Lithuania to Investigate Dr. Yitzhak Arad, Holocaust Survivor

Haaretz:

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Last update - 10:10 18/09/2007
Lithuanian chutzpah
By Baruch Shuv

Earlier this month it was announced that historian Dr. Yitzhak Arad, former chairman of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, might be interrogated about his past as a partisan if he visited Lithuania.
Arad, who served in the Palmach (the elite strike force of the Haganah, the pre-state underground Jewish militia) and reached the rank of brigadier general as the Israel Defense Forces' chief education officer, was invited to Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, to participate in the deliberations of the committee investigating Nazi and Soviet crimes in Lithuania. But ahead of his visit, the Lithuanian newspaper Republika accused him of wrongdoing during World War II. In addition, right-wing extremists called on the Lithuanian attorney general to open an investigation.
This is not the first time this newspaper has expressed anti-Semitic and fascist ideas. It is also no secret that Republika has come out in favor of Nazi collaborators serving in the Gestapo, who murdered hundreds of thousands of Jews and are still wandering around free. Now Lithuania's judicial objectivity will be put to the test.
To add some historical background: The Lithuanians, descendants of Baltic tribes, converted to Christianity in the 14th century. Between the 13th and 15th centuries, the Lithuanian Church expanded its influence and conquered vast areas of land, reaching as far as the Black Sea. It was during this period that Lithuania joined Poland and became one of the largest countries in Europe. Poland-Lithuania was conquered toward the end of the 18th century and carved up between Russia, Prussia and Austria. Lithuania was annexed by the Czarist Russian regime.
The 20th century's revolutions and wars brought Lithuania periods of occupation and independence. All in all, Lithuania was under Russian occupation (both Czarist and Soviet) for 186 years, and under German occupation for about 7 years.
Jews first settled in Lithuania about 600 years ago. Before the Nazi invasion, the country's Jewish population numbered 220,000, while after the Holocaust only about 10,000 Jews remained. Most of Lithuania's Jews were murdered by Germans and Lithuanians. Today Lithuanian Jewry is scattered throughout the world.
By the end of World War II, fascist-Nazi tendencies had become widespread among Lithuanians. In the late 1930s a group of Lithuanian Nazis organized in Berlin, headed by Colonel Kazys Skirpa, calling itself the Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF). From 1940 onward, organized underground groups were operating in Soviet-occupied Lithuania, too. When the Germans invaded Lithuania in 1941, LAF units were the first to cross the border. Together with the local underground, they began to murder Lithuania's Jewish citizens. The massacres spread to every town and village, accompanied by arson and pillaging. Neighbors became enemies, and Jews were murdered in the streets and in their homes, including women, children and elderly.
All these crimes were perpetrated by the inflamed masses and under the leadership of the local Fascists and LAF units, even before the murderous German Einsatzgruppen arrived. Only later were thousands of Lithuanians recruited to the ranks of organized SS units and turned into Einsatzgruppen henchmen. The Lithuanians, who hated the Russians and the Communists and were disappointed by Nazi Germany, took out their frustrations on the defenseless Jews.
Lithuania's Jews were the first to be murdered and the first to rebel. The call for self-defense and revolt against the Germans began in the Vilna Ghetto, on January 1, 1942. Twenty days later the underground United Partisan Organization was formed. When it became clear to them that they could not overcome the Germans with their limited forces and without any outside assistance, Jewish youths began escaping to the forests, the swamps and the lakes in and around the country. The forest was the only place where the Jews could fight and take revenge on the Germans. Youngsters who had seen their parents, relatives and friends murdered had only one desire: to fight back and avenge, and if they had to die - to die fighting.
Over 1,000 men and women left the ghettos, camps, towns and villages in Lithuania and hid in the forests. They formed fighting units and fought shoulder to shoulder with their Russian, Belarusian, Polish and even Lithuanian comrades.
The local population, mostly ethnic Poles or Belarusians, were usually friendly, providing the partisans with food, basic necessities and sometimes even weapons. In most cases there was mutual respect between the farmers and the partisans. But this was not always the case: The few villages that were populated by Lithuanians (in areas that had been under Polish control before the war) were usually hostile to the partisans, and were organized to "defend themselves" by the Fascist regime.
These villages did not fight the Germans, but rather the partisans. In certain cases, the villagers set up guard posts at the village entrance, armed themselves and lay ambushes. They struck hard at the partisans and had to be fought just like the Germans. When the war ended it was the Lithuanian fascist groups who fled to the forests, both out of fear of the Russians and as a continuation of their war against the Russians, in response to the official order that Lithuanian collaborators be rooted out.
Today, 65 years after these events, it is an impudent perversion of history and a disgrace to the Lithuanian people to accuse the Jewish partisans of murdering Lithuanians. The Lithuanian people has so far refused to try and convict their murderous countrymen, who participated in the extermination of the Jews who had lived among them for 600 years.
The State of Israel, the Justice Ministry and the Foreign Ministry must respond to anti-Semitism and to this form of Holocaust denial. The peoples of the world should also raise their voices.
The author is director of the Organization of Partisans, Underground Fighters and Ghetto Rebels. [link]

posted by: jrtelegraph

Comments

[Natasha Broudy]

Too many volunteers!

[VR]

A Lithuanian who kills Jews is a murderer, but a Jew who kills Lithuanians is a hero? Such thinking surely does not bring any sympathy to Jews. While your statements about Jews in Lithuania before WW II are for the most part accurate, the statements about the situation during the war are not entirely accurate. Lithuania was a country occupied by a foreign power. There was no Lithuanian government, so no Lithuanian government could have ordered or initiated the killing of Jews. While it is true that some Lithuanians took part in the killings, they did it either ordered by the German government or as "volunteers." So it is unfair to blame the entire nation for the actions of the Germans or the few Lithuanians. And your statement that Lithuanians organized SS units is entirely inaccurate. They refused to do it, and as result, scores of Lithuanian intellectuals and activists were aprehended by the Germans and sent to concentration camps. If you don't know this is because you didn't do your reseach or your intentions are to smear the Lithuanian nation.
By the way, if you say that of the entire 220,000 Jewish population in Lithuania prior to WW II, only 10,000 remained, how come there are so many Litvaks (Lithuanian Jews) around the world today? Every day I meet a few. Just wonder.

[tbart]

Yes, not all were anti-Semitic. And there were Lithuanians who took actions against the Soviets, and who did not participate in the murder of the Jews. So, why make patriots and heroes out of those who did!

[Eva Grecius]

I have no reasons to doubt your research, but I am a descendant of Lithuanian Catholic peasant farmers who hid Jews between rows of corn, in the barn, anywhere they could and brought them meals and tried to fatten them up for the strength to continue on their escape route. Today the descendants of this family are liberal Democrats who fight for human rights. Not all Lithuanian Catholics were anti-Semitic.