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Disinformation and Antisemitism:
Holocaust Denial in the Baltic States, 1945-1999
by Dov Levin*
Although this article presumes to focus on all three of the
important phenomena expressed in its title, in the post-Holocaust
reality they often commingle and cannot always be differentiated
properly.(1)
In the main, this is said about the problem of distinguishing
between general denial of the Holocaust(2)
and partial denial, which includes components of
disinformation and distortion.
All of them
frequently interrelate with the new forms of antisemitism. Be this
as it may, this article will attempt to present several facts that
represent our knowledge of these phenomena in respect to the
Holocaust in the three Baltic countries, Lithuania, Latvia and
Estonia.
GENERAL
BACKGROUND
At the
beginning of World War II, the Baltic countries had a population of
about six million, including 350,000 Jews. In the summer of 1940,
these countries were occupied by the Red Army and, with the support
of local Communist elements, became Soviet socialist republics -
integral parts of the USSR. In accordance with the Soviet policy at
the time, the Jews' national and religious education institutions
were shut down but, unlike previous times, they were allowed to
accept positions in the state bureaucracy, while the majority
peoples were grievously affected by the obliteration of their
countries' independence.(3)
Amidst the
great disgruntlement that possessed much of the local population
because of the changes that had been forced on it, some local
elements established anti-Soviet underground organizations that
neighbouring Nazi Germany supported in various ways. The authorities
responded by arresting masses and exiling large population groups (including
Jews) to Siberia on suspicion of hostility to the Soviet regime.
Things worsened in the summer of 1941, when the Wehrmacht swiftly
occupied the Baltic countries as part of its all-out attack on the
Soviet Union. Although the local population greeted the Nazi forces
enthusiastically and helped them to complete their total occupation
quickly, their hopes of regaining political independence were soon
dashed. However, the Nazi occupation administration gave them
considerable latitude to manage their internal affairs and, a
fortiori, gave them carte blanche — at least at first -
to dispossess and vent their spleen against their Jewish neighbours.
In fact, they began to do this in dozens of localities even
before the first German soldier arrived. Subsequently, tens of
thousands volunteered to serve the Nazis in military and police
units that participated in the total mass murder of Jews in the
Baltic countries, Belarus and the death camps in Poland. Hardly a
handful of local inhabitants mustered the courage to help their
Jewish
neighbours; even a smaller number managed to rescue Jews. Additional
Jews survived mainly by having managed at the last moment, before
the Nazi occupation, to flee to the Soviet interior.
The foregoing
events led to a terrifying 'balance sheet': no more than six percent
of the hundreds of thousands of Jews who had populated the Baltic
countries at the beginning of the war survived. The overwhelming
majority — 94 percent — were slaughtered in various and sundry ways
by Nazi Germans and local inhabitants: Lithuanians, most of whom
were Catholic, and Latvians and Estonians, most of whom were
Lutheran. One way or another, the fact is that the Baltic countries
recorded the highest rate of Jewish victims during the Holocaust.
In 1944—1945, when
the Soviets reoccupied the Baltic countries, a small proportion of
Jewish survivors returned to live in areas that were filled with the
graves of most of their relatives, recently slaughtered by the
Germans and their non-Jewish neighbours. Quite a few of these
murderers emigrated under false names and/or went to the forests to
join the armed gangs that, for nearly ten years, fought against the
Soviet regime to make their countries independent again. It took
until the 1990s to attain that goal, mainly because it took that
long for the Soviet Union to disintegrate.
Thus far, we have
provided a terse review of background facts that, to some degree,
fathered the three phenomena mentioned in the title of this article
and that have persisted for more than fifty years after World War
II. However, before we present several concrete examples and survey
the main players involved in them, we mention several facts
concerning disinformation activity in respect to the Holocaust of
the Baltic Jews even during the Holocaust, mainly for rational
political and ideological reasons.
Here is the place
to mention a disinformation tactic that the German occupation
authorities invoked in advance of the organized mass murders
(Aktionen) they perpetrated among the Baltic Jews. On 18 August
1941, for example, the Germans carried out the so-called 'Intellectuals
Aktion' among the population of the Kovno ghetto: 543 Jews,
including many professionals who were lured by offers of clerical
jobs with the city archives, were removed from the ghetto, taken to
Fort IV, and killed.(4)
Immediately before
they retreated from the Baltic countries, the Germans strived
prodigiously to cover up these and similar crimes by incinerating
the bodies of the murdered Jews.(5)
In planning this action, they evidently thought they would be able
after the war to mask the totality of their conduct by means of
blanket denial.
