Dr. Akvilė Naudžiūnienė. Photo: Evgenia Levin/Bernardinai.lt

by Rosita Garškaitė
Bernardinai.lt

Historian Akvilė Naudžiūnienė who defended her dissertation “Ethnic Minorities in the Educational Narrative of Lithuanian History, 1918-2018” at Vilnius University last month says: “There is an attempt to integrate ethnic minorities in the teaching of history, but there is avoidance when they don’t fit the image of Lithuanian history being created.”

She interviewed teachers and found they tend to consider ethnic minorities a problem and a problematic issue, not a simple fact of life. This is especially true when it comes to the Polish and Russian communities. On the other hand, there are no problems regarding the Karaïtes and Tartars because they are exotic and teachers are able to talk about their ethnic foods. Jews are seen as a problem in the context of the Holocaust but become very interesting in discussions of cultural legacy and cooking.

How does the understanding of the ethnic minorities as a problem express itself?

Some teachers come out and say it is a problem and say it is difficult to teach the Holocaust and in Vilnius schools it’s hard to discuss Polish and Lithuanian relations in the interwar period. Teachers say disputes still arise between Lithuanian and Polish students. Of course this isn’t easy for teachers. Teachers also reported a negative reaction from students when they begin to talk about Russians in Lithuania. So the discussion is avoided, teachers close up and don’t want to do anything about it. This supports the idea there is an attempt to integrate ethnic minorities in the teaching of history when they are not perceived as problems and that there is avoidance of the topic when they are not in keeping with the vision of Lithuanian history being created.

You conducted 14 interviews with teachers. What else of significance emerged?

I observed efforts by separate teachers to, as it were, redeem the guilt of the Lithuanian people regarding the Holocaust. It was constantly noted in the interviews that there truly is discussion of Jews during lessons and the need to talk about the Holocaust. When this topic came up, the tone and even the manner of speech of the teachers changed. It seems to be this attitude is a learned response. I often felt some teachers were just saying what they thought they were supposed to say. The myth of multiculturalism is current in the schools, but almost none of the teachers were able to say how to apply this educational approach. The teachers didn’t get engaged is such things “from the top.” Although they frequently renew and enhance their own knowledge, it didn’t appear as if their understanding of how to teach has changed.

Full interview in Lithuanian here.

(Miami, July 7, 2019)—This summer a team from the University of Hartford is working to locate the lost shtetl of Rumšiškės (Rumsheshok) in Lithuania, which is now located under Lake Kaunas. Home to approximately fifty Jewish families who were massacred in 1941, the village was abandoned and the Soviets later created a dam, resulting in the village’s remains now being under water. Filming throughout the process will document the work, which will result in a documentary film, museum exhibitions, and presentations in Lithuania and the U.S. Targum Shlishi’s grant is helping to support the five-person student team, which is led by archaeologist Richard A. Freund, a professor at the University of Hartford who has headed the university’s Vilna Excavation Projects for the past four years.

Project Background and Scope

“This is a unique program for students to work on. The students will document our summer excavations and create a documentary film that will show our underwater search for the lost village of Rumshishok,” Freund explains. “We will be working with high-tech, robotically-operated vehicles and professional divers to find the village and we will work with our ground penetrating radar equipment to identify the location of the mass grave of the Jews of Rumshishok which will ensure that no future development can take place at that site.”

Several months of silence have ensued since the publication of a shocking “explanation” with the features of gross Holocaust denial issued by a Lithuanian state institution, the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania, published with no author attributed.

The “explanation” from this Lithuanian national historical research institution claims “the inhabitants of occupied Lithuania did not understand ghettos as part of the Holocaust” in attempting to vindicate Jonas Noreika’s culpability in establishing the Šiauliai (Shavel) ghetto, isolating Jews and seizing their property.

The Lithuanian Jewish Community not only believes these statements violate article 170-2 of the Lithuanian criminal code, but also desensitize the public to the Holocaust, and possibly intentionally and calculatedly encourage conflict in society and belittle and debase the memory of brave Lithuanians who rescued Jews from the Holocaust.

Just after marking the anniversary of the horrific Lietūkiis garage massacre and as we mark the 75th anniversaries of the destruction of the Kaunas and Šiauliai ghettos in coming days, we feel it is important to recall the roots and origins of the Holocaust in Lithuania.

When World War II came to Lithuania, the children were on summer vacation, many at Communist Youth and pioneer summer camps in Palanga, Kačerginė and Druskininkai. Stasys Sviderskis (1920-2011) was assigned leader of the youn pioneer camp in Druskininkai, where of the 150 or so children, 70 were Jewish.

Stasys was recognized a Righteous Gentile by Yad Vashem in 1997 and Lithuanian president Algirdas Brazauskas awarded him the Life-saver’s Cross. His elder brother Alfonsas saved Jews from the Kaunas ghetto and was named a Righteous Gentile by Yad Vashem in 1980.

When the war arrived on June 22, 1941, Stasys Sviderskis didn’t wait for instructions and collected all the children in his care to send them east away from hostilities. On the first day of war he managed to put the children on a train to Vilnius which continued a long journey to cities in the east in the Soviet Union. Despite the many dangers which confronted him, Sviderskis evacuated all of his wards out of Nazi-controlled territory and so all the Jewish children were saved. He was named a Righteous Gentile on October 6, 1997, with Yad Vashem also publishing a list of the children he rescued.

A ceremony to unveil the unusual new Holocaust memorial in the Pakamponys forest outside Biržai in northern Lithuania took place June 16 with over 50 people from around the world attending. Also attending were Lithuanian MPs, ambassadors, visitors from other towns and local residents and young people.

Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman, a member of the executive board of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, represented the LJC at the ceremony and presented a thank-you letter to Biržai regional administrator Vytas Jareckas. Sofia and Michael Tabakina of Israel, who arrived in Panevėžys on June 14 and who are frequent visitors, also attended the ceremony. Sofia’s family came from Panevėžys, Šiauliai and Biržai. Her ancestors were murdered in Biržai. As many Litvaks living in Israel do, every year Sofia Tabakina visits sites where her relatives were murdered in Lithuania.