And this precisely what happened in this profound article. Read it for yourself:
Saulius Sužiedėlis explained why the Nazis did not need gas cameras in Lithuania [at the Holocaust]
40 percent of Holocaust victims died in gas cameras but not so in Lithuania. Here, Nazis found enough killing workforce, says Saulius Sužiedėlis, professor emeritus of history of US Millersville University.
According to him, though there were informal attempts to contain violence, public outrage and public condemnation by authoritative figures was sorely missing. Top Church officials kept silence too. According to Saulius Sužiedėlis, it is time to stop denying unpalatable facts and take an honest look at our past.
Saulius Sužiedėlis was in Vilnius by invitation of the Lithuanian (Litvak) Jewish Community and read a report at the conference #MemoryResponsibilityFuture
When the topic of the participation of Lithuanians is touched in the public discourse, very often we witness defensive reactions manifesting in attacks against Jews: ‘But look, they did this and that to us!’
– It is human nature to attempt to put the blame on others. For example, the annihilation of Indians was ignored for a long time in the US. The popular line was that it was a result of spontaneous bloodsheds in the wild west but the latest research shows that in most cases it was a deliberate massacre of peaceful inhabitants. Of course, some were dismayed to hear this, and they reversed the blame: ‘But don’t you know what did they were doing to cowboys!’, etc. None other is happening in Lithuania: we undergo lively discussions about the causes of the war, who should be our heroes or who should be deposed from such.
Personally, I don’t care what Jews did. I care, however, what Lithuanians did. Of course, there were Jews who took part in exiling people to Siberia. But what does it have to do with, say, murdered Jewish children of Telšiai (Telz)?
I feel not personal (I was not born at the time) but a certain collective shame that people from my nation could behave so in a Catholic, religion-practicing country. This is a shameful episode of our history and it is not a solution to sweep it under the carpet. This would only witness to our inferiority and undermine the country’s image.
If documents, sources used by historians witness that part of society contributed to the annihilation of their fellow citizens we have no choice but to concede – yes, it was so. Needless to say, the context must be taken into account – it happened during the years of foreign occupation and the main incentive for murder came from the outside; nevertheless, local inhabitants were granted a major role in the execution of the occupying power’s plans. We must acknowledge this unequivocally. We must accept equally so that the Holocaust was the cruelest and bloodiest episode in the Lithuanian history. There is no similar event to match it by brutality, scale, and cruelty.
It is not easy to acknowledge this but we must go in that direction. I don’t know of any other way.
But perhaps we have too few facts, related documents and sources to make us accept and believe it?
– The fact that a significant number of Lithuanians participated in it cannot be denied. But it is subject to numerous manipulations as to who is to be regarded participant, which social classes were most involved, etc. All those discussions are not of any good because they overlook the administrative structure of the genocide.
Holocaust was a well-organized effort. It did not spring up accidentally as riots or pogroms would and which could be instigated by scum. Genocide is made possible only by a well-orchestrated effort, it requires management and administration. They occupying forces employed local governing structures and this enabled them to implement annihilation plans in a well-organized fashion.
From the invasion of the Wehrmacht in late July 1941 till August, 85-90 percent of Jews were still alive. Only men were shot during this period, women and children only occasionally. Then about 70 percent of Jews were murdered in a brief period – from early August till the Great action in Kaunas IX fort on 29 October. Having the scale of the operation in mind, the Nazis and the perpetrators regarded it highly successful. The survivors were herded into large ghettoes – in Vilnius, Kaunas, and Šiauliai (Shavl). They were meant to be killed later, after having been used as a workforce.
Needless to say, there would be no Holocaust without the Germans but it is an evident fact that the existing administration was operational in the Holocaust effort. This is especially true of the local administration: municipalities, police units, local LAF (Lithuanian Activists Front) committees. The effort required clerks to draw lists of Jews, determine who was Jewish and who was not, segregate victims in temporary camps, provide food rations, etc. All these actions required an elementary knowledge of record-keeping; a number of Lithuanians provided this service.