The Soviet
authorities adopted a different kind of deception: although well
aware of the magnitude of murder being perpetrated in the Baltic
countries (which, from their standpoint, were integral parts of the
USSR) and the national identity of most of the victims (Jewish),
they tended to overlook this fact in their anti-Nazi propaganda,
preferring for political reasons to use general terminology such as
'Soviet citizens'.(6)
In turn, the press
and the institutions of the veteran non-Jewish Baltic emigres who
for many years had been living in the United States - especially
those from Lithuania (see below) - deliberately presented a false
picture of excellent relations (!) between the Jews and their
neighbours even during the Nazi occupation. Similarly, they inflated
the fact of the existence of a handful of rescuers (Righteous among
the Nations) and exploited it, among other things, to polish the
tarnished image of the Lithuanian people in world public opinion,
from which they expected support in re-establishing independent
statehood.
An important
American-Jewish periodical innocently fell into a disinformation
trap of this kind during the Holocaust. Basing itself on reports
from circles in the Lithuanian Embassy in Switzerland, it wrote that
even under Nazi occupation, Lithuanians and Jews were still
maintaining friendly relations in their small country.(7)
For this reason, quite a few Lithuanian Jews who had settled in the
United States accepted these leaked reports with satisfaction even
in late 1943, when reports about what the Lithuanians were really
doing to their Jewish neighbours were already persistent and
prevalent.
The facts
presented above, I believe, allow one to state that several players
- the Nazi occupation authorities, the Soviet propagandists and the
Baltic emigre community overseas - already used disinformation about
the Holocaust of the Baltic Jews during World War II. However, as we
shall see below, the phenomenon of disinformation in this context
persisted, in different forms and with greater intensity, in the
reality of the postwar era, now 55 years old. In view of the
changing postwar reality, the disinformation has naturally been
augmented by a more general phenomenon, in which the very occurrence
of the Holocaust is sweepingly denied, and by new forms of
antisemitism that have evolved. The nature and potency of these
phenomena stem largely from three main factors that were involved in
them at certain periods of time. For this reason, we will now
present a representative selection of the phenomena in the context
of these factors.
FACTOR A: THE
SOVIET-BALTIC STATES IN THE POSTWAR ERA (1945-1990) (8)
As stated above,
Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia spent 45 years - from the end of the
war to the early 1990s, when the Soviet Union disintegrated and the
Baltic countries declared their independence - under Soviet
Communist rule. As the Soviet rulers succeeded one another (Stalin,
Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Gorbachev, etc.) during this time, so did
their loyalists in the Baltic countries. Partly for these reasons,
but mainly because the population was so hostile to the Soviet
regime (as manifested until 1953 in armed action in the forests), an
accelerated ascent of local national elements ensued in both the
internal governing systems and the institutions of the Communist
Party. This process made no small contribution to the Baltic
countries' proclamation of political independence in 1990;
concurrently, however, it had an indirect effect on the way these
countries treated various aspects of the Holocaust. Among the three
countries at issue, these developments were especially intensive and
powerful in Lithuania. As far back as 1988, a militant national
entity called Sajudis ['Movement'] came into being and acted
decisively to disengage from the Soviet ambit. Notably, however,
this development and the attitude toward the Holocaust were moving
in the same direction, more or less, in Latvia and Estonia as well.
In these three
countries, many collaborators with the Nazi occupation authorities
were found after the war and quite a few of them, including
murderers of Jews, were severely punished.(9)
However, for unbending ideological reasons that prevailed in the
late 1940s and in the 1950s, and especially for reasons of domestic
policy (not to anger or embarrass the majority peoples), the Soviet
authorities, followed by the press and the institutions of education
and culture, were careful to make the least possible mention of the
disposition of the local Jewish population during the world war. An
example of this approach is the fact that an official history book
published in Lithuania shortly after the war, sponsored by the
academy of science, devotes only five pages (out of 518) to the fate
of the population during the Nazi occupation. Within the five pages,
only one terse paragraph makes even a partial (!) reference to the
terrible fact that 220,000 Jews were annihilated in this country:
In the very first days of the
occupation, the occupiers passed a racist law that placed all
members of the Jewish nationality outside the bounds of civil law
and banished them to a 'ghetto'. Starting in October 1941, the
German fascists embarked on mass shootings of civilians of the
Jewish nationality, which lasted throughout the occupation era.
