Jews in the Radom ghetto, May, 1941. Photo courtesy German Bundesarchiv.

by Ieva Elenbergienė

“The Holocaust is not just a horrible story which happened a long time ago and to someone else. If we want humanity never to experience genocide again, we must understand that this is our history, not just ‘theirs,’ which happened not ‘somewhere’ but right here, to us,” political science professor Dovilė Budrytė said during our interview. Budrytė teaches at Georgia Gwinnett College, part of the higher education system of the US state of Georgia, which awarded her for best teaching within the state college and university system. Her list of publications includes books on traumatic experience, memory and multiculturalism.

Presenting the events of history in a human context, they become closer to us, they become visible through the prism of personal experience. So in teaching the Holocaust, is it possible to speak very emotionally about human nature?

“Now, as the world faces war and ecological crises, it’s popular to research how people act in catastrophes, how they resist, how human dignity is preserved. The history of the Holocaust is the basis for so-called resilience studies. It’s interesting to look at, for example, how some Jews entered into armed resistance while others were passive, believing they needed to be patient and wait for the situation to improve. But how would I act in that sort of situation? What does it mean to be not just a victim or a perpetrator, but an observer? After all, that category of people was the largest in Lithuania during the Holocaust. Is the role of witness innocently guilty? This is a very broad question which applies today to us as well. In the US, for example, we and the students talk about elected senators and presidents whose policies, let’s say, some people really don’t like and even seem threatening. The students think about ‘what will I specifically do now? Will I even lift a finger? What must happen for me to act? And what will I do? And why?'”

Why is it that so few people in Lithuania write and talk about the Holocaust, compared to the US, where the Holocaust didn’t even happen? In Lithuania it happened all over the place…

“There was long silence about the Holocaust in America, too. And even now it’s a painful topic, because the Allies, even though they knew what was going on in Europe, did almost nothing. Of course it’s a different question as to what they could have done more.

“When people feel guilt, they speak little about the phenomenon for some time. At least several decades have to pass before the trauma becomes part of the life of the community. We must not forget the cultural aspect: often people in the cultural sphere bring attention to a painful experience. In the US Claude Lanzmann’s film Shoah (1985) contributed to the revival of Holocaust memory, let’s say, a film which had a great influence on public consciousness, and at the same time the Holocaust Museum opened, and other steps were taken. Good museums help in a totally different way, providing a more personal encounter of the Holocaust. When you go into the Holocaust Museum they give you a number which belonged to a real person with a name and surname. At the end of the journey through the museum you find out what happened to your person. They hold programs connected not just with the Jewish genocide, but also with the Rwandan genocide, the problems in Syria and so on. The presentation of the Holocaust is intimately connected with human rights. The slogan Never Again is common to humanity and ambitious, calling upon us to make sure humanity never again experiences genocide.

“Lithuania is following a similar approach. We have to achieve the level of consciousness where this is our history, not ‘theirs,’ and it happened not somewhere in Europe but right here and to us. This is the first step. It seems to me we are going in that direction, perhaps slowly, but still in that direction.”

What role do individuals and public figures play in Lithuania in terms of the Holocaust?

“The books and articles about the Holocaust written by historians are good and plenty, the problem is the dry academic language doesn’t capture the public’s interest. So it’s the cultural representatives who bring history to life, making it accessible and topical to everyone. Films, books or, for example, the contribution made last year by the playwright Ivaškevičius in organizing the procession in Molėtai, move the public, break through the emotional wall. Perhaps the history books will not quote these people later, but their contribution is able to affect everyone’s thinking. I think it’s very significant that the phenomenon becomes a cultural trauma. As in America: it required much cultural work to make the Holocaust part of culture, and therefore of education. In Lithuania learning about the Holocaust is required at schools, but as Beresniova’s studies show, everything depends on the teachers. Some dive in head first, others don’t seek out additional materials, yet others question why they should talk about the Jews at all…”

Historians’ interest in the issue of collaboration ended with the Soviet Union, it seems, and there is very little discussion of the different kinds of collaboration during the Nazi occupation. Is this topic being suppressed because it became clear that there were some very “uncomfortable” events in our past?

“In the geopolitical sense Lithuania’s situation isn’t easy; memory wars are part of the information war against Russia. In Soviet propaganda the enemies, ‘bourgeois Lithuanian nationalists,’ are portrayed without exception as Nazi collaborators and war criminals, and of course that card is still being played. Unfortunately, while there weren’t many cases of this, it really did exist. So, for example, General Vėtra, who was decorated with the Cross of Vytis, first degree, for fighting the Soviets. It is claimed he contributed to the Jewish genocide. This is a painful topic, but a democracy can only thrive when people can and want to talk about everything openly, about painful matters as well. This is an expression of real freedom.”

We didn’t talk about the Holocaust during the Soviet era for one set of reasons, and after independence we didn’t talk about it for a different set of reasons. What are those reasons?

“In the Soviet era the Holocaust wasn’t mentioned as a Jewish tragedy, but as the catastrophe of Soviet citizens. The ethnic element was denied.

