The independence of the Republic of Lithuania was restored in 1990 in large part because the people of the country demanded a restoration of their right to live as an independent nation. This meant that the injustices of the past should be recognized and rectified, a determination expressed in the million-strong “Hands across the Baltic” demonstration of August 23, 1989 denouncing the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact by which the Soviet and Nazi governments partitioned the Baltic states and Poland.
An entire generation began rediscovering its past, which had been suppressed by decades of Soviet disinformation and suppression of history.
At the same time, the new openness towards the past meant that Lithuanians were compelled to come terms with the painful history of the Holocaust.
More than 90 percent of the Jewish citizens of the Republic of Lithuania perished during the German occupation of 1941-1944. What made this confrontation with the past most difficult was the fact that some of the Gentile population collaborated with the Nazis in the extermination of the Jews.
This would not be an easy task, considering that the non-Jewish population of Lithuania had also suffered grievous losses, particularly during the years from 1940 to 1953. People would have to go beyond their own suffering and embrace an understanding of the horrible fate which befell their Jewish fellow citizens, to understand the particular nature and Jewish specificity of the Holocaust.
Since the restoration of independence, Lithuania has proceeded successfully in its quest for integration into the European and trans-Atlantic community of democratic nations, gaining admission to the EU and NATO in 2004. The process culminated in Lithuania’s presidency of the Council of the European Union from July 1, 2013 until December 31, 2013.
During this period of nearly a quarter of a century, as noted by Lithuania’s ambassador in Washington, Žygimantas Pavilionis, “Lithuania has once again discovered its cultural heritage and identity as a state.”
The numerous cultural and educational programs on Lithuanian Jewry, such as the symposium on the Holocaust in Lithuania held at the University of Toronto on November 24 of this year, are evidence that Lithuania is concerned not only with political and economic matters but with fostering democracy and the values of tolerance.
A brief review of some of the accomplishments and challenges in embracing a painful history might be helpful in understanding the attempts to come to terms with the Holocaust.
On May 8, 1990, the parliament of the Republic of Lithuania published the “Appeal Concerning the Genocide of the Jewish Nation,” which condemned the mass murder of the Jews and acknowledged that some Lithuanian citizens were “among the executioners.”
In a speech to the Knesset in Israel on March 1, 1995, President Algirdas Brazauskas expressed regret for the actions of “those Lithuanians who mercilessly murdered, shot, deported and robbed Jews.”
In September 1998, a decree by President Valdas Adamkus created the International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania, which created two distinct sub-commissions in order “to clearly distinguish between the crimes committed by the two occupation regimes and to avoid superficial analogies during their analysis and evaluation.”
The commission published three volumes of research between 2002 and 2006 on Nazi crimes in Lithuania. In 2002, Lithuania became a member of the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance, and Research.
The commission also cooperates with the National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism and the U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
After an eight-year interruption, the commission’s research work was reauthorized in October 2012 by President Dalia Grybauskaitė. In April 2000, the country’s Catholic Bishops Conference issued a public apology for those “children of the church who lacked charity towards the persecuted Jews, failed to undertake all possible means to defend them and especially lacked courage to influence those who assisted the Nazis.”
The November 2003 Law on Equal Treatment prohibits discrimination on ethnic and religious grounds. In June 2011, the Lithuanian parliament passed a law for the restitution of the property of Jewish religious communities, thus beginning to address the problem of compensation.
In April 1913, President Shimon Peres, who traces his roots to the Litvak community, visited Lithuania on a state visit, underscoring the increasingly close ties between the two countries.
The weakening of censorship during the late 1980s provided the opportunity for an open examination of the past in the educational and cultural spheres. Research into the Holocaust has expanded greatly, especially since the early 1990s: dozens of scholarly monographs and numerous articles on Lithuanian Jewish history have been published during the past two decades.
A number of younger scholars have learned Hebrew and Yiddish and have explored Jewish history. International conferences have been convened, most notably the Holocaust Conference in September 2002 in Vilnius, which included scholars from Israel, the United States, Germany, Russia, Ukraine, Poland and other countries.
To increase public awareness of the Holocaust, especially in the schools, the historical commission, noted above, has sponsored the National Holocaust Education Project, which involves teachers, school children and the public.
The Holocaust curriculum now contains numerous lessons targeting different age groups. A continuous special program of published essays by middle and secondary school students, The Jewish Neighbors of My Grandparents and Great-Grandparents, seeks to involve students in researching the history of Jewish communities in their locales.
Students, especially in secondary schools, are encouraged to observe days of commemoration, such as January 27 (International Holocaust Remembrance Day), September 23 (The Day of the Genocide of Lithuania‘s Jews) and November 16 (International Day of Tolerance).
In addition, the commission has created a Tolerance Education Network (TEN), which sponsors some 86 centers whose task includes a study of Nazi crimes and a commemoration of the victims.
Local governments have restored and improved numerous memorials to the Holocaust throughout the country. Events focused on Lithuanian Jewish culture and history have become commonplace. In April 1997, an international art festival commemorating the 55th anniversary of the Vilnius ghetto theater was held in Vilnius.
The films of Saulius Beržinis have taken on difficult issues of the Holocaust, including the participation of local citizens in the murder of the Jews. Audrius Juzėnas’s film version of Joshua Sobol’s Ghetto has won several international awards. Recently, the novel Darkness and Partners, written by one of Lithuania‘s best-known writers, Sigitas Parulskis, became the first major Lithuanian-language fictional narrative on the Holocaust.
This list of some of Lithuania‘s attempts to come to terms with a painful history is not meant to convey the idea that the work is finished or that the path has been an easy one.
Just as everywhere in Europe, the task of overcoming racial and ethnic prejudice and confronting denial of the past must continue.
Vytautas Zalys is the Republic of Lithuania’s ambassador to Canada.