Lithuanian writer Rūta Vanagaitė and German historian Christoph Dieckmann presented their new book called “How Did It Happen?” at a launch ceremony held at the Choral Synagogue in Vilnius on June 25.

Dieckmann delivered what amounted to a lecture on the topic of the Holocaust in Lithuania lasting about one hour, and proposed rejecting some accepted Holocaust terminology as judicial rather than historical. He said looking through the lens of ethnicity creates a false picture, even though the actors at the time did so. He also said the idea of perpetrators, victims, collaborationists and so on should be revisited and the true picture is more complex, with people collaborating with the Nazis at one point and the same people resisting them at another. He said the grey cover of the Lithuanian-language edition of the book reflects this ambiguity.

Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky served as moderator and challenged Dr. Dieckmann’s seeming rejection of the legal aspects in favor of the historical truth. Dieckmann responded saying so much of the narrative is dominated by legal defense and prosecutorial arguments that it’s difficult to see what really happened.

by Jūratė Juškaitė

Historians calculate about 17,000 people were deported from Lithuania during the first Soviet occupation. They were sent into Russia on cattle cars from June 14 to 18, 1941, and many didn’t survive their first winter. Most people who live here know these facts, but the tragedy turns out not to be uniquely Lithuanian.

Violeta Davoliūtė’s book “Population Displacement in Lithuania in the Twentieth Century” was recently completed and will appear soon [it appeared in 2016], in which the culture historian recalls the tragedy and attempts to put the deportation of Jews at the same time within the general Lithuanian context again. She says the story which appeared during the Lithuanian independence movement was ethnocentric and often way too “Catholicized.” Although official commemoration policies appear complex to say the least, and more complicated by the prevailing stereotype of the “Judaeo-Bolshevik,” Davoliūtė says these and similar stereotypes don’t divide deportees, who formed a close-knit community of shared experience.

Full text in Lithuanian here.

Dear parliamentarian,

The Lithuanian Jewish Community received your apology regarding the use of a Nazi salute during a vote in a parliamentary committee. We most likely don’t have to repeat that raising an arm in this way (with two fingers raised higher) is associated without a doubt with the glorification and worship of Hitler and at the same time with the brutal degradation and murder of Jews.

We would very much like to believe your apology is sincere. At the same time, we are surprised by statements made in your letter to the effect the situation has been escalated artificially, and that there was the attempt to draw the Lithuanian Jewish Community into “unfair political games which do harm to the reputation and ethical stature of politicians.”

I can say firmly the LJC is an independent organization and no one is manipulating it. For many years now we have been following reports of possible expressions of anti-Semitism and providing this sort of information about expressions of anti-Semitism and the response by state institutions to international institutions battling anti-Semitism.

About 95% of Jews living in Lithuania were murdered here during World War II and in total 6 million of my people died in the Holocaust. These numbers have not been and will not become tools for political games. It is the Community’s duty to preserve their memory and to attempt to insure the times of the Nazis and the Shoah are never repeated.

In pursuing these goals, one of the most important roles is played by public education, something to which you, too, can contribute. You could, for example, hold lessons by historians on the Holocaust for the public in your Biržai-Kupiškis voting district, set up meetings with ghetto survivors, and so on. The LJC supports these kinds of public initiatives and would gladly become a partner in organizing these activities. We believe these kinds of events and similar initiatives with the involvement of Lithuanian members of parliament would contribute to encouraging tolerance, better mutual understanding and a better understanding of history.

Therefore we call upon you not to limit your apologies to letters and words, but to show true leadership through real action.

I would like to inform you your colleague Arūnas Gumuliauskas’s dissertation “The Activities of the Lithuanian Communist Party in the Development of the Art of Theater in the Republic (1966-1980)” has been recognized worthy of the degree of doctor of philosophy in independent Lithuania.

I would like to learn your opinion about this.

