Every Lithuanian suffered. Christian, Jew, Pagan, even the Hitlerist invaders and the Soviet soldiers suffered

By Ida Hardy, Texas, USA

Dear everyone, 

While historians try to piece together the stories of 'who suffered more' during the times of our parents and grandparents, and while they get entrenched in the details of soviet interrogations and torture and public atrocities and Siberian exiles and illegal imprisonment and young children working in salt mines and the humilities and deaths of so many and compare those sad sufferings to the relegation of Jewish people to ghettoes and the killing and torture and forced labor - while the historians try to keep score as if it is some sort of macabre game - while all of this gruesome comparison is going on can the rest of us acknowledge a couple of things?

First - every Lithuanian suffered. Christian, Jew, Pagan, even the Hitlerist invaders and the soviet soldiers suffered. The Polish people and the Germans and Prussians suffered. Everyone suffered in wwii. So many dead in every country.

Second - every human has a lower self and a higher self. We all have the capacity to cause suffering. There are things we must actively do as individuals and collectively to prevent ourselves from acting on those base possibilities.


Jonas Dainius Berzanskis 
Revenge does not work!


Felicia Dalia Prekeris Brown 
Well said!


Jon Platakis I do not believe Lithuanians play the "who suffered more" comparison game. It is unfortunate that comparatively few people in the west know and understand what happened to the Lithuanians and other eastern Europeans at the close of WWII. All that Lithuanians are attempting to accomplish is to simply tell their side of the story to the world. Let us not forget that Lithuania, except for brief periods of freedom, has been savagely occupied for approximately 200 years. There is so much to tell from the Lithuanian perspective, and let us be not shy about doing so.


Ida Hardy Not all - but some do. All suffering should be acknowledged. And you're right - so many in the west have NO idea of what soviet occupation was like. My wish is not to stop the conversation - but to increase understanding.