in a different way and have the right to express their position and feelings. But I am also convinced that different arguments should be expressed at the same time, if possible, on the same page.

Dr. Yves Plasseraud is well known as a fighter for minority rights and against any xenophobic trends including also anti-Semitism.

I decided to write this little note only because I noticed some concrete mistakes in the articles of Mr. Bertini and Donatas Januta.

The comments of Dr. Yves Plasseraud did not intend to analyze the history or perception of the Holocaust in Lithuania. His intention was only to react to many non-objective comments in some Jewish press which are misleading.  Among Jews are some people who never want to acknowledge positive changes in the perception of the Holocaust in Lithuania, especially by the government, academic circles, educational institutions, including schools and keep repeating the same criticism over and over.  Such comments do a lot of harm to the development of Jewish-Lithuanian relations and create a false image of the country. To overcome stereotypes and hatred you indeed need a lot of time and positive thinking from both sides.

Misunderstandings occur sometimes just because of lack of knowledge. This was, in my opinion the case with the article written, maybe, with the best intention by Donatas Jonata. Just a few examples taken from his article:

-The “double genocide” theory is used a lot in Lithuania as shown by J. Mikelinskas popular writings or the existence of the Genocide Museum without even seriously mentioning the Jewish genocide. I know it was recently corrected, but I did not see it yet.
-The 16 soviet division was fighting against Nazi-Germany. Of course “à la guerre comme à la guerre”, some crimes are committed by any army, but to call them just « bandits » is not fair. It was a regular Soviet army unit.
- Soviet partisans of Jewish origin were first of all saving their own lives. They had no way out. Their fight against Nazis is completely justified.
- It was not fully understood during the IIWW, but to treat today Nazi Germany as a liberator or friend of Lithuania would be a big mistake. The Nazis started already during the war a colonization process in Lithuania.  We also know now very well their plans for the future, their strategic plan’s “OST”…
- It is true that, in pre WWII Lithuania, Jews lived in many ways separately and tried to preserve their own traditions and faith. But I could not agree that Jews did not do anything in or for the country and its culture... And this is more and more acknowledged today by Lithuanian historians.
I fully agree with Mr. Jonata‘s evaluation of Zuroff, also that ethnic Lithuanians and Jews found themselves in different existential situations at the beginning of the IIWW. This was very well understood by Ona Simaite already in the beginning of the 50-ies, but you should not forget, that the Soviets deported also over 7000 Jews in 1941, that they   destroyed Jewish culture during the II soviet occupation, etc.
I think that Mr. Jonata is right not to agree with Mr. Bertini, but his statement that Lithuanians and Jews should grieve their own tragedies separately is not productive. The Holocaust is also part of Lithuanian history as soviet deportations were part of Jewish history, but still not to compare with the total annihilation of the Litvaks during the Holocaust. I would like to emphasize the main statement of Professor Suziedelis, which was published in VilNews». 

« If Lithuanians are to “own their own history,” he believes, they must do three things:

• view Jewish history as part of Lithuanian history as a whole. “In the past,” Dr. Suzedelis says, “Jews wrote about Jews and Lithuanians wrote about Lithuanians.”  Today, this is changing.  An increasing number of ethnic Lithuanians are studying Jewish history.

• understand the Holocaust as the central event of the Nazi occupation. “The genocide of the Jews constitutes the greatest single atrocity in modern Lithuanian history.”

• assess Lithuanian participation in that event “without evasion, without squirming.” “

We have to build bridges.
Irena Veisaite

Holocaust in Lithuania ; Response to Mr. Didier Bertin.

The Lithuanian authorities are
better than most in the region

Dr. Yves Plasseraud

By Yves Plasseraud, Paris

I would like to answer briefly to the paper of my compatriot Didier Bertin, posted in VilNews on October 15. Discussion is always positive and I welcome his contribution.

I would first like to point out that my incriminated paper only concerned the attitude of some intellectuals vis-a-vis the Holocaust question in Lithuania and by no means « the martyrdom of the jewish people » in itself.

Now, concerning Bertin’s reaction, I note that although many points he raises are unfortunately true and worth mentioning,  I cannot agree with him on several issues :

The Lithuanian authorities are certainly not 100% right in their treatment of the jewish question, but, they are better than most of their counterparts in the region. Presidents Landsbergis and Brazauskas were among the first head of states of Middle Europe to admit WWII crimes again Jews from the part of compatriots and to apologise for them.

I certainly never obliterated the participation of Lithuanians in the Shoah, current neo-nazi parades or the danger of the Double génocide notion. On the contrary, I often denounced them. To mention only one french publication, see the Histoire de la Lituanie,  Un millénaire (Armeline, 2009), which I  directed : chapters X (A. Anusauskas) & XI (A. Bubnys) on WWI and the Shoah.

The Green house is not the only museum carrying exhibits about the Holocaust : The Panerai museum, the Naugarduko Tolerance Center, and now the Genocide Museum should also be mentioned.

I would be interested to know more about « the many other negative facts »  which I forgot in this respect.  I have been active in this field for more than 25 years and I do not have the impression to have ever treated the question lightly. I would only remind M. Bertin that, in 1993, I was among the organizers of the first post indépendance conférence in Vilnius on the topic of Lithuanian-Jewish relations1 !