“After restoration of independence, Soviet brutally was elevated above the Holocaust drama. Sharing memories of suffering, no place was left for the memories of Jews. At that time much was written about the Soviet deportations, portraying them as the destruction or even genocide of the Lithuanian people, ‘forgetting’ that other peoples were also deported. Research shows many Jews were deported from Lithuania to Siberia in 1941, because many had their own businesses and some were even rich. And in 1994 or 1995 the dangerous idea of a double genocide was promoted, according to which Jews were members of the KGB and so responsible for the genocide of the Lithuanian people. The entire Jewish people were blamed for the decisions of a few people. Jewish partisans were attacked who had resolved to fight the Holocaust and whose only choice was to fight the Nazis on the side of the Soviet partisans, there were almost no other options.

“At that time discussions also began about the culpability of the Lithuanian people in the Holocaust. President Brazauskas apologized to all Jews in Israel for our people, but society wasn’t ready for that. The backlash was strong and many articles appeared after his visit which asked rhetorically whether the entire Lithuanian nation was responsible for the Holocaust. After all, the Jews were responsible for our genocide! Because so many of them were Communists, supposedly. But according to the myth it was ‘all’ or ‘most’ of the Jews were. The myth the Jews in general had some ethnic preference or favor for one group or another. Today the politics of memory have changed, the anti-Semitic conversation no longer enjoys public support, but the idea of a double genocide remains like a dark stain on the history of independent Lithuania.”

You often emphasize it’s important to connect Holocaust teaching with human rights. Why?

“That’s what Martin Luther King said, that while we, humanity, do not understand human rights and their violation as universal, not a local problem, we will be doomed to repeat mistakes. You cannot judge the history of your own country without looking at what happened in other countries, what tragedies, how they began and how they ended elsewhere. Violation of human rights is a global phenomenon. In this sense the Holocaust is not a tragedy exclusive to the Jewish people, just as the violation of the rights of blacks isn’t just America’s problem, and the Rwanda genocide isn’t just somewhere in Africa, as if the massacres took place almost in another world… This is really the problem of all humanity. Research and comparison of these phenomena should serve to stop similar tragedies from happening.”

You have said different disciplines can be utilized for teaching the Holocaust, including history, psychology, social sciences and so on. How do you apply this in the political science course you teach?

“This is an interesting time in the US right now. Many states finally have taken down Confederate flags. The official story is the southern states were fighting for their right to autonomy in the Civil War, but it’s clear there was another conflict: the southern states were in favor of slavery. And the lingering sentiments for the lost Confederacy can be connected with nostalgia for slavery, which hasn’t been erased from the minds of some as a completely unacceptable thing. So in the South there is still felt a great separation between Afro-Americans and some white conservatives, and the rights of blacks are violated.

“So it would be a progressive move by America to revisit her past, to talk about how things really were, otherwise it will be significantly more difficult for democratic processes to move forward. Texts have appeared claiming it’s time to come to terms with our legacy, meaning with slavery, for which no appropriate apology has ever been made, and to move forward. When we study the foundations of the United States in the course I teach, the students discuss and compare similar experiences, processes and changes in the world. There’s a good English neologism, ‘glocal,’ a mix of global and local, and we all are, after all, connected in various ways. So if in former times it was controversial to compare slavery to the Holocaust, today that comparison helps us see the wider context, the origins of public racism and the consequences. Comparison doesn’t mean which was worse, the Holocaust or slavery, or whose trauma was greater, rather it means how people lived with these kinds of difficult experiences, how they dealt with the consequences of trauma.”

In Lithuania discussion of the Roma genocide has just begun…

“The current situation of this people is very complex, the Roma experience a kind of racism and are compared to parasites. That’s why it is crucial in this connection to talk about the Holocaust and to make the connection with human rights, since this could change public attitudes, give birth to sensitivity towards the Roma and perhaps somewhat lessen the separation which is not just ethnic, but social and economic as well. If there were more discussion of the Holocaust among us, perhaps we would understand more easily the way in which a certain group of people are stigmatized, perhaps we would perceive more fully the connection between word and deed, between calling a person a parasite and violent acts, in the final analysis the connection with genocide. Of course we don’t need to compare suffering, that one people suffered more and another less. It is clear the Roma did suffer much and deeply in the Holocaust. That fact remains forgotten, it wasn’t spoken of. For that reason we have to improve memory and the Roma genocide should also become part of the history of Lithuania.”

Is it true Lithuanians enjoy suffering and sometimes make use of it get attention?

“At the beginning of the formation of the state after the disintegration of the Soviet Union these narratives of suffering were indeed very marked and those who suffered from the regime were exalted. Suffering isn’t just a Lithuanian characteristic, although we often both seriously and not very seriously take it as our own. Attention to suffering is a normal part of politics. By underlining traumatic experience a feeling of commonality is created. This happens in many places. There is a even a term for it, ‘affective communities,’ and political scientists have understood finally how important a shared feeling is in creating a political entity. But perhaps we have felt so deeply how much we were oppressed that we forgot there were others who were also oppressed. The real emotion of shared humanity comes after we understand our painful experience allows us to understand better the experience of others, and to extend a helping hand to them. This is one of the most important lessons of the Holocaust, in realizing the tragedy of the Jews, Roma and other people, to look more widely and to see the violence and brutality which has happened and is happening to others in other locations, and some of which can be changed. Traumatic experience doesn’t have to result in becoming closed and suffering, it can be a bridge to other communities and societies.”