OPINION | LEGACY OF 23 JUNE 1941 | 2011 ATTEMPTS TO SANITIZE THE LAF  |  LAF’S INTENTIONS IN WRITING | ŠKIRPA’S PLANS | COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED | LITHUANIAN JEWISH AFFAIRS | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS

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OPINION

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by Dovid Katz

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In the opinion of every Lithuanian Holocaust survivor interviewed, the magnificent six-century record of tolerance and enlightened coexistence, including the years of the successful interwar Lithuanian Republic, were in a single day, June 23rd 1941, replaced by the eruption of barbaric mass murder that is all too well documented. It is “Barbarossa Plus One” (the major killing started one day after Hitler’s invasion was launched, in survivors correct memory: the Monday after the Sunday). The far right’s history department, sometimes rewriting history on an industrial scale with support from certain state agencies (most infamously, the “Genocide Center”), has attempted to “fix” this by ignoring the facts and claiming that this was actually the LAF (Lithuanian Activist Front) leading an “uprising” which drove out the Soviet army and restored independence.

That is of course utter nonsense. The Soviets fled Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa, the largest invasion in human history, not the local white-armbander Jew-killers. As for independence, it was openly Hitlerite rule. Indeed, only a few weeks later the Germans confirmed in placards placed up and down the country that Lithuania was part of the new “Ostland”. Had the Nazis won the war, they would have made good on their plans to resettle the country. There would been no Lithuania to become independent decades later. None of this diminishes the enormity of Soviet crimes of the preceding year, not least the forcible occupation and destruction of the freedom of the Baltic peoples and their citizens of all backgrounds, unconscionable deportations, and imposition of the evils of communism.

The Seimas (Lithuania’s parliament) has once again hosted a “history conference” (June 19th) that was dedicated, in the opinion of this journal, to far-right Holocaust revisionism seeking to whitewash and deflect from the outbreak of mass murder of Lithuanian Jewish civilians on June 23rd 1941 in Kaunas and dozens of other locations. Thousands of Jews were killed before the arrival or setting up of authority of the invading Germans. The murderers, who donned white armbands, generally declared themselves to be members of the LAF, which in its prewar leaflets had made its intentions re the Jewish minority of Lithuania crystal clear. The various “declarations” on June 23rd were in concord with the spirit of abject loyalty to Adolf Hitler and to the imminent removal of the Jewish minority. (There was no statement or version that said “We will protect all our nation’s citizens, whatever their ethnicity”…)

Sadly, the Seimas conference program (as PDF and below) did not include a single paper with a contrary opinion on the activities of the LAF and its supporters that day, that week, and in the time to follow.

Not a single paper on the outbreak of mass murder that in the view of survivors was the de facto onset of the Lithuanian Holocaust, in which some 96% of Lithuanian Jewry perished (that figure established by Dina Porat among other major historians).

Not a single paper on the Kaunas Pogrom (“coincidentally” in the same place on the same day). In other words the local Hitlerist forces that initiated the destruction of Lithuanian Jewry are being made into national heroes for an “uprising” that did not occur. Because an “uprising” is a revolt against powers that be. When the Soviets were in power (until their panicked fleeing on 22 and 23 June 1941), the LAF did not “rise up” against anyone.

Not a single inclusion of any speaker from the country’s now very small Jewish community.

It is noteworthy that the major media outlets have generally avoided covering the event, no doubt understanding the damage to the standing of modern, tolerant, democratic Lithuania that such fascist-glorifying events can cause. There was however a glowing report in the far-right Lietuvos aidas.

The occasion this year is the 85th anniversary of the outbreak of the Holocaust. A decade and a half ago, when the Seimas was poised to mark the 70th anniversary, the “dualism” came to light with an English page dedicated to commemoration of the Holocaust, and a Lithuanian page dedicated to glorifying the local collaborators and perpetrators. But back then, the late Lithuanian philosopher Leonidas Donskis was around to rapidly expose the plans for a pseudo-academic conference intent on such sanitization and glorification. Leaders of the then Jewish Community of Lithuania, including chairperson Dr. Shimon Alperovich and editor of the community newspaper Milan Chersonski, and international groups of Litvaks, among others, responded publicly (Alperovich proposed the term “history apartheid” for the attempt to treat June 23rd as commemoration of heroism, while “pushing” Holocaust commemoration to Sept. 23rd). Who will play that role today (and going forward)?

Glorifying the LAF usually goes with glorifying the related Hitler-puppet “provisional government”. Back in 2012, two courageous members of the Seimas, Vytenis Andriukaitis and Algirdas Sysas, responded forcefully. They defended that response in a Seimas confrontation worthy of the House of Commons.

Readers are invited to visit Defending History’s section on the legacy of June 23rd 1941, the publications on these pages of Lithuanian scholars Evaldas Balčiūnas and Andrius Kulikauskas, of Leonidas Donskis, and the testimonies of survivors slowly being excerpted from the corpus of the LYVA (Lithuanian Yiddish Video Archive) project. In recent years, readers of English have been able to access the massive postwar Koniuchowsky testimonies in translation.

There were great Lithuanian heroes of June 23rd 1941 and the following days. They were the folks who with inspiring bravery rescued from death a neighbor targeted because of being born Jewish. Unlike the later rescuers who physically hid Jews for months or years, many had to do just “one thing” during those days and their names remain unknown and they are not in any official counts of the Righteous. Many of them risked their lives knowing what the LAF might do to them for such activity. Over the years we have, in hundreds of interviews, done our best to elicit and record these memories of heroes of that day and week (example from Kaunas, English transcript).

What remains to be seen is whether the Seimas and the government will succumb to far-right demands for a permanent “collegium” (whatever that means) to commemorate and glorify the events of June 23rd 1941 (see last year’s discussion). Any true friend of today’s beautiful, modern, democratic and tolerant Lithuania will rush to frankly point out the folly, and the damage that a small well-heeled ultranationalist elite is causing. It is one thing for the far-right Holocaust revisionists to have their dark corners of the media and internet. It is another for the Seimas to be instrumentalized in this way to attempt to “legitimize” twenty-first century incarnations of Holocaust obfuscation, distortion, minimization and denial while attempting to turn a nation’s chapter of shame (and what nation on the planet doesn’t have them?) into a pseudo-heroic episode.

As with various thorny issues in today’s Lithuania, history will one day show who were the real friends of Lithuania at the onset of our century’s second quarter.

The program of the Seimas conference this year (video is online):