Language:
English
Year of publication:
2001
Titel der Quelle:
Lituanus; the Lithuanian Quarterly
Angaben zur Quelle:
47,4 (2001) 47-60
Keywords:
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
Abstract:
The massive participation of Lithuanians in the Holocaust in 1941 burdens the historical memory of present-day Lithuanians. The attempts of some historians to place all the responsibility for the genocide on the Germans and to declare the archival documentation on Lithuanian participation to be a "Soviet forgery" or to whitewash it in any other way are inconsistent with the truth. The anti-Soviet uprising in June 1941 which accompanied the outbreak of the Nazi-Soviet war was justified - yet the rebels directed their wrath not only against the Stalinists but also against innocent Jews. The Lithuanian Provisional Government, which existed between 23 June-5 August 1941, only symbolically deplored the massacres of Jews without trying to stop them. Moreover, it openly aligned itself with the Reich and dreamed of modelling Lithuania on the racist state. Ca. 120,000 Jews were killed in 1941 by the "Rollkommando Hamann"; this unit employed five times as many Lithuanians as Germans. States that the only way for Lithuanians to lighten the burden of 1941 is to embrace it honestly.
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