[... ] In addition to Soviet people [i.e., 'Jews'], the fascists
murdered at Fort IX in Kovno peaceable civilians [i.e., 'Jews']
who had been transported [to the Fort] in trains from France,
Austria and Czechoslovakia.(10)
What is more, the
dateline at the end of the book cites only three events that
occurred in Lithuania during the Nazi occupation: the execution of
peasants from Ziezmariai who had failed to supply food to the
occupation authorities as ordered (February 1943); the closure of
the university in Vilnius (March 1943), and the incineration of 119
unarmed residents of the village of Pirciupis by the occupation
authorities (June 1944).(11)
No information is presented about the mass executions of Jews in
various locations in Lithuania, e.g. the 'great Aktion' in Kovno, in
which some 10,000 men, women and children perished on 28 October
1941.(12)
With the passage
of time - especially since the mid-1960s - it has increasingly
become the trend in Soviet-Lithuanian historiography to 'prove', by
stressing the existence of several hundred Lithuanian Righteous
among the Nations,(13)
that the Jewish-Lithuanian 'fraternity of peoples' endured even
during the Nazi occupation. The only non-participants in this
fraternity were 'a minority of lowly murderers', nearly all of whom
(in the Soviet terminology) were fascist nationalists and members of
the kulak [estate-owning] class. In accordance with the prevailing
policy in Lithuania at the time, dozens of books were published in a
series called Faktai Kaltina [Facts accuse]. Also during this
time (1965 and 1973), two collections of authentic documents were
published under the title Mass Murders in Lithuania 1941—1945.
These books retell the murder by Lithuanians of hundreds of Jews
during the Holocaust, including the names and testimonies of persons
involved in these crimes.(14)
This process seems to have begun earlier in a lengthy series of
public trials against murderers of Jews, attended by large audiences
including public figures and the media. However, the appearance of
approximately two dozen publications on this delicate subject, in
Latvia and Estonia as well and in English(15)
and Russian,(16)
was something of an anomaly in the Soviet publishing policy at the
time. The Communist establishment in Belarus issued only one of
several acrid responses to the disclosure of these murders of Jews
in Lithuania: 'These publications give one the impression that the
Lithuanians are a people of murderers.'(17)
Indeed, the publication of works in this genre was halted some time
later.(18)
At the same time,
the Communist leaders of that era, including Jews such as Genrikas
Zimanas, did not flinch from exploiting this pregnant topic to
settle scores with political rivals and subject them to sweeping
excoriation. For example, Zimanas castigated Lithuanian nationalists
who had earned notoriety for murdering Lithuanian Jews but expressed
an almost identical view of Jewish nationalism: 'The Jewish
nationalists were no better. It is they who are responsible, at
least morally, for the death of Jews in the ghettos of Kaunas and
Vilnius ...'(19)
FACTOR B:
POSTWAR COMMUNITIES OF BALTIC ÉMIGRÉS IN THE WEST (1945-1999)
As the Nazi
occupation army was driven out of the Baltic countries at the end of
World War II, tens of thousands of Lithuanians, Latvians and
Estonians fled from these areas to Germany. A large majority of them
had collaborated with the Nazi authorities; not a few of them had
also been known as slaughterers of Jews during the Holocaust - as
Žydsaudžiai [Jew-shooters] in their countries' folk vernacular.
Subsequently, they emigrated to Western Europe, Africa and
Australia. Since most presented themselves as refugees from the
Soviet regime, these countries granted them dignified asylum in view
of the Cold War, then under way between the Soviet Union and its
satellites and the Western world. Some of them also became Cold
Warriors in various practical capacities. As part of this activity -
or outside of it - these emigres focussed strongly (until the 1990s)
on stirring interest in Western public opinion in the matter of the
protracted Soviet occupation of their homelands. For this purpose,
they availed themselves, among other things, of the rather extensive
press of the veteran organizations that Baltic emigres had
established in these countries before World War II. They also
received substantial support from the Baltic diplomatic missions
that since 1940 had continued to operate in the United States and
other Western countries that did not recognize the Soviets'
annexation of the Baltic states.