Researchers of the genocide typically distinguish several stages. Were Lithuanians involved in all of them?
– As far as the process is concerned, we need to get things straight. German theoreticians pondered for about a year on such questions as how many Jewish grandparents one must have to be deemed Jewish. Then these theoreticians determined that if Jews pose threat to the Arian race due to some collective guilt, they must be marked, segregated and concentrated in certain places. All these three stages were implemented by Lithuanians: they identified, segregated and concentrated the victims.
Even Nazis themselves executed the final stage – of annihilation – with some delay. At first, they wanted to deport Jews to Madagascar but is was not possible because of the British navy. When the war broke out, they were free to resort to radical measures.
The plan for mass killings had to be coherent and was created in stages. At first, victims were shot. Then they noticed that it breaks the psychological balance of the killers because they are too exposed to their victims. The masterminds decided to use gas cameras instead and thus the killing process became ‘industrialized’. It was a much less humane death but they focused not on victims but on the executioners. The psychological burden was relieved to them.
40 percent of Holocaust victims died in gas cameras but not so in Lithuania because the Nazis found enough killing workforce here. Not only for auxiliary administrative tasks but also for the key function, i.e. to execute. This facilitated implementation of the Holocaust to the Nazis.
Was it possible for an ordinary person to attempt to oppose the organized violence? Many people remained observers in the face of such force…
– Indeed, when the genocide became fine-tuned people could only observe it. They had no opportunity to oppose it in any way. The only remaining option was to save individual people.
Therefore it is possible to say that essentially the fate of the Jewish people did not depend on the Lithuanian inhabitants under the Nazi occupation but the survival of individual Jews seeking refuge fully depended on the actions of individual non-Jews. Will a specific person provide help or not? The matter of life and death was decided by individual village or city inhabitants. We can be proud that these were not a handful of people but rather several thousand of rescuers. It is a large number in comparison to other countries, adjusted per capita. We have a legitimate reason to be proud of that. The point is that pride for ones can go hand in hand with shame for others.
It is noted today that the textbooks have enough facts about the Holocaust but there is not enough reflection, trying to imagine ourselves in victims’ shoes, not enough empathy. Perhaps this would help perceive the motifs of why some people risked their lives to save people and why others merely observed the ongoing tragedy or even participated in it…
– Lack of empathy is not a problem relevant only to our time. For example, the anti-Nazi publications of 1942-1944 reported the closing of Lithuanian high schools vividly and in heightened emotional terms. The reporter’s used such words as ‘horrible’, ‘crusader Germans’, barbarians and similar. Right next to it – merely a couple of sentences about the extermination of children of Šiauliai ghetto: on this and that day children were shot. Period. A dry fact with no trace of empathy. This is what it degraded to.
Many people empathized with the victims but the public expression of their position was sorely lacking. There were sporadic bursts of disapproval; I remember my father told me he had seen a group of people herded into a forest by the Vilkomir police. This experience stuck in his memory for the rest of his life. He would vex at how someone could herd people into a forest as cattle… ‘How can this be that people are beaten in the light on the day, what to do?’ There were attempts to stop the violence. But there was no broad condemnation – opinion leaders remained silent in public. Nor was it denounced by the top Church hierarchs who wielded huge influence on the society at the time.
There is but one notable exception. Justinas Staugaitis, bishop of Tešliai (Telz) wrote an apostolical letter on 10 July 1941 in which he writes: ‘God save us from violence’ and preaches that it is not right to persecute ‘strangers’, meaning people of other ethnicities. Such proclamations were badly needed at the time.
Instead, the opposite happened. Virulent anti-Semitic propaganda was fanned in the media at this time. The propaganda effect reduced the effect of the public act when the provisional government (formed by Lithuanians prior to the arrival of Nazi forces) distanced itself from violence in a formal way. Because anti-Semitic attitudes were legitimized, people who wished to act on their convictions had their hands freed and thus violence was unleashed.