Pinchos Fridberg
May 30, 2020
Vilnius

P.S. You may find further details in Lithuanian, English and Russian here:

Nuogas faktas: Nepriklausomoje Lietuvoje tekstas „Aleliuja TSKP“ buvo pripažintas vertu daktaro laipsnio

The Naked Truth: The Text “Hallelujah to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union” Judged Worthy of Doctorate in Independent Lithuania

Голый факт: в Независимой Литве текст «Аллилуйя КПСС» признали достойным степени доктора наук

Lithuanian Jewish Community, Pylimo street no. 4, LT-01117 Vilnius, telephone (8) (5) 261 3003, fax (8) (5) 2127915, email info@lzb.lt

to:

Office of Prosecutor General,
Rinktinės street no. 5A, LT-01515 Vilnius
email: generaline.prokuratura@prokuraturos.lt

cc:

President of the Republic of Lithuania Gitanas Nausėda
email: kanceliarija@prezidentas.lt

Speaker of the parliament of the Republic of Lithuania Viktoras Pranckietis
email: Viktoras.Pranckietis@lrs.lt

Statement
On Anti-Semitic Activities

May 27, 2020
Vilnius

The Lithuanian Jewish Community constantly monitors information about expressions of anti-Semitism and provides the corresponding information on these expressions and the reaction by state institutions to it to international institutions fighting anti-Semitism.

Recently the LJC learned two members of the Lithuanian parliament’s National Security and Defense Committee at the committee’s sitting of May 20, 2020, raised their arms in salute to one another in the fashion which prevailed in Nazi Germany (an excerpt of the meeting was posted on youtube at https://youtu.be/2ZATZiDvSdI). Raising the arm in this manner (with two fingers raised higher) unavoidably leads to Jewish people associating the salute with the worship and lionization of Hitler and the intentional and brutal degradation and extermination of Jews.

Following thorough examination of this video material one has to come to the conclusion it contains public derision, degradation and incitement to hatred of Jews based on their ethnicity (and perhaps other ethnic groups as well who were persecuted by the Nazis). It is clear from the recording that members of the parliament of the Republic of Lithuania, to whom high moral standards are applied, are performing this action.

For some reason their colleagues at the sitting (other members of the National Security and Defense Committee and members of cabinet) tolerated this in silence, neither disciplining nor condemning their two “fellow thinkers.”

We do not gainsay the possibility the recording was fabricated. In that case it incurs no lesser liability, because this sort of recording also seeks the same aims, to divide the ethnic communities living in Lithuania.

It should be noted the excerpt from the meeting which carried the date and the appellation “Nazis in the Parliament of the Republic of Lithuania” was neither composed nor posted by the LJC.

Article 25 of the constitution of the Republic of Lithuania enshrines the right to express one’s convictions and the right to provide information which cannot be restricted except by law when it is necessary to protect public health, personal honor and dignity, privacy, public morality or for the defense of the constitutional order, while part 4 of this same article provides freedom of expression does not include criminal actions such as sowing ethnic, racial, religious or social discord, calls to violence and discrimination, slander and libel and disinformation.

One instance of restriction on the freedom of self expression is contained in article 170 of the criminal code of the Republic of Lithuania. Incitement against any ethnic, racial, religious or other group of people doesn’t necessarily include the call to commit a specific violent or criminal act; public derision and degradation are sufficient grounds, something which we observe in the aforementioned video material.

Attempts against people committed with offense, derision or slander against specific groups and groups of people is sufficient grounds for state institutions to assign priority to fighting racist statements in terms of irresponsible use of the right to self expression which does harm to the dignity or even safety of a portion of society or groups of people (European Court of Human Rights in the case Tor Fredrik Vejdeland and others vs. Sweden, February 9, 2012).

The composition of the crimes defined in both parts 2 and 3 of article 170 of the criminal code are formal: they are help to have been committed by the public performance of the acts enumerated, without regard to the consequences of these acts.

Therefore, based on the arguments and information above, we request you initiate a pre-trial investigation for the anti-Semitic crimes alleged in this statement (the act defined in article 170 of the criminal code or other crimes defined in the criminal code).

Appended: photographs (2) from the May 20, 2020, meeting of the National Security and Defense Committee of the parliament of the Republic of Lithuania.

Respectfully,

Faina Kukliansky, chairwoman