Language:
Russian
Year of publication:
2004
Titel der Quelle:
Диаспоры; независимый научный журнал
Angaben zur Quelle:
3 (2004) 10-44
Keywords:
Jews History 1939-1945
;
Antisemitism History 1918-1945
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
;
Lithuania History Soviet occupation, 1940-1941
Abstract:
The Sovietization of Lithuania in 1940-41 left the impression on Lithuanians that the Jews had brought it about, and they were considered collectively guilty. Wartime and postwar writers propounded this thesis in an attempt to justify the mass killing of Jews by Lithuanians under the Nazi occupation from the summer of 1941. Shows that Jews did not play a leading role in the Sovietization of Lithuania. Ethnic Russians played a more important role, but the main actors in the Sovietization were ethnic Lithuanians. Nonetheless, the Front of the Lithuanian Activists in early 1941 built its propaganda on antisemitic arguments much more than on hatred toward "native" communists. Contends that the main causes of the upsurge of antisemitism in Lithuania were a conflict in geopolitical interests (Lithuanians preferred German rule, and the Jews preferred Soviet rule) and the chain of national humiliations undergone by Lithuania in 1938-40, from the forced peace treaty with Poland to annexation to the USSR. These humiliations caused Lithuanians to look for a scapegoat - the Jews.
Note:
With an English summary.
,
The article was reprinted in "Diaspory" 3 (2005). Another version, in Lithuanian and English, appeared as "Lietuvių ir žydų santykių krizė (1940 m. birželis - 1941 m. birželis)" and "The crisis of Lithuanian and Jewish relations (June 1940 - June 1941)" in "Holokausto prielaidos" (2004) 69-100, 173-208.
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