What were the reasons or preconditions that enabled to fuel aggression towards Jews in the wake of German occupation?
– The ground shaking shock for the nation was the exiles of the first period of the communist occupation. With people looking for revenge, the link between Jews and Bolshevism was cemented in the perception of the population. So the animosity to the Soviet rule and distaste for Jews went hand in hand. But it is worth noting that Jews were depicted both as communists and as capitalists as the same time. Anti-Semitic propaganda employed both sources of discontent.
Alas, it must be said that the public narrative providing a case for genocide was rather convincing and legitimized acts of violence: ‘But we are merely defending ourselves in this way!’ Today we have a case of study about how a society deteriorates under the influence of a genocidal mindset when there is no voice from opinion makers who could potentially prevent acts of violence.
The rhetoric of violence was abundant in the media. For example, the head article of Naujoji Lietuva (New Lithuania) of July 4, 1941, wrote about “parasites”, encouraged readers to fight the Jewry by the strictest of means and plainly suggested to exterminate it.
The diaries of intellectuals of the time reveal that this narrative was impactful. For example, Rapolas Mackonis ponders in his diary that cleansing ourselves of Jews is a historical necessity: ‘Jews are like lice seizing the body of Lithuania for centuries, they sucked the juice of her body like clinging leeches. We got used to such insects with time and therefore we now look as bitten by lice all over. But it is high time to undergo a disinfection…’
All such “disinfection” in the world start from verbal abuse: dismissing others, dehumanizing, weighing collective guilt on them. Words are powerful – they can justify violent actions which follow them. Are words as dangerous today as they were back in the day?
– It is why we research terrible events in history – in order to learn how to prevent them. For example, the Roma community is exposed to public intolerance today. The society lacks the understanding that we are not too far away from a dangerous line. When a certain part of a society is not useful economically it is not hard to cross the line and descend into violence… It is easy dismissed Roma people but why not stretching our hand and helping them – after all, we are a majority and they are so few. Perhaps it is time for the Church to say a word to intercede on their behalf? Would the principle of love for thy neighbor help change the mind of many people?
Anti-Semitism and homophobia are a necessary precondition but not enough to unleash violence towards these peoples. The vital element is the stance of politicians and public figures.
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Notes by translator:
- 1. The article is not translated in full.
- The Roma (gypsy) community is largely involved in drug dealing and at least some of public discontent is justified. It would do no good in the long term if Lithuania or any other country is forced into liking communities who are heavily involved in immoral activities and do not fight such mores from within. I think it will lead to the opposite result – public anger may grow to the point where it will be hard to contain it.
- Not only national majorities but also minorities must mind why the majorities want to kill them. In Lithuania, some Jewish artists promoted radical communism prior to the Soviet occupation. After it, some Jews were expressing their joy publically about the fact that Lithuania was annexed by the Soviets rather than Germans (a definite no-no if you live in this country). Some of them derided Lithuanians saying that from then on Jews will have the upper hand in Lithuania. Needless to say, some Jews went to work for repressive Soviet structures, thus adding to the public myths. All this indeed created the impression that Jews were mostly into communism and they were dismissive of the opinion of other inhabitants. The reality was that such troublemakers were a tiny minority within the Jewish population but the main part of the Jewish community did nothing to convince their fellow countrymen that Jews, in general, do not approve of them.
- Delfi, the media channel where this article appeared in early February, is the central source of news in our country. This article was read by hundreds of thousands of people.
Original in Lithuanian: https://www.delfi.lt/multimedija/mes-prisimename/saulius-suziedelis-paaiskino-kodel-lietuvoje-naciams-neprireike-duju-kameru.d?id=77094961
For contacts with publisher: info@delfi.lt
For contacts with translator: Aurimas Guoga, aurimas@magistrai.lt
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