by Liova Kaplan

Being a musician, a pianist and a piano teacher, I also like singing and songs. Different songs–happy and sad, French and German, Yiddish and Russian, classic and folk songs, etc.

But one children’s song, a Lithuanian folk song which unfortunately I have heard many times growing up in Lithuania makes me very angry and sad. Many generations of Lithuanians have been raised hearing and often singing this folk song.

A Jew is climbing a ladder
Suddenly he is falling
Children! Take a wooden stick
And kill the Jew!

And we know its results–96% or more of 200,000 of Lithuanian Jews were brutally murdered in over 237 known mass murder places all over Lithuania and many other unkown places yet to be found. In one of those mass murder places next to the town of Molėtai among the thousands murdered Jews is my mother’s whole family–over 100 of them. One particular brutal and horrible event happened in the first few days of German occupation in the town of Kaunas, the capital of prewar Lithuania. This event is called the Lietukis Garage Massacre. Here the “wooden sticks,” metal bars and water hoses went into action. Lithuanian Nazi collaborators executed over 68 Jews in front of a cheering crowd of Lithuanian men, woman and even children, first torturing and then clubbing them to death with whose “wooden sticks.”

And now almost 80 years after the Holocaust, the most horrible, brutal and inhumane event in all of Lithuanian and European history, we hear the same song again.

One of those singers is Remigijus Žemaitaitis, a newly elected member of the Lithuanian Parliament (Seimas) and the godfather of his party Nemunas aušra which was invited to join the governing coalition.

For almost two years he rann his election campaign using anti-Semitism, attacking the Lithuanian Jewish Community and its chairwoman, Israel and even Israeli archeology by using the most horrible wording. Žemaitaitis wrote that it is not the Lithuanians who are guilty of murdering the Jews but the exact opposite: Jews murdered Lithuanians. It’s interesting that the uniform of his party is the color brown…Is this a coincidence?

So, after all the anti-Semitic tirades of Mr. Zemaitaitis, I wrote him a letter asking for an apology. And yes, I have received a reply into my email–an insult and the same song in the original Lithuanian:

Lipo zydas kopeciom ,
ir nukrito netyciom,
imkit vaikai pagaliuka
ir uzmuskit ta zyduka!

And, for sure, Remigijus Žemaitaitis is not Caruso or Pavarotti. But the aria he sang he sang so well, that a chorus of almost 200,000 anti-Semites voted for him. And now he is promoted from a singer to the conductor of the Lithuanian Parliament chorus who sang and know this song well from childhood. Bravo, Remigijus! Bravo!

Liova Kaplan is a citizens of the USA, Israel and Lithuania and has served as a faculty member at the American University, the Levin School of Music and Mannes College Preparatory. He is the founder of the Washington Conservatory in Washington, D.C. Mr. Kaplan lives in Israel and Lithuania.