Faina Kukliansky, chairwoman, Lithuanian Jewish Community
Today we mark 75 years since the Holocaust began. Someone born on June 1, 1941, would be 75-years-old today, and his children all grown up, and his grandchildren as well. Today when we watch films about the Holocaust, we cry because we still remember what we went through, indescribably brutal atrocities against Jews, and our children cry because of it, too. After a few more decades pass there will be no more tears because the events will no longer move anyone. I might compare it to Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812. It is an interesting historical fact that Napoleon and field marshal Kutuzov were in Vilnius, but it no longer moves anyone. Today, 75 years later, many people are moved and grieve over the Holocaust, the mass murder of the Jews, and their rescue. We lived through the Soviet era, we have lived in a free Lithuania for 26 years now, but those who dared rescue Jews have not received the honor due them. Till the present day there is no monument, no sign where Jews could pray, meditate or give thanks to those who saved their lives.
Seventy-five years after the Holocaust, the Jewish community received a nice gift from the city of Vilnius: a sign in Yiddish and Hebrew on Jewish Street. It was truly a beautiful event: the mayor smiled as did I, the Israeli ambassador and other important people took part and there were Jewish songs. That same day just several hours after that ceremony, it was decided at the Vilnius municipality that the site selected for a monument to the rescuers was inappropriate, but they didn’t specify an appropriate site. The decision was postponed yet again, always with the promise to take care of the matter. Mayors change, and still there is no monument. I would call this spitting in the face of the entire Jewish community and especially in my face, because I am from a family of Jews who were saved. I am ashamed in front of all my relatives spread around the world. My 94-year-old uncle is one of those who were rescued, and I cannot explain to him why this has happened. It needs to be understood that the LJC with the Center of Genocide and Resistance have for many years exerted enormous efforts so that any site at all in Vilnius might bear witness. Our feeling is that the best location would be somewhere around Ona Šimaitė Street, at the intersection of Misionierių and Maironio streets. It was the courtyard of the monastery at Misionierių street where the final selection of thousands of Vilnius Jews took place when the Vilnius ghetto was liquidated. Ghetto resistance members were murdered there. It is a site where the condemned awaited the decision on their continued existence. The selection was carried out. Some had a terrible fate in store: they were to be sent to Ponar. Others faced the “good” prospect of being sent to concentration camps in Latvia, Estonia and to Stutthof in German-occupied Poland, where Jews were locked in cellars and condemned to death. LJC member and Holocaust survivor Fania Brancovskaja’s mother and sister were sent to Kaiserwald concentration camp outside Riga. Women over 35 were drowned at sea as unfit for labor. Her mother was then 42. Her father was sent to the Klooga concentration camp in Estonia where there were electro-mechanical workshops. He died just a few days before the camp was liberated in 1944. The final selection was carried out on Rosa Square at the monastery of the Church of the Missionaries where the Lithuanian Jewish Community sought permission from the municipality to erect a commemorative statue to the rescuers.
One of the most famous rescuers, the Lithuanian woman Ona Šimaitė, recognized by Yad Vashem for her work saving Jews, has had a street named after her, but Vilnius maps show the street as Ona Širvaitė Street instead, because no one here knows who Ona Šimaitė was. They don’t discuss the rescuers at school. Now we have a street named after Ona Šimaitė, and we would like the monument to stand close by.
In 2004 famous Jewish author and rescued Jew Icchokas Meras wrote a testament to the president of Lithuania, the parliamentary speaker and other high-ranking state officials: “Intentionally or unintentionally, they opposed the destructive power of the Nazis and their tools, those who committed the murders. We must remember and honor their heroism based on conscience, morality, love of their neighbors and simple human mercy. Their names are commemorated on the Mountain of Memory in Jerusalem. Their names should be inscribed in golden letters in independent Lithuania as well. A monument should be raised to the Righteous Gentiles of the Lithuanian nation, to those who in the time of greatest darkness bore in their unarmed and burning palms the ember of conscience, morality and love of neighbor. Sadly, it all remains merely words. Until now there is no monument, no street named, no alley of rescuers, and the rescuers receive no support from the state. Why the state doesn’t appreciate its most noble people is unknown. Speculations about Holocaust education, different programs and seminars will not bear any fruit if there isn’t official, loud and understandable esteem given to the rescuers in the state, and if those who needed to be rescued are punished instead. Otherwise the heroic deeds of the rescuers are simply derided.”
Not erecting a monument to the rescuers is not a decision by one or another mayor or a commission. No one has invited me as chairwoman of the Lithuanian Jewish Community to hearings at the municipality. Instead dilettantes with no knowledge of the history of the Jews or the heroism of the rescuers deliberate the issue. More than 200,000 Jews were murdered during the Holocaust in Lithuania and more than 800 people have been recognized as rescuers. In this sense the Yad Vashem motto, “When you save one life, you save an entire world,” takes on a special significance. The Jewish Community is ready to erect this monument at our own expense. The Lithuanian state should bow down and give thanks to those people, if not for whom Lithuania’s honor and reputation would be entirely associated with those who committed mass murder. The heroic actions of the Righteous Gentiles were a ray of humanity during the darkest times for Lithuania filled with hatred for Jews.
Did perhaps the rescuers act incorrectly? Should their awards be rescinded? The argument over a monument is not anything like the issue of whether to erect a monument to Jonas Basanavičius in Vilnius. It is an argument over principle, not over location. And this is Lithuanian policy. The rescuers are treated like dirt. Worse.
