A brave Lithuanian writer speaks of the genocide of the Jews by the Lithuanians

 Due to the book about the genocide of the Jews in Lithuania, family and friends moved away from Ruta Vanagaitė

"I have fulfilled my duty to the country"

Mindaugas Jackevičius • • Ruta Vanagaite

Young illiterate Lithuanians in a sober state killed Jews so diligently that they were brought here to Lithuania for extermination from other countries. Schoolchildren also willingly participated in the murders, and the church observed the Holocaust with indifference, even the murderers were absolved of their sins. For the sake of racial purity and Jewish teeth, some 200,000 Jews were exterminated in Lithuania.

These are the conclusions reached by Rūta Vanagaitė, who wrote the book "Mūsiškiai" ("Ours"). An important part of the book is "A Journey with the Enemy", in which Vanagaitė and the famous Nazi hunter Ephraim Zuroff embark on a journey to the places where Jews were murdered and communicate with surviving eyewitnesses of those events.

"I know Lithuania didn't expect this book. That's why I wrote it." These are her words. Have you already experienced a backlash?

Priest Ričardas Doveika told me that doors were closing in my face. From the beginning, I faced a negative reaction: my relatives said that I was betraying my relatives and that I was Pavlik Morozov. Several of my friends turned their backs on me, saying that the Jews were paying me and that I was betraying my country.

It took a lot of courage. I asked my children, who are 20 and 28, if I should write a book like this. They said they supported him 120%. But some of my friends warned me that I would run out of readers who loved me for my books on caring for the elderly and women. I thought, why should I think about trading? I see that no one else will write a book like that.

Why do you think no one else will write? Are you afraid of this topic?

They are so afraid that I face absolute panic, from the authorities to the villagers. In six months, I met only a few people who were not afraid. I even had to meet historians on a park bench ... I can't quote some historians, they don't want to, one of them said that from now on he would not give lectures on this topic, it's dangerous.

Where does this fear come from? Lithuania and Israel reconciled, and in 1995 President Algirdas Brazauskas apologized to the Jewish people, even though he was jealously criticized for it.

They made peace with Israel so that it would not raise this issue. In exchange, Lithuania will support Israel at the UN. It's politics. Even the Israeli ambassador, seeing Zuroff in Lithuania, said to him: "Why are you coming here, will you ruin the mood of the people?" Not even the Jewish community raises this issue, neither Israel nor Lithuania raises it, and there are practically no eyewitnesses to these events. And there is no money for research.

Yes, Brazauskas was convicted. I think he later regretted doing it. He promised to identify and name the killers, but this was not done. In 2012, the Lithuanian Center for the Study of Genocide and Resistance compiled a list of 2055 people who could have participated in the genocide. The list was delivered to the government. Where is he now?

I went to see the Vice Chancellor of the Government and told him that we had to do something with this list, because he could not lie for 5 years. They told me that no matter what we did, the Jews were not enough. And the list goes on.

Maybe everything has already been researched and evaluated?

I have read the books of all Lithuanian historians, and all of them claim that the Holocaust took place in provinces throughout Lithuania. We believe that only in Paneriai, no, the entire province of Lithuania is full of Jewish graves, people have been exterminated. This is a blank spot in our historiography. Why didn't they investigate it? There are only a few historians who do this: I was told that five people have to work for five years to find out how many Lithuanians participated in the Holocaust. Not five people and 5 years. Zuroff and I drove through Lithuania: the people who saw and remember the Holocaust are now between 5 and 85 years old. How much longer are we going to wait?

It's no secret that Zuroff is hated in Lithuania and he himself, to put it mildly, does not burn with love for us. How did you manage to convince him to take a "trip" to Lithuania?

In the spring, I was preparing a conference, and all the historians told me not to invite Zuroff: if he did, they refused to participate, because he might cry and start a fight. He interested me a lot. When he came to participate in the neo-Nazi marches, I met him. I asked him if he worked for Putin, and he asked me if he was doing Jewish projects for money.

I responded that among my relatives there were people whom I suspected of having participated in the Holocaust. He said that in 25 years he met the first person in Lithuania who recognized this. I said, "You're attacking Lithuania, so let's get in my car and drive around Lithuania, talk to people, see who's right." Because I do not know.

She accepted and the trip lasted three weeks. We agreed to pay for gas equally.

What did you see? How many doors have been closed in your face?