The problem was
that some of these emigres, upon their arrival in their new
countries, concealed from the immigration authorities their 'activity'
in murdering Jews in their countries of origin. Once their identity
and erstwhile activity were discovered,(20)
subjecting them to punishment or deportation — depending on the
decisions of the judicial authorities in their host countries —
these emigres and their supporters launched a counteroffensive that
included a venomous incitement campaign against the local Jews who
had ostensibly unmasked and incriminated them. Furthermore, in the
tense climate that pervaded the newly landed emigre communities,
views upholding their actions against the Jews during the Nazi
occupation were frequently expressed. In so doing, the emigres
invoked, among other things, false rationales including the infamous
'symmetry formula', which terms the slaughter of the Baltic Jews,
carried out by their neighbours during the Nazi occupation, a
reprisal for the ostensibly excessive participation of Jews in the
Sovietization of their countries in 1940. Baltic emigres have
persisted in activity of this kind to the present day, nefariously
twisting the facts and often resorting to various forms of
antisemitism.(21)
FACTOR C: THE
INDEPENDENT BALTIC COUNTRIES UPON THE DISINTEGRATION OF THE SOVIET
UNION (1990-1999)
When the
independent Baltic states were reconstituted in the spring of 1990
and needed de jure recognition from the West, the new
governments of these countries took a well-publicized series of
measures to demonstrate a new and fair approach in several matters,
including the Holocaust and related issues. For this purpose, they
encouraged and even provided incentives for the formation and
activation of cultural and educational institutions for the
remaining handful of Jews in these countries, mainly in several
large localities. They also strongly emphasized the rehabilitation
of pre-war cemeteries and, especially, the hundreds of mass graves
of Holocaust victims.
Concurrently,
however, a sophisticated campaign began in each of the Baltic
countries to elevate the so-called Baltic Holocaust to a parallel
place on the national agenda. Consequently, the theory of two
holocausts made inroads: the Jewish one, caused by the Nazi
occupation, and the Baltic one, caused mainly by the lengthy Soviet
occupation. This artificial parallelism has blurred the uniqueness
of the world disaster that afflicted the Jews as such and marred
memorial sites that symbolize certain parts of the cataclysm. Thus,
documentary and other material on the political struggle waged by
Lithuanian national circles against the Soviet authorities was
arbitrarily inserted into the permanent exhibition facilities at the
place where the Jews of Kovno (Kaunas) were mass-murdered — the
aforementioned Fort IX.
Furthermore, after Jewish activists in
Vilna (Vilnius) established a monument in the memory of Holocaust
victims at the vale of slaughter at Ponary (Paneriai), the
authorities seriously depreciated the contents of the inscription.
Originally, the inscription was to mention the 70,000 (sic.) Jewish
victims who were 'murdered and incinerated by the Nazis and their
local assistants'. The word 'local', referring in fact to the
Lithuanians, was deleted from the façade of the monument because the
Lithuanian authorities refused to acknowledge (even indirectly) the
national identity of most of the murderers. What is more, the
Lithuanian and Russian versions of the inscription were deleted
altogether — evidently out of concern that the non-Jewish young
generation would discover what their elders had done.
Shortly before the monument with its
mutilated inscription was dedicated, insult was added to injury: at
the aforementioned vale of slaughter, the names of fourteen
Lithuanians who had recently died in clashes of a political nature
with Soviet troops were noted in bold print. Many Lithuanian emigres
considered this action a continuation of the policy of blurring the
Jewish uniqueness of the Holocaust in Lithuania.
The Baltic governments' way of coping
with citizens who participated in perpetrating the Holocaust,
including some who were convicted of crimes during the Soviet tenure,
has been expressed in a totally different manner.(22)
Admittedly, one of the first laws enacted in independent Lithuania,
on 2 May 1990 - 'On the Restoration of Rights of Persons Repressed
for Resisting Occupational Regimes' - excludes from its incidence 'persons
who took part in genocide, murder, or abuse of unarmed civilians'.
Practically, however, a sweeping rehabilitation was proclaimed for
more than 30,000 persons, including quite a few who had participated
actively in murdering Jews in Lithuania and other locations. The
beneficiaries of these rehabilitations received financial
compensation and various benefits.
This embarrassing and defiant measure
against the victims' relatives touched off acute protests in the
Jewish world generally and among Holocaust survivors from Lithuania
particularly - with the Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel at
their lead.(23)
The bizarre rationale offered by the
Lithuanian judicial authorities - that they have no legal mechanism
with which to locate the murderers of the Jews - not only was
rejected but also caused grave repercussions around the world. On 5
September 1991, for example, The New York Times published a
sharply worded home-page article by Steven Kinzer, condemning the
rehabilitation in Lithuania of thousands of persons convicted by
Soviet courts of war crimes in service of Nazi Germany.
