by Sergejus Kanovičius

They no longer have a voice. Although, as my father says, they speak to us without stop. From the pits on the forest’s edge. Marked and unmarked. From both those somewhat maintained and those littered with trash. They speak to us and our conscience. The handful who possess a conscience respond, some with respectful silence, some, as in the forests of Šeduva and a few other places, quietly carrying and lighting a candle at that dismal site, some uttering something not very popular about the state of our memory which has become oblivion.

Those who are offended by this constant remembrance of two hundred thousand lives laid down in the pits also respond: after all, how much can you continue to appeal to our conscience, how much can you blame us for being apathetic about what happened, how much can you remind us that you still lie and will lie eternally there where the garbage of our memory swirls? Then there will appear those who express their annoyance with intellectual cynicism, who will remind us of the Jewish ghetto police, of Jacob Gens, who will argue that so many of you died because you didn’t know how to run away (yes, there are those, too). These people, calling themselves journalists or some sort of PhDs or even attorneys will speak cynically about the victims’ responsibility in their becoming victims. They’re the guilty ones. Do you hear that, you who lie under layers of garbage and moss? You’re the guilty ones.

If you want to prove you aren’t, then appeal to the Genocide Center or the prosecutor’s office. Why don’t you speak up? Have you grown weary of speaking to us? Don’t you have a voice? You do not. The murdered do not vote. You, the murdered, didn’t vote and don’t vote, not for plaques commemorating the Noreikas, not for statues commemorating the Krištaponises, not for historical findings on the “patriotic” Škirpas. You don’t have the right to vote. We have that right. You lie there, deep under our lack of conscience and the layer of soil and the moss of our cynical memory. It doesn’t vote for you. It votes against you. Rest in peace. The peace provided by the actions and choices of the living who have the right to vote: we obediently celebrate your eternal rest with a lie. That’s the way we vote.

We have that privilege, we are the living. You, the murdered, get a commemoration or two. A short speech of some kind. Well, at best a conference or a small exhibit. Isn’t that enough? It will suffice. And some kind of statue for your rescuers. Are you happy? You shouldn’t be. Just so it wouldn’t all be too much, we”ll walk to that statue down roads and alleys named after your murderers and we will send our children to schools named after them. That’s how we, the living, vote. All that was taken from you once upon a time was your life. Now we will also deprive you of your right to vote. You don’t participate in our elections or our choices. Until the next commemoration. Adieu.

Full text in Lithuanian here.