Most people spoke, but did not agree to be photographed or give their names. Others were afraid, they said they would come and kill me. Who is going to kill? Lithuanians! They know that in most cases Jews were escorted, guarded or killed by their neighbors' parents or grandparents. In this way, they betray their neighbors. But they remember it very well.

In an interview published in the book, Zuroff says that Lithuania is extraordinarily beautiful, but its beautiful forests hide several hundred massacre sites. When you drive around Lithuania you can see signs indicating those places, at least Lithuania has taken care of this.

But if you turn around there, you won't see anything. There is a sign, and then you can wander through the forest, and that's it. But there are also places that are not indicated. That's what I told Zuroff, we're not rich enough to guard 227 places. He replied that it was necessary to watch when they were shot.

Zuroff cried in every place. I had to wait for him to say a prayer. And then I thought, there are thousands of bones underground, and these places are not marked in any way. Then I couldn't bear to look at the Lithuanian graves. It seemed that everything was given too much importance, everything was so theatrical.

I have read the exhumation reports, many children with skulls intact, so they were buried alive. In the book, there is the testimony of a soldier: the father was lying face down in the well, covering the child. The soldier was asked who was shot first, the father or the child. He replied: "Are we beasts, or what, to shoot a child in front of his father?" "A child doesn't understand anything."

In the book, your rhetorical question about how many gold teeth were taken from the murdered Jews, melted down and then used to make the teeth of the inhabitants of Joniškelis, sounds terrible. He was a murderer of Jews who then worked as a dental technician. Did Lithuanians share the gold crowns of the dead?

Not only in Joniškelis, but in many places. I remember that in Soviet times, when teeth were treated, people asked whether the gold would be yours or mine. Where did dental technicians get their gold? Where did all the gold crowns go?

There is an even more interesting point. I inherited an antique bed, a wardrobe and a clock from my grandparents. I read that there were about 50,000 Jewish homes throughout Lithuania, plus synagogues, shops, hospitals. Where did all this go? All of Lithuania became rich.

I read that in Panevėžys, things were given to the Drama Theater, to a nursing home, to a women's gym, to a hospital and then sold to the residents. What could not be sold was given away. At the time of the murder of the Jews, there were 25,000 inhabitants in Panevėžys, and 80,000 belongings remained after the murder of the Jews, from bedding to cups. They gave themselves away. This means that each resident received several free things.

My grandmother is from Panevėžys, the bed is from Panevėžys. Did she buy it? I don't know. Did my mother wear any of those clothes? All Lithuanians who have antiques may wonder where they come from. The murderers of Jews were not paid anything, they took what they could, took it to sell or exchanged it for vodka. That was his reward. At night they returned home. Some of them had children, and they didn't come home from work empty-handed, they brought them clothes or something else.

When you read the book, you get the impression that the killers were simple village boys who volunteered for the Lithuanian army.

They went there on their own because they had nothing to do. At that time, there was a logic: they gave us food and shots. And you can also bring clothes, shoes, Jewish chains, drink. Rimantas Zagreckas conducted a study on the social portrait of the murderer of Jews: half of those killed in the province were illiterate or had completed two degrees. Maybe if the Church had taken a different stance or said that one of God's commandments had to be obeyed, maybe that would have stopped them. But the Church was silent or did not call.

When you read the memoirs of the murderers of Jews, the conclusion suggests itself that the Germans did not force them to kill - they could have refused.

First of all, these were volunteers - and the white armbands who volunteered. Some claimed that refusal was threatened with execution, but there is only one fact - in Kaunas a soldier who refused to kill was shot in the Mickevicius Valley.

Eight vocational school students, 16-17 years old, served in the special detachment. June came, there was nothing to do, they went to work - they were promised Jewish things. Summer is over, they left the detachment. Is this violence - they came on their own, they left on their own.

In Lithuania they say that they forced people to kill and gave them water. Military officer Liaonas Stonkus said that if they saw that someone’s nerves could not stand it, the officers did not force them to shoot, they were afraid that the weapon would be turned against them. And they didn’t drink - they gave it after, in the evening, or very little - they were afraid that the commanders wouldn’t get shot. We can say that the Jews were killed by young, illiterate and sober Lithuanians.

You will be attacked for inconvenient truths and asked how you know what you are relying on?

In the book I do not rely on any foreign source, only on what is said by the residents of Lithuania and historians. I spent six months in the Special Archive, reading cases and their confessions. Whoever says that our boys were tortured and only after that they testified is nonsense, no one talks about torture. One murderer of Jews complained of pain in his shoulder, they took an x-ray, found out the cause, prescribed a massage and paraffin baths. Apparently he shot too much.

