BOOKS )""3&5;ď4FQUFNCFS 4FQUFNCFSď)""3&5;
Hol o c a u s t St u d i e s Killed by their neighbors It took more than six decades, but a unique collection of survivor testimonies about Lithuanian collaboration in the Holocaust is finally available to the public. Its blood-chilling accounts only make more disturbing another book, which seems dedicated to minimizing the collaboration and the ongoing denial of the phenomenon to this day
Expulsion and Extermination: Holocaust Testimonials from Provincial Lithuania, by David Bankier. Yad Vashem, 232 pages, $58 The Last Bright Days: A Young Woman’s Life in a Lithuanian Shtetl on the Eve of the Holocaust, edited by Frank Buonagurio Jewish Heritage and YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, 165 pages, $39.95 We Are Here: Memories of the Lithuanian Holocaust, by Ellen Cassedy. University of Nebraska Press, 273 pages, $19.95 (paperback)
By Efraim Zuroff he Kuniuchowsky collection of testi- monies of Holocaust survivors from T the provincial towns and villages of Lithuania first came to my attention more than 30 years ago. At the time, I was work- ing as a researcher in Israel for the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations, looking for first-hand evi- dence of the mass murders that had been carried out in various locations in provin- cial Lithuania. Since there is relatively almost all the murders carried out locally, In these chapters, the unique historical little information about, and few survivors in the vicinity of the Jews’ residences, significance of these testimonies becomes from, these communities, this material was with the majority of the participants readily apparent, as they provide critical extremely valuable. Even more important, Lithuanians. This collection clearly un- dimensions in vivid detail of the tragic fate Leyb Kuniuchowsky, an Alytus-born engi- masks distortions of the historical narra- of approximately half of Lithuanian Jewry, neer who had survived the Kovno Ghetto, tive of the Shoah by chronicling the numer- elements that are missing from the perti- had made a determined effort to record ically dominant role played by Lithuanians nent official German and Lithuanian docu- Photos by Beile Delechky from pre-war Kavarsk the names of all the numerous Lithuanians in the mass murders, many of which mentation. While the latter give us impor- (clockwise from far left): Harvest time; the Jewish elementary school (folks-shul); unidentified woman who had participated in the murders, mak- were carried out without any German or tant information about the administrative and cows; Beile’s best friend Yokeh, 1932. ing his collection a resource of potentially Austrian participation at all, and by nam- implementation of the Final Solution, they unique significance in the efforts to bring ing and identifying almost 1,300 local per- hide or ignore highly significant aspects of these Nazi war criminals to justice. petrators. In Bankier’s words, the value the murders, which are critical to our abili- In every single The problem was that for many years, of these testimonies is that “they identify ty to construct an accurate narrative of the Kuniuchowsky had refused to make it those who humiliated, abused and tortured Holocaust in Lithuania, where the propor- provincial Jewish available to researchers, because he insist- [the Jews], pillaged their belongings, eject- tion of Jewish citizens killed among com- ed on publishing the collection in its entire- ed them from their homes and, in the end, munities that had more than 1,000 Jews community, local ty, and no institution or organization was massacred their families.” was the highest in Europe. willing to do so. It was only in 1989, almost In order to maximize the value of the In this regard, the most pertinent of the collaborators were a decade after I began trying to obtain ac- testimonies, the book begins with an intro- themes that emerge from the witness tes- cess to the testimonies, which duction about Leyb Kuniuchowsky timonies is, first and foremost, the extent at least the majority, had been recorded during the and his collection, and then to which it was primarily Lithuanian vol- first three to four years after the provides a concise summary unteers who carried out the murders. In if not the only ones, end of the war, that Dov Levin of of the annals of provincial every single provincial Jewish community, Jerusalem, the leading expert on Lithuanian Jewry from the local collaborators were at least the major- doing the killing. the Holocaust in the Baltics, fi- country’s independence after ity, if not the only ones, doing the killing. nally convinced Kuniuchowsky World War I until the destruc- Thus, for example, in places like Lazdijai, to donate his archives to Yad tion of these communities dur- Telsiai, Eisiskes, Joniskis, Dubingiai, alive into mass graves, since “the little ones Vashem. And it is only now, an- ing the Holocaust. It is followed Babtai, Varena and Vandziogala, there were not worth a bullet,” as a Lithuanian other 20 years afterward, that by a more in-depth treatment of were no Germans present at all, and in “partisan” in Kudirkos-Naumiestis ex- parts of this unique resource the various stages of persecu- Onuskis, Vilkaviskis and Virbalis, the only plained to an eyewitness. have finally been published, tion and murder of