THE VOICE OF INTERNATIONAL LITHUANIA
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Reply to the article of Mr. Plasseraud published in VilNews in October 2011
Lithuania and the memory
of Holocaust
By Didier Bertin, President of the Society for the Promotion of the European Human Rights Model (France)-14 October 2011
We love Lithuania and its wonderful and precious language and fine people! The sole acute problem of Lithuania might be its government.
There is still a lot to do in this country for Human Rights Organizations like fighting Racism, antisemitism, Homophobia and promoting education and free information as the corner stone of democracy for a member-State of the European Union.
Mr. Plasseraud reminded important criticisms which could be made in Lithuania and that he does not share despite they are true in our opinion: The obliteration of the participation of Lithuanian militias in Pogroms and Holocaust, the “current” authorization of Nazi Parades and the creation of a new concept which put in equivalence of the Holocaust and the suffering of people under communist dictatorship whose consequence is the arbitrary second ranking of the Holocaust. This concept is named double Genocide and made a mathematical equality between events, which has no sense in History. In fact this concept aims to obliterate or reduce one of the two components of the equation, which is clearly the Holocaust as this can be seen in Lithuania.
As a matter of fact the Vilnius Genocide Museum displays only facts on the Soviet oppression and we were personally told by a member of the Staff that for “the Jewish things” we have to go to the green hut named “Green House”, which is a very poor small a museum in a wooden hut and which at last refers to the Holocaust. This so called museum is as difficult to find as the Holocaust in the Lithuanian History. However and on top of these negative facts many others were forgotten were forgotten by Mr. Plasseraud.
We were also shocked by similar substantial obliterations in the museum of the 9th Fort in Kaunas. We had also the opportunity to check the content of a History school book of a 15 years old Lithuanian schoolboy and we noticed that it was far from the richness of our French school books. The History school book we saw was very slim and presented an over- simplified version of events.
We understood that the bad treatment of History was deeply rooted in Lithuania when we learned that the public relation manager of the Genocide Center associated to the Genocide museum and considered as “a “senior specialist” is the current leader of a Neo-Nazi organization.
96% of the Lithuanian Jews were killed in 4 years, which is the highest country rate of extermination of the Holocaust and of course 96% of the Lithuanian people were not killed in such proportion over a so short period and then were not victim of an equivalent genocide.
Lithuanian people still exist and are active in Lithuania when the Jewish people almost entirely disappeared. The double genocide is clearly a fake concept probably developed for ideological reasons. We are on the side of the victims of Genocides and we are thus opposed to the over-utilization of the word “Genocide” in order to preserve its real meaning. The over- utilization of this word obfuscates the responsibility of perpetrators of “real Genocides” as the Holocaust and the Genocides in Armenia, Rwanda and Cambodia.
Lithuania is the sole country of the planet, which currently tries to prosecute Holocaust Survivors and members of the resistance against Nazis during World War II. The reason for this harassment is that few of them are still alive and witnessed militias members participating to the holocaust while Lithuanian authorities want to consider them as resistants. Lithuanian authorities went too far in asking Interpol to hunt these heroes. Their last request to Interpol in order to hunt a very old Holocaust survivor in Israel was made at the end of August 2011 with of course no result but a lot of international protestations, which are detrimental for the whole people of Lithuania.
Lithuania is also the sole country on the planet to have legalized the display of the Swastika in
2010 and this is a shame for the whole European Union and provocation against European
Ethics. This sole fact is very eloquent and should lead Mr. Plasseraud to review his position.
The duly authorized Nazi Parades in Vilnius are totally intolerable in European Union and should also be considered as a provocation against European Ethics. A Member of Parliament as the above mentioned “Senior Specialist” of the Genocide center participated both with the mob to the last 2011 Nazi Parade in Vilnius.
In June 2011, a conference was organized by the Genocide center in the premises of the Lithuanian Parliament. The target of this conference among others was the rehabilitation of the LAF (Lithuanian Activist Front) who initiated with others the Pogroms that constitute the onset of the Lithuanian Holocaust.
The Lithuanian Activist Front –LAF and other participants took the opportunity of the withdrawal of the Red Army and the fact that the German Army did not yet arrived to barbarically murder 5 000 Jews in 5 days from 25 June to 29 June 1941 in the sole area of Kaunas ( similar events of smaller magnitude occurred in other cities).
The fact that “the Patriotic Youth” who currently utilizes the slogan “Thank God, I am white” is currently subsidized by the authorities as are other far rightist organizations, is another outrage against the terms of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.
As a matter of fact there is a “Double Genocide” in Lithuania which is the genocide of the Jewish people and today the Genocide of the remembrance of their martyrdom.
Fighting for the remembrance of the martyrdom of the Jewish people cannot be called “gesticulations” as said Mr. Plasseraud but is a duty of anyone defending Human Rights.
We also want to respectfully remind readers that Russia was an ally during World War II, and despite Communism’s atrocious dictatorship we must not forget the sacrifice of the lives of
13.5 million Russian soldiers without which Western Europe might not have been easily freed from the Nazis by the other allies. If the Nazis were not defeated as they were, there would have been no Lithuania to regain its freedom in 1990/1991, because it seems clear today that its Germanisation was in their agenda.
