Our People by Rūta Vanagaitė & Efraim Zuroff

Author:Rūta Vanagaitė & Efraim Zuroff
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2019-12-31T00:00:00+00:00

The poet was writing about the Lithuanian partisans fighting the Soviets after the war, not about murdered Jews. It was probably just a coincidence that he mentioned Einstein, a Jew. It’s only a coincidence that sixteen-year-old Jews, future Einsteins, were murdered in 1941 by Lithuanians no older than they were. Not Galileos.

We go to the city center of Ukmergė and enter the local museum, where we ask about the Holocaust, and about Pivonija Forest. One of the workers points us toward an exhibition panel about the Holocaust, prepared thanks to funding from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. There are a few photos and the traditional requisite text, the same sort as the one at the museum in Švenčionys and in the pamphlets. The Jews were arrested, transported, and murdered. Who arrested them? Who murdered them? What’s the difference? After all, it happened long ago. And in the final analysis, is this really part of Ukmergė’s history?

Efraim: On the third floor there is an entire section devoted to the history of the Jewish community of Ukmergė that was created with the support of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). It describes the Holocaust as follows: On August 18–19 and September 5, 1941, more than 6,354 people were murdered in Pivonija Forest near Ukmergė, which was one of the favorite places of the town’s residents. But there is no mention of who did it. The most outrageous detail in this museum is the fact that this special corner was created by IHRA, so, in fact, IHRA is spending money to hide the crimes of the Lithuanians, a phenomenon which is so typical here. We are talking about a city in which more than eight thousand Jews were murdered.

Rūta: I think that the best Holocaust education is not putting up one or two abstract sentences in a museum, but to put a plaque on every building which was used for guarding people, during the Holocaust. On a private garage in Kavarskas where the Jews were held, as well as at Vaitkuškis manor (which is currently private property), there should be signs about what happened there during the Holocaust. In ten years, nobody will know anything. Even now, nobody knows.

The city of Ukmergė, like all the other Lithuanian cities, wants to have a heroic history. It has a monument recently built for one of the postwar heroes. So we are trying to find the square which the city of Ukmergė recently renamed in honor of an anti-Soviet partisan named Juozas Krikštaponis. None of the locals seem to know where the square is, or the statue, or who Krikštaponis was. They only know that there is a statue to which the archbishop of Lithuania, Monsignor Svarinskas, used to come to pay his respects. And that’s the one.

Next to Vytauto Street near the public library there is a huge monument with a cast bas-relief of the hero. Krikštaponis is famous for being the nephew of Lithuanian president Antanas Smetona, but more infamous for having served the Nazis loyally in the Impulevičius battalion before becoming a partisan.

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