the provin- Germans at the murder sites were photo- A third theme is the nationalist con- edited by the late David cial Jews, using excerpts from graphing the crimes. text of the murders, which were viewed Bankier, the former head of the testimonies to illustrate the by many of the participants as acts of pa- Yad Vashem’s International trials and tribulations suffered ‘Not worth a bullet’ triotism. Thus in Merkine, for example, a Institute for Holocaust Research, by the Jewish inhabitants of the witness described the celebration staged with the assistance of Holocaust research- more than 200 Lithuanian towns and villag- A second theme that is evident in almost by the murderers: “Their faces glow- er Ben-Tsiyon Klibansky. es that had Jewish communities. Starting every testimony is the incredible cruelty ing, they sang happily and loudly the The inexcusable delay in bringing se- with the initial days of the German occupa- displayed by the Lithuanian Nazi collabo- Lithuanian national anthem and other na- lected portions of these testimonies to the tion, the book recounts in vivid detail the rators. In many cases, the preliminary tionalist songs.” A similar scene took place knowledge of the public was not without imposition of forced labor, the plunder of stages of the Final Solution were accompa- in Zarasai, where a Polish witness related serious consequences, most notably in Jewish property, the process of ghettoiza- nied by the brutal raping of Jewish women, that the killers not only sang “Lithuanian Lithuania, where the government has sys- tion and concentration, and ultimately the including girls as young as 13 and 14 years national songs,” but were very “happy and tematically tried to minimize or hide the mass annihilation of Lithuania’s Jews, with old, and the public humiliation and torture satisfied.” These testimonies are reminis- unusually extensive participation of local additional chapters devoted to the role of of rabbis, as well as other Jews. It was also cent of the notorious murder of several Nazi collaborators in the annihilation of the local non-Jewish population, focusing fairly common for Jewish infants to be dozen Jewish men in Lietukis Garage in the country’s Jews. More than 96 percent on the local Nazi collaborators who did the murdered by having their heads smashed Kaunas in late June of 1941, after which of them were killed in the Holocaust, with actual killing. against stones or trees or being thrown the large assembled crowd joined in sing- )""3&5;ď4FQUFNCFS 4FQUFNCFSď)""3&5; BOOKS
intelligentsia, including doctors and teach- men, when that was the total manpower of because of her unbalanced approach to the ers, to the most marginal groups. Thus in all four of the units, and the fact that a typo topic and her determination to prove her Dubingiai, it was a young priest named in the book’s final sentence makes its cur- hypothesis that the land of her ancestors Zrinys who led the partisans and organized rent formulation the exact antithesis of the is populated by an impressive number of the murders, and in Kuniuchowsky’s own entire message of the volume. people dedicated to commemorating and town, as he himself noted, “Lithuanians of teaching the truth about the Holocaust, every social group and class participated Life in the shtetl and today including the unpleasant parts about local in arresting, tormenting, bullying, robbing complicity and cruelty, and to engaging and eventually shooting the Jews of Alytus Two other recent publications on in fruitful dialogue and building sturdy and those of the surrounding townlets in Lithuanian Jewry deal with different time bridges of reconciliation and cooperation. Alytus county.” periods. “The Last Bright Days” is a beauti- Cassedy acts like an archer so intent on These elements complement the pre- fully produced album of photographs, most- hitting the bull’s-eye that she shoots her viously available documentation, which ly of Jewish life in the shtetl of Kovarsk, arrow first and only then draws the target describes the murders from the perspec- by town photographer Beile Delechky, who around it. tive of the perpetrators and fails to fully immigrated to America in late One example of Cassedy’s lack acknowledge the extent of local complicity 1938. Some of the photographs of objectivity can be seen in in, and responsibility for, the murders, as are accompanied by Delechky’s the differences between her well as their more grotesquely cruel and diary and notebook entries, almost heartless attitude to- bestial manifestations, all of which make which together provide a last, ward her great-uncle and her the Kuniuchowsky collection a veritable nostalgic look at a world about compassion for a Lithuanian treasure and indispensable resource for to be destroyed, but the volume man who claims that his family the study of the Holocaust in Lithuania. offers little information on the helped Jews who did survive Having said that, the book has several fabric of Jewish life or any in- the war, although there is no flaws and mistakes. The first flaw is that sights on the community’s im- evidence to support his story. In it lacks an appendix listing the names of pending doom. In that respect, her distorted view of the Shoah, the 1,284 perpetrators mentioned in the the book, whether intention- the Jewish policeman and the ally or