Secondly, the NKVD workers were consistent, accurate, each story of the killer of Jews was confirmed by the testimony of 15 more people, comrades-in-arms. Every detail matches. They all minimized their guilt. When asked how many times they had participated in executions, at first they did not remember, then they remembered one execution, but in fact they participated in 20 or 50.

Everyone minimized their guilt because they did not want to sit. After the war, the NKVD tried many for escorting, and 20-30 years later, when it turned out that they had been shot, they were arrested again.

To what extent, in your opinion, did the official position of the Lithuanian authorities determine the tragedy?

Determined in many ways. Many people say - the Lithuanian Activist Front started, the provisional government continued, and then the Nazi collaborators continued: Kubiljunas, Reivitis and others.

The Lithuanian administration employed 20,000 people: police officers, district police chiefs. Only 3% of them were Germans. There was a planned process carried out by the Lithuanians. Of course, it was not the Lithuanians who planned it, but they were told, they carried it out, they did everything so well that they later brought Jews from Austria and France to Lithuania to shoot.

At Fort IX, 5,000 Jews from Austria and the Czech Republic were shot. They were taken here for vaccination - the Jews went to the pits with their sleeves rolled up in anticipation of vaccination. The Lithuanians worked so well that Antanas Impulevičius’s battalion was taken to Belarus, where 15,000 Jews were killed. The Germans were very pleased.

Where does such diligence come from? Many people say that the Lithuanians suffered, occupation was replaced by occupation, it is not our fault, we suffered, we were taken to Siberia.

Yes, this is true, but no one forced them to shoot people. Volunteers showed up, partly because of widespread anti-Semitism.

So the Lithuanians killed Jews out of hatred? However, it seems that until now the Lithuanians coexisted peacefully with the Jews.

We had quite a lot of Woldemaras supporters, nationalists who were influential army officers. Many murderers of Jews are aviators, comrades of Darius and Girenas.

Under Smetona, it was possible to get along well with the Jews, but when the Germans came, Lithuanian nationalists joined them, and everything became very simple. And anti-Semitism - everything came from Berlin, Goebbels’ hand was felt there, the Lithuanians spread it. The first newspaper of the provisional government of Lithuania “Towards Freedom” wrote, down with the Jews, their corpses are our path to freedom. They talked about it on the radio and wrote in the newspapers. Two months were enough, then structures were created.

Without the approval of the Lithuanian government and without the connivance of Hitler, this would not have happened: we must admit, but we do not want to, that we have streets and schools named after Kazys Škirpa and Juozas Ambrazevičius.

Zuroff admitted that he did not realize that Lithuania at the dawn of independence was unable to come face to face with the past; even France took 50 years to admit its guilt for the pro-Hitler actions of the Vichy regime.

It will take us 90 years. Soon everyone will die, and my children's generation will be interested, but there will be no more witnesses. That's why I talked to the witnesses while they were alive. Let no one read this book, maybe it will be read in 10 or 15 years. I have fulfilled my duty to my country, even if she did not ask for it.

How can you know that in the building where the famous Panevėžys confectionery company is now located, there used to be a world-famous yeshiva, a religious school? There is no sign. Students and teachers from all over the world came here.

What do you think Lithuania would have been like if it had not exterminated its inhabitants?

I think we would have more scientists, great doctors. It would be a serious condition. But we wanted racial purity and their teeth.

You mentioned that you were disowned by your relatives. Did your family members participate in the Holocaust?

I don't know. My grandfather participated in the commission that compiled a list of 10 Jews, and my aunt's husband was the commander of the White Bracelets, he worked in the security structures in Panevėžys. I know that the entire Panevėžys police, under the influence of the Nazis, participated in this process. I know none of them pulled the trigger, otherwise I wouldn't have written, it would have been too difficult for me. The Holocaust consists of two crimes. One is the involvement of the administration, making lists, etc., the other is assassination. I think if we all look at our relatives...

Are you prepared for Lithuania's defamation accusations with the help of Zuroff?

But I have done something good: Zuroff will stop going to Lithuania. He understands that what I have done, what Ričardas Doveika and Tomas Šernas have said, what historians have done, he knows that we are on the right path. He cannot tell us anything new, it is up to the Lithuanians to discover their past.

Zuroff said that he had nothing more to do here: no foreigner could force Lithuania to look at his past.

Original interview