Donatas Januta: Reply to Olga Zabludoff re Holocaust in Lithuania
To say that there were other genocides does not diminish the Holocaust

Donatas Januta

Dear Olga,

Apparently, we agree that Jews and Lithuanians both suffered greatly during World War II.   And we both agree that Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands is an excellent book.   But, there are still a few things that we don’t agree on.   And I hope that we can disagree without necessarily imputing bad motives to each other.

I do not dispute Dov Levin’s claim that Jews were an integral part of Lithuania’s economy.   But the Jewish lending of money to the Polish kings and other nobles that you brought up, which enabled them to continue their extravagant lifestyles at the people’s expense, had both a short-term and a long-term negative impact on the country and the lives of Lithuanians. Yes, the Jews were also mainly merchants, traders, shopkeepers and craftsmen. But to evaluate their contribution to the country’s economy in those fields is a little hard, because Jews had a monopoly in Lithuania in those fields, and it is acknowledged that all monopolies, with their price-fixing, stifling of competition, and other evils, generally have a negative impact on a country’s economy. That’s why in the US we have anti-trust laws, anti-price-fixing laws, etc. Lithuanians did not have any of those protections.

One result was that, after 600 years of Lithuanians and Jews living side by side, on the eve of World War I, Lithuania was an economically depressed and backward country.

To read this and the other posts on this topic, go to:
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