Ellen Cassedy

When Lithuania became independent of the Soviet Union, a new public discourse began – both about the Soviet times and about the Nazi era. Today, a small but influential cadre of officials, teachers, and activists – Jews and non-Jews alike – is venturing into the hidden recesses of the past, searching for a way beyond disparate heritages and mutual prejudices.

Lithuania’s effort to engage with the past, “is not a Jewish project,” according to Irena Veisaite, 76, a Holocaust survivor. “It is a question for all of us in common. Because as long as you are hiding the truth, as long as you fail to come to terms with your past, you can’t build your future.”

A leader in the effort to examine the past is the International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes, which was established in 1998 by Lithuania’s president, Valdas Adamkus.

“We try to motivate the students,” said Indre Makaraityte, a young gentile staffer, “to ask their grandparents, ‘What was your moral choice?’ We promote dialogue between the generations.”

At the Jewish museum, Viktorija Sakaite, a middle-aged gentile woman, directs the “Righteous Gentiles” project, which honors Lithuanians who rescued Jews during the war. Sakaite began researching rescuers in 1992, in partnership with a Jewish professor.

Lithuania’s initiatives to engage with the Jewish past have several attributes in common:

1) They celebrate, rather than simply condemn. Lithuania’s educational projects seek to connect people not only with the tragedy of destruction but with the glory of the Jewish past. Rather than simply having their noses rubbed in the bad deeds of the war years, Lithuanians are invited to treasure what was lost.

2) They invite, rather than require. Leaders of these efforts believe that instead of being forced to accept responsibility for the events of the war years, Lithuanians should have an opportunity to take the matter into their hearts. People who design their own vehicles of remorse, they believe, are more likely to find their way to a moral view of the past and an open-minded vision of the future.

3) They question, rather than answer. “Here are the facts,” these efforts say. “Here are the questions. Now it’s your job, everyone’s job, to reflect on them.”

4) They call on people to join together. “In a dialogue,” Irena Veisaite told me, “you need two parts.” Jews were not the only victims in the tumult of 20th-century Lithuania. But acknowledging that gentile Lithuanians also suffered is not enough in itself. Lithuanians are called to participate in a moral exploration of the past not as victims and not only because they need to be taught a lesson – but instead because their finest selves are respected and their presence is actively desired.

Anti-Semitism is by no means absent in Lithuania today. Jewish cemeteries are desecrated and prejudice explodes on Internet sites. Yet these days, when such incidents occur, both Jews and non-Jews speak up to condemn them.

For Indre Makaraityte of the International Commission, Lithuania’s effort to confront the past is of the utmost importance. "Our goal," she said, "is to transform ourselves from a society of bystanders into an active civil society."

During the most terrible times in mid-20th-century Lithuania, solidarity was often difficult if not impossible. But in Lithuania today, and elsewhere around the globe, the opportunity exists to expand our sympathies, to ask others to stand together with us, to appeal to one another not as victims, bystanders, or perpetrators, but as fellow beings with the capacity for moral choice.

“We Are ALL Here: Facing History in Lithuania”
Bridges, Fall 2007, Vol. 12, No. 2