I definitely enjoying every little bit of it. It is a great website and nice share. I want to thank you. Good job! You guys do a great blog, and have some great contents. Keep up the good work.weekly fanz

CommentsLikeUnlike 0 people liked this

[…] Read the posts… Category : Opinions […]

CommentsLikeUnlike 0 people liked this

This letter was written by Birute Straupyte Jereminiene in 2000 & expresses my feelings about this issue:

AN OPEN LETTER TO MR. [SIMON] WIESENTHAL
(Draugas, 31 March 2000)
***
Honorable Sir: As a daughter of Lithuania, "nation of Jew-shooters," I make bold to address you.
It wounds me greatly that you speak about us with such hatred. Why don't you remember that Jews as much as Lithuanians equally sufferd the yoke of an occcupant during whose regime not only Jews but also Lithuanians were
murdered.
I often ask myself: Why you don't call as "Je w-shooters" the Germans who started this "machine of hell" or Poles or French? Why are we alone the Jew-shooters, when at that time Jews were being uniformly annihilated everywhere?
During the years of German occupation, there arose people who collaborated with the Nazis. But they [collaborators] were fewer in number than those who risked their own lives and the lives of loved ones to save Jews. I knew many such people, but only one Jew-shooter. People condemned him, avoided him — he was an "alienated one."
Honorable Sir, I want to remind you that not all Jews were "holy" [blameless]. Perhaps you don't know or have forgotten that many Jews were collaborators in 1940 during the deportation of Lithuanians to Siberia. With the arrival of the Communists, Jews were a loyal support of the Soviet Union. In the little forest of Rainiai near Telsiai, people were tortured not by [the Russian national Petr] Raslan alone; he had many assistants of Jewish ethnicity.
Why is there a desire to silence authentic history? Presenting Lithuania to the whole world as a land of the greatest evildoers and killers is dishonest
Among all nations one finds scoundrels — there were some among Lithuanians and Jews. What a shame, but it's true.
In writing this letter to you, I feel I have a right to do so. During the German occupation, I grew up in a family that rescued twenty-six Jews. I experienced the horror of that era. I saw everything. I remember everything!
Pardon me, Mr. Wiesenthal that I dare contradict you that Lithuanians are not Jew-shooters! We endured long years of two occupations, having buried hundreds of thousands of loved ones in the expanses of Siberia, in the tundras of Laptevai, and the grass plains at forest edges . . .
We have reconciled ourselves and forgiven our murderers . . . You are unable to do so; the bonfire of hatred cannot die out in your heart. You occasionally stir up the embers. I want to ask you: Why?
[Signed]
Birute Straupyte Jereminiene

CommentsLikeUnlike 0 people liked this