For more information on this topic: www.DefendingHistory.com,, Lithuania and Baltic- countries pages of www.OperationLastChance.org and www.euro-social-hr.org
Thank you and greetings from France,
DIDIER BERTIN
PRESIDENT
SOCIETY FOR THE PROMOTION OF THE EUROPEAN HUMAN RIGHTS MODEL (FRANCE) http://www.euro-social-hr.org
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Mr Januta,
One only needs to read Kazimierz Sakowicz's Ponary Diary, 1941-1943 to see that many of the killers at Paneriai were indeed ethnic Lithuanians and native Lithuanian speakers.
Your example of a solitary individual, Jan Borkowski, who appears to have been a Polish-speaker (please bear in mind that some now believe that many of the "Polish" of the Vilnius region are in fact long-Polonized ethnic Lithuanians), proves that at least one of them was a Polish-speaker. That's all.
The testimonies of many, many eyewitnesses describe ethnic Lithuanians killing Jews across Lithuania. Please also remember that much of the killing occurred outside of Vilnius in areas that were much more ethnically homogenous, i.e. mainly Lithuanian.
[…] Didier Bertin: Lithuania and the memory of Holocaust […]
Just a bit more of statistics. According to Israeli historian, Dinba Porat, about 0.5%, i.e., half of one percent, of the entire population of Lithuania was involved directly and indirectly, i.e., whether prison guards, drivers, etc., in the German organized and led killing of Jews. She does not however state how many of those were Jan Borkowski, Jan Dogow, and similar non-Lithuanian ethnics. The number of ethnic Lithuanians who have been identified as having, at the rist of their own lives, saved Jews from the Holocaust, is, however, on the same order of magnitude. If someone wants to learn some facts, and not just listen to political polemics based on red herrings like the so-called “Double Genocide”a theory, you should read professor Timothy Snyder’s “Bloodlands” about the conditions in Lithuania and Easterm Europe during World War II. Or better yet, read Israeli historian Dov Levin’s “The Lesser of Two Evils.”
I aprpiecate you taking to time to contribute That’s very helpful.
Borkowski’s testimony is in the possession of the US Justice Department’s “nazi hunting” department, the Office of Special Investigations (OSI), Protokol of Interrogation of a Suspect – Jan Borkowski, 29 January 1973, U.U. v. Dailide, Document 580–655, Bates No. 07821–07823.
Borkowski further admitted that he participated in executing Jews at Ponary, that he has no remorse for thgat, but however, he expressed regret for having worn a Lithuanian uniform: „I was ashamed, however, that I was a Pole and had to put on the uniform of the bourgeois Lithuanian army.” (Bates No. 07882).
Here is a quote from testimony of an ethnic Pole, a member of one of those “Lithuanian Auxiliaries”, also referred to as a “Special Detachment”. The Pole, Jan Borkowski, testified how Jan (Ivan) Dolgow, an ethnic Russian, recruited him into the German organized “Lithuanian Auiliary”: „Dolgow and I entered the building through Wilenska Street and went to the second floor… In my presence [someone] personally filled out my name in the questionnaire in Lithuanian and I signed it after Jan Dolgow had translated it to me. My name in the questionnaire was written in Lithuanian as Jonas Barkauskas, son of Ignas. The questionnaire also included my date of birth, rank in the Polish army, and similar information. That day I also received a certificate stating tha I was employed in the Special Detachment and that I had a right to possess a firearm… I received an identification card, filled in Lithuanian.”
Yes, 90% of Lithuanian Jews were killed during World War II. And, yes, there were some German organized “Lithuanian auxiliaries” who participated in some of those actions. But how many Lithuanians were in those “Lithuanian auxiliaries”? The Soviets during that period also had a Division, the 16th Rifle Division, which they referred to as the “Lithuanian 16th Rifle Division.” But because most soldiers in this “Lithuanian” division did not speak Lithuanian, the commands were given not in Lithuanian, but in Russian and in Yiddish. So, just how “Lithuanian” was this 16th Soviet Division, and how “Lithuanian” were those “Lithuanain auxiliaries” which partook in German organized and led killing of Jews?
. Levin did not use a modifier as far as non-Jews are concerned, i.e., he did not state whether the two evils were or were not equal, or similar, or equivalent, but neither has Lithuania. Lthuania’s position is simply – you grieve for your tragedy, and we will grieve for ours. Just as every person, every family, so every nation, every ethnic group, is entitled to grieve for their own separately from the grief of others, so are the Jews, the Ukrainians, the Laotians, the Armenians, and others. So are the Lithuanians. I have not run across the Lithuanians using the term “Double Genocide”.
The comparison between Nazi and Communist evils was first, and perhaps best, set forth and analyzed by the Israeli historian Dov Levin, in his book “The Lesser of Two Evils”. Three things are clear to anyone who has read Dov Levin’s treatise: (1) Levin was definitely and scrupulously comparing the two, as he inevitibely had to do to arrive at his conslusion which of the two was the lesser. (2) He was very clearly evaluating the two solely from the Jewish perspective only, and that in his conclusion he uses the word “lesser” not in the universal sense, but only with respect to the effect upon Jews. (3) As Levin even in the title of his book acknowledges, there was not one but two evils – if there was only one, there would have been nothing he could have compared it to – and if there were two, then after he concludes that Hitler was the lesser evil for the Jews, that still leaves two for the rest of the world. (continued)
Dear Mr. Januta,
Please send me a photo of yourself, potentially also a short bio, so that we can publish your comments as an article. Send to aage.myhre@VilNews.com.
Kind Regards,
Aage Myhre
VilNews Editor-in-Chief