by Arkadijus Vinokuras

The events shaking the Genocide Center in the last few days are the logical result of several years of flawed policy. This is what happens when responsibility for research into and assessment of historical events is passed into the hands of politically-agitated profaners. According to the professional historians who are finally quitting the Genocide Center, this leads to: “the disappearance of the distinction between the work of professional specialists and amateurish initiatives. In terms of both historical research and the field of commemoration and the authoring and publication of documents, there is a danger that this will become an imitation of academic and expert work and a profanation of academic research.”

So, the honorable historians of the Genocide Center confirmed in a statement they released what I have been repeating for several years now: there simply cannot be a state institution whose task it is to perform objective studies in connection with the history of our country, if it is led by radicals appointed by politicians rather than professional historians. All these sorts of self-declared historians–geologists, philologists and mechanics–cannot prepare properly findings of history for the courts and other important institutions. All the more so if they don’t even consult with professional historians.

The result of this dishonest and likely criminal activity (when history is written based not on facts but on politically-motivated interpretations and myths) are findings of history, binding legally. Thus Kazys Škirpa, who collaborated with the Nazis, dreamt of a Nazi Lithuania and drove the Jews out, is proclaimed a Lithuanian hero. The same goes for Jonas Noreika, who for two years acted as a Holocaust perpetrator, and if his heroization isn’t enough, now he has become “a rescuer of Jews.” And those Jews, allegedly, “themselves, of their own volition, barricaded themselves in ghettos.” So did other Lithuanians as well “themselves, of their own will, yearned to leave for Siberia?” Isn’t it pathetically funny, the Genocide Center’s self-justification is “our Holocaust was different, and collaboration with the Nazis was also different than in other places?” Another example: Juozas Ambrazevičius-Brazaitis, who was, it seems, “vindicated and rehabilitated by US institutions.” This is how the brains of Lithuanian people with no connection are washed, people who find it very difficult to determine where the truth lies, and where the lie does.

Photo: Ceremony to commemorate victims of occupation, genocide and Soviet repression. J. Stacevičius/LRT

by Modesta Gaučaitė-Znutienė, LRT.lt

You speak up, you receive a warning. That’s what happened to a Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania (Genocide Center) historian who openly criticized the current situation there. The director of Genocide Center says the warning was issued because of unprofessional behavior.

LRT.lt reminds readers we have written before about doubts expressed by Genocide Center employees regarding attempts to politicize the Center’s activities as well as regarding the decision to present the status of freedom fighter to deputy general director Vidmantas Valiušaitis. Now it turns out historian Mingailė Jurkutė has received an official warning for publicly airing her concerns.

Received Letter from Advisor to the Director

Historian Monika Kareniauskaitė who no longer works at the Center shared a post on social media Thursday saying she still thinks the Center is one of the institutions working in the field of memory studies with the greatest potential. Nonetheless, she observed problems and poor practices which didn’t affect her alone. Kareniauskaitė said if she had been only one to suffer in this situation, she would’ve kept silent, but her colleagues were coming up against the same things.

The author’s grandfather, Jonas Noreika. Family photograph

In Lithuania, he was celebrated as a hero. But we can’t move on until we admit what he really did.

by Silvia Foti

Ms. Foti is a journalist and the author of the forthcoming “The Nazi’s Granddaughter: How I Learned My Grandfather Was a War Criminal.”

When I was growing up in Chicago during the Cold War, my parents taught me to revere my Lithuanian heritage. We sang Lithuanian songs and recited Lithuanian poems; after Lithuanian school on Saturdays, I would eat Lithuanian-style potato pancakes.

My grandfather, Jonas Noreika, was a particularly important part of my family story: He was the mastermind of a 1945-1946 revolt against the Soviet Union, and was executed. A picture of him in his military uniform hung in our living room. Today, he is a hero not just in my family. He has streets, plaques and a school named after him. He was awarded the Cross of the Vytis, Lithuania’s highest posthumous honor.

On her deathbed in 2000, my mother asked me to take over writing a book about her father. I eagerly agreed. But as I sifted through the material, I came across a document with his signature from 1941 and everything changed. The story of my grandfather was much darker than I had known.

Full story here.

According to the Lithuanian Jewish Community, there are currently about 5,000 Jews living in Lithuania, constituting less than one percent of the country’s total population. Despite their small demographic spread, members of the Jewish community living in Lithuania continue to encounter a lack of tolerance and expressions of hate. Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky says that although no one is beating Jews or drawing swastikas on their backs, there could be a lot more respect and the sense of shared humanity.

No lack of angry comments, go back to Israel

“Thirty years of independence have expanded our society’s horizons and made us more tolerant of one another. Travelling in other countries people begin to recognize diversity and realize we are all different. Even so, when some positive information appears in the public space about Jews and supportive of this community in Lithuania, there come endless disgusting comments and hate speech,” Kukliansky said.

She revealed she had experienced a number of anti-Semitic attacks in her life and therefore would never allow herself to think of another person as somehow lesser because of their ethnicity, race or other characteristics.