Additional articles in this vein, and
protests against the rehabilitations and vindications of war
criminals in Lithuania, appeared that month in a lengthy series of
well-known newspapers in the United States and Canada.(24)
Notwithstanding this, and despite exhausting discussions held by
joint committees set up by the governments of Israel and Lithuania
to resolve this painful affair,(25) thousands of
murderers of Jews - including A. Lileikis, K. Gimdziauskas and
others of their ilk - who had fled to Lithuania after legal
proceedings were begun against them in United States in the 1990s
for their involvement in murder, are benefiting in their homeland
from high-profile protection of the establishment.(26)
The only exceptions are the repeals of five rehabilitations of
Lithuanian murderers (and even then, posthumously!). It is for good
reason that an Israeli daily newspaper described the state of
affairs, which has outlasted the current millennium, by asserting
that 'Lithuania is probably the safest place in the world for
Lithuanians who murdered Jews during the Holocaust'.(27)
Another sophisticated measure taken by
the government of independent Lithuania to blur the involvement of
thousands of Lithuanians in murdering their Jewish neighbours during
the Holocaust was the designation of 23 September, the day the Vilna
ghetto was liquidated in 1943, as 'Jewish Holocaust Day' - instead
of 23 June, when the massacres began in 1941, even before the German
soldiers arrived. The decisive factor in the choice of this date,
over the protests of the Holocaust survivors,(28)
was the fact that the Vilna ghetto had been liquidated mainly by the
Germans, whereas the first pogroms in June 1941, which portended the
Holocaust in Lithuania, had of course been perpetrated mainly by
Lithuanians. There is no doubt that much of the local population —
especially its older members - were aware of this bitter truth, but
only a very small group of intellectuals and liberal elements did
not hesitate to utter 'that two-syllable expression, "we sinned"'.(29)
The rest of the population has either
maintained silence or taken shelter behind the 'symmetry formula,'
which, as stated above, is prevalent among the Baltic emigres in the
West and has been adopted in independent Lithuania. The
establishment in the Baltic countries, attentive to the protracted
criticism of its way of referring to the Holocaust and related
matters, has made a fitful effort to issue statements phrased in the
form of half-truths that might placate Western public opinion
without offending local right-wing circles. For example, Lithuanian
Prime Minister Gedimanas Vagnorius lamented emotionally that the
very small fragment of Lithuanian society that engaged in
criminality 'has cast a shadow over the entire Lithuanian people'.(30)
His successor, Adolfas Sleževicius, was also too wary in his remarks
on the eve of Holocaust day in 1994 to tell the public the whole
truth. Instead, he settled for the following vague statement: 'The
fact that no more than a hundred Lithuanians took part in the
genocide of the Jewish people requires us to express words of regret
and to ask the Jewish people for forgiveness for the suffering
caused to our innocent civilians upon their transfer to
concentration camps...'(31)
On 15 February 1995, to correct the
impression created by statements of this kind and, in the main, to
mend Lithuania's image in the world, the Lithuanian Sejm adopted an
explicit resolution against manifestations of racism, xenophobia,
antisemitism and intolerance. Concurrently, Lithuanian president
Algirdas Brazauskas decided to visit the Knesset in Jerusalem on 1
March 1995 and, in this fashion, to persuade the Jewish people
directly that Lithuania was taking a new and positive approach
toward the Holocaust. His remarks there include the following:
... I, the president of Lithuania,
bow my head in the memory of the more than 200,000 Lithuanian Jews
who perished. I ask your forgiveness for the actions of those
Lithuanians who brutally killed, shot, banished and humiliated
Jews... the black rabble that was given free rein to begin to
annihilate the Jewish people. I deeply regret that only a small
number of citizens were capable of extending a helping hand at
that time...(32)
In contrast to his speech in the
Knesset, which was presumably prepared with cautious judgement and
consideration of Israeli public opinion, Brazauskas adopted a
totally different tone when called upon to address 'sensitive
matters'. For example, he took off the silk gloves at a luncheon in
his honour when asked why he had not inveighed against the nefarious
'symmetry formula' that likens the Jewish Holocaust in Lithuania to
the so-called 'Lithuanian Holocaust'. His response dodged the
question about the comparison and focused mainly on the agonies of
the Lithuanian masses who had been exiled to Siberia during the
Soviet tenure in Lithuania.(33)
It is unsurprising that the Lithuanian
president's apologetic speech from the dais of the Knesset in
Jerusalem was received there with circumscribed satisfaction at
best, coupled with cautious expectations that his remarks would be
translated into action. However, he was greeted upon his return to
Lithuania by a very tumultuous and aggressive response from many of
his countrymen. Most of the allegations expressed — orally and in
the press, by various personalities but mainly by those on the right
flank of the political spectrum - focused on the following points:
• The visit was conducted after world
Jewish organizations had brought heavy pressure to bear against
Lithuania.(34)
• The president has neither the legal
power nor an endorsement to apologize on behalf of the entire
Lithuanian people, including those Lithuanians no longer alive.
• An admission of Lithuania's moral
responsibility for the genocidas of the Jews will only inflict
damage on Lithuania. 'Slowly the world will come around to the view
that the Lithuanians are indeed a people of Žydsaudžiai [Jew-shooters].'