not, magnifies the pain Lithuanian bystander are in the and sense of tragic loss in the same category and should be wake of the total destruction judged as such. And then there of Jewish Kovarsk and of provin- are the numerous factual er- cial Lithuanian Jewry. rors, all of which help support her thesis, Ellen Cassedy’s “We Are Here: such as her claim that in the wake of the Memories of the Lithuanian Holocaust” Wiesenthal Center’s Operation Last Chance actually attempts to deal with contempo- project, which in Lithuania aimed at maxi- rary Lithuania. Ostensibly a reported ac- mizing that prosecution of local killers, the count of the summer of 2004, which the au- “Lithuanian prosecutors put about a dozen thor spent in Vilnius studying at the local defendants on trial.” In reality, not a single Yiddish language institute, the book’s real suspect whose name we submitted to the goal is to tackle the far thornier problem authorities was ever indicted, let alone of Lithuanian-Jewish relations in the after- brought to trial. math of the Holocaust. In Cassedy’s words, Reading the book, I kept asking my- she seeks to determine whether she could self how Cassedy would respond to the “honor my [Litvak] heritage without per- sharp increase in anti-Semitic incidents, petuating the fears and hatreds of those neo-Nazi marches and intensified promo- who came before.” Adding to the drama tion of the double genocide theory by the of her quest is the fact that just before go- Lithuanian government in the years since ing to Vilnius, she learned from her great- her original visit to Vilnius. The answer uncle that he served as a policeman in the came in an author’s note at the end of the Shavli Ghetto, a revelation that shattered book, in which she acknowledged these her original view of his past and chal- facts but remained as blind as ever to lenged her preconceived notions about the their implications. In fact, she has allowed roles of Lithuanians and Jews in the events the current government, which has done Photographs by Beile Delechky, from “The Last Bright Days” of 1941-1944. more than any other country to promote Such a mission might have produced a the equivalency canard and to undermine ing the Lithuanian national anthem. It was testimonies, along with identifying infor- very valuable book, had it been undertaken the justified status of the Holocaust as a this ultra-nationalism which undoubtedly mation arranged geographically. The sec- by a journalist much more knowledgeable unique case of genocide, to promote her fueled many of the acts of extreme cruelty ond is that it does not present sufficient about (or at least open to learning about) book. So of course it is hardly surprising by Lithuanians toward their Jewish neigh- background on the witnesses and the cir- the extensive complicity of Lithuanians that Cassedy’s book, with its message of bors, whom many Lithuanians erroneously cumstances of their survival. The third is in Holocaust crimes, but Cassedy either praise and adulation for a country still in perceived as communists. that it does not address the question of vio- came with her mind made up about the deep denial of its bloody past, will soon be A fourth – and extremely important lence by Lithuanians against Jews before cardinal issues or was brainwashed by published in Lithuanian, whereas there are – theme is that all strata of Lithuanian so- the arrival of the German troops, a subject Lithuanian apologists during her summer no such plans for the witness testimony ciety voluntarily participated in the per- being fiercely debated in Lithuania today. in Vilnius. Such a book should also have recording the prominent role Lithuanians secution and murder of the Jews. This is a While various local historians and govern- taken into account the government’s total played in killing Jews that is presented in fact that has systematically been hidden or ment officials deny the phenomenon, there failure to punish hereto unprosecuted local “Expulsion and Extermination.” ignored in Lithuania, where local partici- is clear evidence of physical attacks by Nazi collaborators, as well as the system- pation in Holocaust crimes is usually at- Lithuanians on Jews in more than 40 cities, atic efforts of the current Lithuanian gov- Dr. Efraim Zuroff is the chief Nazi hunter of the Simon tributed solely or primarily to “hooligans” towns and villages during the initial days ernment to promote its theory of “double Wiesenthal Center and director of its Israel office. His or criminal elements. The sad truth that following the German invasion on June 22, genocide,” which posits the canard that the most recent book, “Operation Last Chance: One Man’s emerges clearly from these testimonies, 1941. crimes of communism are equivalent to Quest to Bring Nazi Criminals to Justice” (Palgrave/ Macmillan) deals extensively with Lithuania’s failure however, is that participation in the mass The two mistakes that mar an otherwise those of the Nazis. to prosecute local Nazi war criminals and honestly murder of the Jews encompassed all strata superb job are the assertion that each of Unfortunately, Cassedy’s efforts were confront the widespread complicity of Lithuanians in of Lithuanian society, from the clergy and the four Einsatzgruppe numbered 3,000 doomed to failure from the very beginning Holocaust crimes.