Two histories and two sufferings – one for Lithuanians and the other one for Jews. This is how Lithuanians perceive the tragedy of the Holocaust, experts say.
Over 90 percent of Lithuania’s pre-war Jewish population of about 200,000 were killed by the Nazis and their local collaborators between 1941 and 1944.
But the general public does not care much about the Holocaust, according to Litvak writer Sergey Kanovich.
“There is the academic level, where we have a lot of very serious studies of the Holocaust in Lithuania, but they are too academic to be of interest to ordinary readers,” he told LRT.lt.
In his words, the problem starts at school where students are only taught about the number of victims, not connected to the lives of specific people in any way.
“It’s not explained how they lived, what they did, what their customs were,” Kanovich said, adding that the declaration “never forget” only makes sense when people have access to information about what was lost.
Difficult not to see
The Holocaust is receiving more and more attention in the academic community, but the public still sees it as part of someone else’s history, notes Violeta Davoliūtė, Vilnius University professor and researcher in the politics of memory.
According to her, this topic is unpopular in Lithuania because part of the society feels that it is being pushed from the outside to shame or humiliate Lithuanians, making them feel bad.
“Moreover, some people think this has nothing to do with them – neither their family nor their past. We don’t realise that it is also a part of almost every family’s history and memory,” Davoliūtė told LRT.lt.
This is because, she points out, the massacre of Jews in Lithuanian towns was public and highly visible: “There are over 200 murder sites, so almost all of our grandparents and great-grandparents were touched by these horrific events in one way or another.”
“Some of us do not want to admit that those people were left alone at the time. People did not want to hear and see many things, and one of the things that people did not want to hear and see was the massacre of Jews. But it was very difficult not to hear them,” adds historian Nerijus Šepetys.
Separate sufferings
Columnist Arkadijus Vinokuras argues that in Lithuania, the attitude towards the Holocaust is shaped by “right-wing radicals” whose aim is to “whitewash the collaborators who murdered Jews”. As long as this narrative persists, Lithuania will have two separate histories, he said.
“One suffering is for Lithuanians, the other is for Jews. But one political and civic nation cannot have two separate suffering. It’s absurd,” he said.
Kanovich also points out that when the fact that Lithuanians also participated in killing Jews is mentioned, it often causes a wave of indignation.
According to the writer, it is difficult to acknowledge dishonourable historical facts, “especially when, thanks to the interference of politicians, the public has been offered a narrative for decades that only includes the victims and their saviours”.
Of the almost 200,000 Jews in Lithuania, only a few thousand survived, but we often present ourselves as the country that saved the most Jews, adds Vinokuras.
“Those who were directly involved in the massacres or other forms of genocide are now being heroised. When evil is heroised, moral values become a sham,” he said.
He stresses, however, that we must not talk about collective guilt because children are not responsible for the crimes committed by their parents: “It is time for us to come out of our trenches because the killers have already died.”
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Harmful silence
According to Davoliūtė, under the Soviet regime, it was also difficult to talk about the Holocaust in Lithuania without ideological clichés, as history was told “from above”.
“Some of the personal experiences have remained untold. So, to this day we have certain amnesia, which, hopefully, will slowly disappear over time thanks to ongoing research and communication,” the professor said.
It is also important how the topic of the Holocaust is presented in Lithuanian museums or places of historical memory – in some regional museums, the Second World War is not mentioned at all, Davoliūtė says.
“Such silence is harmful. It is necessary to tell what happened openly and honestly, and then the Holocaust will not seem like a part of some other history. The changing totalitarian regimes have left behind a rather ugly legacy of confrontation and conflict that we must overcome,” she said.
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