• The president's stance may inspire
the Jews to present additional demands, such as restitution of
property.(35)
• In response to the visit, there has
been an eruption of antisemitic activity, among other things.(36)
* * *
It seems to me that of all these
allegations, the last (an eruption of antisemitic activity) has
proved to be the most realistic. Truth to tell, postwar Lithuania
had known previous antisemitic eruptions — during the Soviet tenure,(37)
and in the initial phases of the formation of independent Lithuania,
which the rump Jewish community supported strongly.(38)
However, these events pale in comparison with the turgid wave of
hundreds of antisemitic incidents, from desecration of Jewish
cemeteries to graffiti such as 'Jews get out' and swastikas, and
incitement articles in the press almost every day in the years
following the Lithuanian president's visit to Israel.
A large proportion of the articles,
reports and chronicles focusses on antisemitic manifestations in
Lithuania, even though the entire Jewish population there is
estimated at about 5,000 (0.7 percent of total population) and even
though this number is steadily dwindling because of the demographic
deficit (mortality and emigration). An indication of the abiding
strength of extreme anti-Jewish prejudice among Lithuanians is the
fact that even after the Holocaust, blood libels in several
Lithuanian cities necessitated the intervention of the authorities
but were silenced by the press!
By the same token, in view of the
widespread resistance and disgruntlement that accompanied the
Lithuanian president's visit to Israel, local periodicals have been
fanning antisemitism anew (39) by invoking
techniques and fictitious and primitive stories that were
conventional in history's bleakest days. One article in this vein,
written by a Lithuanian physician and entitled 'Jews - Murderers',
begins by presenting the reader with the following themes:
• The Jews are 'cultural parasites'
who drain other cultures dry.
• The Jews are seeking to concentrate
the entire world economy in their hands.
• The Jews are seeking to annihilate
the Christians and to convert all other nations to Judaism ('a
worldwide Jewish plot').
• The Jews use the blood of Christians
(foremost of children) in their religious rites.
The last-mentioned allegation, the
most hideous, is scarcely believed anymore even by the most sworn
antisemites. In the not-so-distant past, Jews in many European
countries (particularly Eastern) were prosecuted for 'blood
sacrifices' although even the most biassed courts could not prove
their guilt. A letter by the physician from Klaipeda, Dr. A.
Giedraitiene, included in this article, may be considered a typical
document of 'savage' antisemitism. It ends with the following
remarks:' The Jews' tactics are known throughout the whole world.
They accuse others of what they themselves are doing. People like
Hitler and A. Likeikis should be granted the highest orders for
rescuing the nations of the Baltic states from the hideous terror of
the Jews.'(40)
CONCLUSION
Even the relatively few details in
this article suffice to illuminate the close relationship among the
three main phenomena reviewed here: denial of the Holocaust,
disinformation and the new forms of antisemitism. Unlike the first
two-mentioned phenomena, the new forms of antisemitism have
developed, naturally enough, as outgrowths of Factor C - the factor
that embodies the independent Baltic states that have existed since
the early 1990s. One of the characteristics of these countries
undoubtedly has its roots in the coalescence of a new national
identity after decades of various forms of 'foreign rule'. However,
this process has been accompanied by continual efforts to blur
everything connected with collaboration with these rulers, including
the Jewish Holocaust. However, it stands to reason that the new
forms of antisemitism developed in these countries, to a certain
extent, pursuant to the Jews' demands for investigation of the
Holocaust-era murders and punishment of the murderers.
The new form that this phenomenon has
acquired has an additional characteristic: in contrast to the
pre-war antisemitism in the Baltic countries, which focussed largely
on the economic domain (asking who subjected whom to greater
exploitation), the new antisemitism stresses rivalry over the
national identity of most of the victims of the war era (asking who
suffered more), and so on.
In our survey of the phenomena that
stemmed from Factors A and B, we also found that concurrent
interests at the political or the public-national level led to
manifestations of negative attitudes toward the Jewish entity:
either deliberate disregard (on the part of the Soviet Baltic
leadership) or in the form of propaganda attacks (on the part of
Baltic emigre communities in the West).
It is only natural than Factor B was
most active and conspicuous at the time when Factor A was
politically and ideologically limited. However, when Factor C made
its appearance, it adopted several tactics from Factor B (such as
the 'symmetry formula') and developed and expanded their use.
It also seems that certain wartime
events have often been mobilized for the interests of all three
factors. The tragic burning of 119 people in Pirčiupis by the Nazi
authorities, for example, has been exploited by both Factor A and
Factor C.
