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?