Lithuanian War Crimes – Knesset Speaker Rivlin addresses Seimas in Vilnius Jerusalem Post Editorial, September 25, 2003
Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin yesterday concluded his state visit to Lithuania, notorious for its World War Two collaboration with the Nazis.
Though pressured and criticized, the outspoken Rivlin pulled no punches. He demanded his hosts face their anti-Semitic past and own up to their responsibility for brutish mass murder. “Admitting guilt is an essential step in any bid to tighten relations,” he told the Lithuanian parliament.
His words of admonition were frequently met with bristling intolerance. The small local Jewish community, fearing a backlash, begged that he give no offence. Lithuanian officialdom, concerned about the country’s image, also asked Rivlin to tone down whatever remonstrations he planned to include in his address to parliament, where some representatives preferred to walk out rather than hear unpleasant truths.
To his credit, Rivlin did not cave in. The Holocaust in Lithuania was unique even within the context of the Holocaust as a whole.
Lithuanian mobs did not wait for the Germans to implement an “orderly” final solution. Two days after Germany’s invasion of the USSR, they began butchering their Jewish neighbors. Lithuania holds another distinction; its Jewish population suffered proportionally the heaviest losses of any Jewish community anywhere in wartime Europe. Ninety four per cent of Lithuania’s Jews were wiped out. In that, the Lithuanians outdid such bloody minded collaborationist neighbors such as the Latvians and Ukrainians.
Then too, most Lithuanian Jews were slaughtered by Lithuanians, not Germans. The Lithuanians organized special volunteer units to exterminate Jews and were the first to conduct mass executions of women and children. Up to that point, most German atrocities were perpetrated against Jewish men. The Lithuanians specialized in shooting tots in their mother’s arms. So efficient was the Lithuanian 12th battalion in murdering local Jews that the Germans transferred it to Belarus to continue its handiwork there.
The traditional Lithuanian narrative is to blame the bitter fate of Lithuanian Jewry on its alleged pro-Soviet sentiments. The USSR annexed Lithuania in 1940 and ruled it for less than a year prior to the Nazi conquest. That short period suffices to furnish a sort of moral equivalence – the Jews aided the Soviets and the Lithuanians got back at them by aiding the Germans.
Though Jews never massacred tens of thousands of Lithuanians, there are few Lithuanians today who dispute and reject this equation. With eyewitnesses dwindling, Rivlin thought it paramount that the record is set straight and that younger Lithuanians be aware of their nation’s sins.
Before that, he stressed, “relations cannot be normal. Cooperation between parliaments and governments is meaningless if there is no reconciliation between peoples. The Jewish people, the survivors among them first and foremost, refuse contact with Lithuania until there is a meaningful assumption of responsibility.”
But Lithuania’s record is not encouraging. It has been remarkably reluctant about compensation for confiscated Jewish property, and it has been even more loath to bring war criminals to justice. Many of them in fact are brazenly feted as heroes of the anti-communist struggle.
That is why Rivlin rightly refused to attend a ceremony in which the Lithuanian president was to honor several dozen of his compatriots credited with rescuing Jews.
Righteous gentiles were exceedingly rare in Lithuania and Rivlin discovered that only a minority of those who were to be decorated for their humanitarianism were known to, and recognized by Yad Vashem. He feared the others may not only be counterfeit altruists but could even include murderers. This assumption, sadly, is not far fetched in Lithuania.
Israel must be very careful indeed in how it furthers relations with such collaborationist Eastern European states. All of them, like Lithuania, crave ties with Israel on the stereotyped assumption that Jews can work financial and economic magic, or, at a minimum, win them American favors.
These states need legitimacy from the Jewish state to cleanse their record and earn the respectability they need to integrate into modern Europe. Their overtures to Israel are self-serving. It is not that Israel, hardly pampered by international popularity, could not use new friends, but like Rivlin, we feel that Israel cannot overlook bestiality for ephemeral advantage.
No measure of profit can justify deals with Holocaust deniers, be they individuals or nations reluctant to admit their collective guilt. Lithuania has made some hesitant first steps but still has a long way to go. That was Rivlin’s message and it was the right one.