Be this as it may, one may state that
the phenomena discussed above are associated with any number of
factors, depending on their interests and needs in given situations.
Of course, in addition to timing and all of its implications, they
are also differentiated in terms of tactics and intensity of
involvement.
Although this article provided
considerable detail and information, the subject in its overall
sense has not yet been researched properly. Since additional
relevant material is being discovered every day, one presumably can
look forward to important complementary work on this topic in the
near future.
* In memory of Dr. Geoffrey Wigoder.
This article was published in :
Remembering for the Future - The Holocaust in Age of Genocide
Palgrave - Macmillan's global academic publishing Hampshire 2001,
Vol. 1, pps. 847-857
Professor Dov Levin is one of the
preeminent contemporary international scholars of the history of
Eastern European Jewish Communities. He is the Director emeritus of the Oral History Division of
the Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry, at the Hebrew University
in Jerusalem. Professor Levin was born in Kovno, Lithuania, and was
a member of the anti-Nazi underground movement in the Kovno ghetto.
More information and publication list.
Notes:
(1)
See Dov Levin, 'On the
Relations between the Baltic Peoples and Their Jewish Neighbours
Before, During and After World War II', in Remembering for the
Future, Theme I -Jews and Christians During and After the Holocaust
(Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1988), pp.171-181.
(2)
Amidst the proliferation of views about this phenomenon, one view
seems the most appropriate and relevant for the contents of this
article: that 'The real purpose of the denial is to clear the Nazism
that clings to it, to achieve for it the rehabilitation that will
pave the way for those radical movements that are experiencing
difficulty in gaining a broad foothold in the public and political
arenas': Yisrael Gutman, Denying the Holocaust (Jerusalem: Shazar
Library, 1985), p. 13.
(3)
For further details, see Dov Levin, Baltic Jews under the Soviets
1940-1946 (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1994).
(4)
Dennis B. Klein (ed.), Hidden History of the Kovno Ghetto
(Washington, D.C.: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1997),
p.242.
(5)
In the fall of 1943, as the Soviet armies advanced toward the
borders of the Baltic states, the Germans attempted to erase the
physical evidence of their crimes against humanity, first by
incinerating the most startling evidence - the tens of thousands of
corpses of Jews from Kovno and Central Europe in mass graves at Fort
IX. Ibid., p.10.
(6)
This term and others like it ('innocent Soviet citizens' or 'peaceful
Soviet citizens') were also regularly used during the postwar era of
Soviet rule in inscriptions on monument plaques. For facsimile
reproductions of these inscriptions, see Y. Levinson, The Book of
Sorrow (Vilnius: Vaga, 1997), p.21.
(7)
'News from Lithuania', Congress Weekly, vol.9, no.4, 20 February
1942.
(8)
In the jargon of the local Baltic population and these countries' 'post-Soviet'
historiography, this era is known as the 'second Soviet occupation'.
The 'first' occupation lasted from June 1940 to June 1941.
(9)
According to a later source, approximately 250 Lithuanians who had
murdered Jews during the Nazi occupation were executed by gunfire in
accordance with court verdicts, and about 1,000 were sentenced to
lengthy prison terms. 'Dienos tema', Diena, 29 September 1994.
(10)
J. Žiugžda (ed.), Lietuvos TSR Istorja, Lietuvos TSR Mokslu
Akademija (Vilnius, 1958), p.420.
(11)
Books, pamphlets and memorial cards were published about this tragic
event in the 1950s and afterwards; several of them present a full
and detailed list of the victims' names. Vincas Uzdavinys, Pirčiupo
kaimo tragedija [The tragedy in Pirciupis village] (Vilnius:
Valstybinc politines ir mokslo literatures leidykla, 1960). Fifty
years after the incident, in independent Lithuania, the journal
Kardas (no.3—4, 1994) printed an article that blamed the Jewish
Communist leader G. Zimanas (about whom more is said below) for the
episode.
(12)
ibid., p.515.
(13)
During this time, a book was even published reviewing 160 instances
of rescue of Jews during Holocaust: S. Binkiene, Ir be ginklu kariai
(Vilnius, 1967). The author was recognized as Righteous among the
Nations by Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.
(14)
B. Baranauskas and F. Rozauskas (eds.), Masines Zudynes Lietuvoje
(1941-1944) (Vilnius: Mintis, vol.I, 1965; vol.11, 1973).
(15) A. Avotins, J. Dzirkalis and V.
Petersons. F. Rozauskas (eds.), Daugavas Vanagi - Who Are They}
(Riga, 1963).
(16)
E. Martinson, Slugi Svastiki [The servants of the swastika]
(Tallinn: Eesti Raamat, 1962).
