BRIEF
EXCERPT ONLY:
There is no progress apparent in Lithuanian-Jewish relations.
Anger
against Efraim Zuroff and attempts to lay the foundations
for the
“Double Genocide” theory continue, accompanied by the demand:
“Don't you
dare call us a nation of Jew-shooters.” Obviously, Lithuanians
are not a nation
of Jew-shooters. But, unfortunately, actions in the recent
past do provide a
basis for calling Lithuanians a nation of lawyers for Jew-shooters.
Whatever
you might think about Efraim Zuroff, he is right when he says
that Lithuanians,
unlike Croatians, have not punished a single murderer of Jews.
On the contrary,
although this hasn't been articulated by society or the courts,
there is clearly a
sentiment that the right thing to do is to silently sabotage
all such cases. We are
not mature enough to understand: it is not permissible to
justify or support a
criminal merely because he is an ethnic Lithuanian (who considers
himself
a patriot), when his his victims or accusers are not Lithuanians.
I have said and will say that two large mistakes were made
in this area
which will have to be corrected sooner or later. The first
mistake concerns the
Provisional Government of 1941. It needs to be said without
any qualifiers that
the new Lithuania categorically rejects including this episode
among its list of
laudable and honored traditions. The Provisional Government
wasn't essentially
different from the Tiso regime in Slovakia or the Pavelic government in Croatia,
neither of which any serious historian would consider a positive
thing. We call
members [of the Lithuanian Provisional Government] patriots—subjectively
they were—but we cannot honor patriots who cause such great
damage to their
country that even up till now we are powerless to clean up
the mess. They
damaged Lithuania's reputation more than any other enemy
of Lithuania.
If an “alternative history” thought-experiment is allowable,
let's
imagine the Western allies had liberated Lithuania in 1944
and Stazys
Lozoraitis, then the nominal head of state, had returned.
Without a doubt,
there would then have to be (however reluctantly) a tribunal
to try the
Provisional Government just as the Pétaine process took place
in France.
Pétaine was also a patriot who had achieved merit for France
on the battle
field, and he wanted to preserve France's independence, even
at the cost
of union with Hitler. Some of the members of the Provisional
Government
might have been acquitted, but certainly not one of them
would have
received a state medal and not one of them would have been
called Patriarch of
the Nation. [...]
litvakstudiesinstitute.org
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