by Dr. Efraim Zuroff

Let us all hope that the new spirit on display in Moletai will mark the beginning of a new era in Lithuania.

MOLETAI, LITHUANIA – If anyone had told me prior to this week’s Holocaust memorial event here that numerous people from all over the country, the majority of whom were ethnic Lithuanians, would participate, I would have considered them delusional. Yet that is precisely what took place earlier this week here in Moletai (Malyat in Yiddish), where at least 3,000 persons, the majority of whom are not Jewish, marched about two and- a-half kilometers from the center of town to the main site of the mass murder of 2,000 Jewish residents of Moletai exactly 75 years ago.

The fate of Moletai’s Jewish community was exactly the same as that of all the provincial Jewish communities of Lithuania, which together included approximately 100,000 Jews and were virtually totally annihilated during the summer and fall of 1941 by the Nazis, with the active participation of numerous local collaborators from all strata of Lithuanian society. Until recently, this latter fact was rarely acknowledged by the country’s leaders, and certainly never sufficiently emphasized, neither in the school curriculum nor even at Holocaust memorials.

On the contrary, Lithuania was one of the most active promoters of the canard of equivalency between Nazi and Communist crimes, and state-sponsored research organizations focused almost exclusively on the latter, virtually ignoring the former. In addition, much effort was invested to enlist European support for a joint memorial day for all victims of totalitarian regimes, which undermines the uniqueness of the Holocaust and might very well jeopardize the future of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Yet despite the ostensibly overwhelming odds against historical truth regarding the Holocaust, the participation of so many mostly young Lithuanians in the march at Moletai is proof that positive changes are taking place in this largest of Baltic republics.

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