(17)
Vytautas Tininis, Sovietine Lietuva ir Jos veikejai (Vilnius:
Enciklopedija, 1994), p.137.
(18)
Ibid. Cf. D. Nachmanovich, 'An eyntselner shtrol in dep pinstern
tunel fun yidn sino' [A lonely ray of light in the dark tunnel of
antisemitism], Naye Tsaytung, 24 October 1996.
(19)
K. Telyatnikov, 'Mingle with the People', Soviet Life 8, no.179
(August 1971): 63. See also Genrikas Zimanas, Illusions and Reality
(Vilnius: Mintis, 1983), pp.86-89.
(20)
One of the books that revealed murderers of Jews in Latvia is J.
Silabriedis and H. Arklans, Political Refugees - Unmasked (Riga,
1965).
(21)
One such activist, A. Simutis, made remarks likening the Jews to
Hitler (Respublica, 24 August 1993). He has since been named
Lithuanian representative to the United Nations.
(22) 'In their zeal to undo the convictions
handed down by the Soviet courts, Lithuanian officials granted
rehabilitations even to individuals who had been convicted of
participation in murder.' Efraim Zuroff, 'Whitewashing the
Holocaust: Lithuanian and the Rehabilitation of History', Tikkun 7,
no.l (January-February 1992): 44.
(23)
This organization has systematically been publishing relevant
material on the matter in booklets carrying the pregnant title Crime
and Punishment in Lithuania. The most recent booklet appeared in
January 1999.
(24)
The Sunday Sunpost, 8 January 1991 - by the Vice-Chairman of the
American Zionist Federation; The New York Times, 10 September 1991 -
by A. Rosenthal; Newsweek, 16 September 1991; Miami Herald, 18
September 1991 - by Sender Vaisman.
(25)
Audrius Braukyla, 'Committee Established to Review Rehabilitations',
The Baltic Independent, 2-8 July 1998.
(26)
David Filipov, 'In Homeland, Lileikis a Victim, Not a War Criminal',
Boston Sunday Globe, 16 October 1996.
(27)
'Lithuania Hit over War Criminals', The Jerusalem Post, 16 September
1999.
(28)
Eliezer Zilber, 'The Genocide of the Lithuanian Jews', Lithuania -
Crime and Punishment 3 (August 1993): 14. Cf. E. Jacovskis, 'Kodel
rugscjo 23-oji?' [Why 23 September?], Tiesa, 10 June 1993.
(29)
Pranas Morkus, Siaures Atenai, 23 September and 1 October 1994.
(30)
Gedimanas Vagnorius, 'Gedulas ir viltus', Lietuvos Aldas, 5 July
1991.
(31)
Diena, 23 September 1994. This is the place to note the overuse of
the term genocidas (genocide), with which much of the public is
unfamiliar. The Lithuanian language has the alternative concept of
skerdynes (slaughter). This term is also rooted in Lithuanian
historiography in the context of a bloody action conducted by a
company of Cossacks on behalf of the Czarist Russian authorities in
1891 in the Lithuanian town of Kraziai. Two volumes on the subject,
entitled Kraziu skerdynes, were published in Lithuania in 1990.
(32)
Algirdas Pranas, 'Atgailos Zodziai' [Words of repentance], Diena, 5
March 1995.
(33)
For more on the Lithuanian president's state visit to Israel, see
Dov Levin, Gachelet, April 1995, p.17.
(34)
'Nemandagumo vizitas' [The impolite visit], Respublika, 3 March
1995.
(35)
'Prezidento vizito pedsakais' [After the president's visit],
Respublika, 6 March 1995.
(36)
'We Lithuanians ourselves were surprised by the intensity of the
antisemitism that the visit aroused.' S. Stoma, 'Atgaila is reikalo
nickada nebuna nuosirdi' [Repentance with interest is never sincere],
Lietuvos Rytas, 6 March 1995.
(37)
In 1958, a blood libel in the town of Plunge almost led to a pogrom.
The violence was headed off only by massive police intervention. See
Yankl Piker, 'Azoy iz es gevn' [So it happened] (Tel Aviv, 1979),
p.87.
(38)
The reference here is to a mob attack on the home of Arkadi
Lichtenstein, director of the chamber of commerce in the port city
of Klaipeda, in December 1989.
(39)
For an extensive review of this topic, including details on the
contents of dozens of articles, see Lithuania Anti-Semitism
(Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel, October 1997).
(40)
'Zydai - zmogzudziai' [Jews - Murderers], Europa, 21-23 February
1996, pp.1-3. |
