Antanas Sutkus, 2014. Photo by Jurga Graf

A little more than a month from now renowned Lithuanian photographer Antanas Sutkus will exhibit his photos of Holocaust survivors at the White Space Gallery in London. Most of the works come from his series of two decades ago called “Pro memoria: gyviesiems Kauno geto kankiniams” [In Memoriam: Living Martyrs of the Kaunas Ghetto]. The photographer says we must not forget the Holocaust and discussion of it is needed today more than ever.

Izabelė Švaraitė conducted an interview with the artist.

Your grandparents told you about the Holocaust. What did they say?

Village people didn’t talk much. But they very severely condemned and felt deep disgust for those Lithuanians who shot, transported and guarded Jewish prisoners.

In the catalog for your exhibit “Pro memoria: gyviesiems Kauno geto kankiniams,” the writer Alfonas Bukontas wrote you feel shameful about what happened in the Kaunas ghetto and Ninth Fort. Why do you feel ashamed?

The Holocaust isn’t some sort of ordinary crime. It was the highest metastasis of Naziism. Consider, for example, I live at home and a family of guests comes to me. At night bandits come threatening to murder me, and take them out in the yard and shoot them. Among the murderers is maybe a neighbor of mine. Although I didn’t shoot these people, and I didn’t have an association with those bandits, the scene would be burned into my eyes for the rest of my life.

I would say I feel sorrow and contrition that some many people died in Lithuania. Practically all the Jews in the country were shot… If Lithuania had come to the aid of Herkus Mantas [during the Prussian uprising of 1260 to 1274) or if Lithuania had saved its Jews, we would have progressed very far as a state.

Full interview in Lithuanian here.