The prosecutor at the Vilnius District Office of Prosecutor has decided not to begin a pre-trial investigation of statements made by member of parliament Valdas Rakutis in his article “International Holocaust Day and Historical Memory.” The prosecutor said the decision was made based on the lack of an act of a criminal nature, a press release said.

The decision not to initiate a pre-trial investigation was made following a statement from the chairwoman of the Lithuanian Jewish Community which indicated historian and MP Rakutis published the article on International Holocaust Remembrance Day on an internet site which allegedly incited hatred against Jews and their people, and possibly engaged in Holocaust denial.

The informant asked the prosecutor to consider whether or not the statements made in the article constituted the criminal act defined in article 170, part 2 of the Lithuanian criminal code, “incitement against any national, racial, ethnic, religious or other kind of group of people,” and article 170-2, part 1, “public approval for international crimes, crimes committed by the USSR and Nazi Germany against the Republic of Lithuania or residents thereof, and their denial or gross trivialization.”

The decision to decline beginning a pre-trial investigation stated the criminal acts defined in article 170, part 2, and article 170-2, part 1, can only be committed by direct intention.

by professor Rimvydas Petrauskas, rector, Vilnius University, for DELFI.lt

Recent discussions on the topic of historical memory and policy have brought to the fore the issue of the role the professional historian plays in shaping the public’s historical memory. This text is about history, historians, historical memory and the historian’s mission.

History and Historians

The noted French historian Jacques Le Goff who died a few years ago spoke about the relationship between history and the present, soberly saying history can at one and the same time be that which connects, and that which afflicts. It can be utilized for the most different ends, to encourage healthy patriotism and to justify the annexation of another country, and those are just two of the more extreme poles. At the same time, Le Goff explained, the discipline of histry should help people live their lives and in communal life, help them navigate between a rich legacy of the past and what is sometimes a dangerous nostalgia.

He knew what he was talking about. In 1942 his teacher Marc Bloch, founder of the Annales School of French social history, had lost his job, books and some of his old friends in occupied France, but authored what is probably the most optimistic explanation of history ever, calling for seeking out historical truth in the face of historical tragedy. This member of the French Resistance was shot two years later by the Nazis.

Full text in Lithuanian here.

by Arkadijus Vinokuras

The events shaking the Genocide Center in the last few days are the logical result of several years of flawed policy. This is what happens when responsibility for research into and assessment of historical events is passed into the hands of politically-agitated profaners. According to the professional historians who are finally quitting the Genocide Center, this leads to: “the disappearance of the distinction between the work of professional specialists and amateurish initiatives. In terms of both historical research and the field of commemoration and the authoring and publication of documents, there is a danger that this will become an imitation of academic and expert work and a profanation of academic research.”

So, the honorable historians of the Genocide Center confirmed in a statement they released what I have been repeating for several years now: there simply cannot be a state institution whose task it is to perform objective studies in connection with the history of our country, if it is led by radicals appointed by politicians rather than professional historians. All these sorts of self-declared historians–geologists, philologists and mechanics–cannot prepare properly findings of history for the courts and other important institutions. All the more so if they don’t even consult with professional historians.

The result of this dishonest and likely criminal activity (when history is written based not on facts but on politically-motivated interpretations and myths) are findings of history, binding legally. Thus Kazys Škirpa, who collaborated with the Nazis, dreamt of a Nazi Lithuania and drove the Jews out, is proclaimed a Lithuanian hero. The same goes for Jonas Noreika, who for two years acted as a Holocaust perpetrator, and if his heroization isn’t enough, now he has become “a rescuer of Jews.” And those Jews, allegedly, “themselves, of their own volition, barricaded themselves in ghettos.” So did other Lithuanians as well “themselves, of their own will, yearned to leave for Siberia?” Isn’t it pathetically funny, the Genocide Center’s self-justification is “our Holocaust was different, and collaboration with the Nazis was also different than in other places?” Another example: Juozas Ambrazevičius-Brazaitis, who was, it seems, “vindicated and rehabilitated by US institutions.” This is how the brains of Lithuanian people with no connection are washed, people who find it very difficult to determine where the truth lies, and where the lie does.