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.