Lithuania
Lithuania is a parliamentary democracy, having regained its independence
in 1990 after more than fifty years of forced annexation by the Soviet Union.
In elections in 1992 the Lithuanian Democratic Labour Party (LDLP), the
successor to the Communist Party of Lithuania, won a majority of parliamentary
seats and formed the government. The Tevynes Sajunga (TS, Conservative Party)
prevailed in the October and November 1996 parliament-ary elections, followed
by the Christian Democrats. The two parties formed a coalition government,
the first in Lithuania's history, in December.
Since independence Lithuania has made steady progress in developing a market
economy. Over 40 per cent of state property has been privatized. The inflation
rate for 1996 was 13.1 per cent, compared with 16.7 per cent in 1995. Per
capita gross domestic product in 1996 was estimated at $2,000 (8,000 litas)
and unemployment for 1996 was 6.3 per cent.
The Jewish community of Lithuania is one of the oldest in Europe. Jews
have lived there since the fourteenth century and have accomplished a great
deal in developing religious thinking and secular, particularly Yiddish,
culture. One of the greatest religious scholars in the world lived and worked
in Vilnius-Elijahu, the Gaon of Vilnius. The 200th anniversary of his death
will be commemorated in September 1997.
On the eve of the Second World War, there were approximately 250,000 Jews
living in Lithuania. Only 12 per cent of them survived the Holocaust. The
Lithuanian Jewish community was one of the hardest hit by Nazism.
Following the post-war period of Soviet rule, the situation for Jews improved
when Lithuania regained independence in 1990. The genocide of the Jewish
people was officially denounced, various Jewish public and state organizations
were re-established, and government funding was allocated for Jewish cemeteries
and sites of the mass murder of Jews.
Minority ethnic groups, including Russians, Poles, Belarusians and Ukrainians,
comprise roughly 20 per cent of the population. A few hundred representatives
of the Polish minority protested in June against a law depriving ethnic
minorities of preference in elections. Poles also protested against the
redrawing of the boundaries of Vilnius to include a region heavily populated
with ethnic Poles. They were angered by the rise in taxes that accompanied
inclusion in the city of Vilnius.
A growing number of refugees prompted the government to begin plans for
building a refugee detention centre and other refugee facilities. There
were about 500 refugees waiting to be deported at the end of the year. The
refugee issue in Lithuania is closely linked to developments in Russia and
other neighbouring countries of the former Soviet Union, as Lithuania is
mainly a transit country.
A number of parties are chauvinistic in character and anti-Jewish in
sentiment. Among them is the Lithuanian National Party-Young Lithuania.
Its leader, S. Buskevicius, who has repeatedly spoken out against Jewish
businessmen, became a member of parliament in 1996. According to the newspaper
Respublika , approximately 2.4 per cent of the population support
this party.
Similar in tone is the National Progressive Party (with approximately 0.3
per cent supporters) and the Lithuanian Freedom Union, which has few followers.
The leader of the latter, V. Sustauskas, who is a member of the Kaunas city
council, was unsuccessful in his candidacy for parliament. On the alleged
war criminal Aleksandras Lileikis (see LEGAL MATTERS), Sustauskas has declared:
"As far as I am concerned, he is not a criminal but a hero. What would
I be now if the Jews hadn't disappeared during the war? I'd be shining shoes
on the streets of Kaunas."
In May a club for Lithuanians who had participated in defence and police
battalion activities against the Soviet Union in 1942-4 was established
in the Vilnius officers' club. Most of these units were directly involved
in the killing of civilians, mainly Jews.
A founding conference of the Union of Lithuanian Nationalists for Social
Solidarity took place in Siauliai in mid-1996. Mindaugas Murza, chairman
of the organization, stated: "It is important for us that Lithuania
is governed only by Lithuanians." The goal of the Union is to become
a political party uniting patriots.
From time to time Nazi slogans and swastikas have appeared on announcements
by the Jewish community and the Jewish State Museum, on Vilnius ghetto memorial
plaques and in the Vilnius Children and Youth Aliya (emigration to Israel)
building. Memorial sites to the victims of the Holocaust at the Kaunas VII
and IX fort have been desecrated: vandals used white oil paint to inscribe
the words "Jews will die, Juden raus", the letters SS and a swastika
on to the memorial at the Kaunas VII fort. A granite monument to Jewish
victims of the Holocaust was knocked off its pedestal in Vilnius. Several
gravestones were pulled down in Jewish cemeteries in Vilnius and Silute.
Tombstones in the old Kaunas Jewish cemetery are regularly demolished. A
poster announcing a concert by the well-known Israeli violinist Motti Schmitt
was defaced with the words "Juden raus" and a swastika.
On the eve of the parliamentary elections, anonymous flyers stating "[D]on't
let ambitious Jewish names take over the government. Don't forget that all
the bad things started when they were in power" were posted in certain
parts of Kaunas.
Jewish businessmen do not play a significant role in the country's economy: there are less than a dozen of them. However, the aforementioned nationalist parties, the Young Lithuania Party and some business people consider even that too many. This is reflected in campaigns against Jewish business in the nation's press. Jewish businessmen are accused by various newspapers, including the largest daily, Lietuvos rytas , of money-laundering, tax evasion, links with organized crime and illegal property privatization. The party leaders S. Buskevicius, E. Klumbys, leader of the Tautos Pazangos Judejimas (TPJ, National Progressive Party), and V. Sustauskas have repeatedly spoken out against Jewish businessmen. For example, on 11 October the popular business newspaper Verslo zinios published an article entitled "Loan Sharks"; on 6 November the daily Lietuvos aidas published the article "Banks-Like Honey to Flies".
One of Lithuania's best-known writers, Juozas Mikelinskas, published
a forty-page article in the Lithuanian Writers' Union monthly journal Metai
(no. 8-9, 1996) entitled "The Right to Remain Misunderstood-Or
Us and Them, They and Us". He stated that the Jews were responsible
for their own genocide during the Hitlerite occupation, exaggerated their
role during the Soviet occupation, asserted that they had been on the side
of Lithuania's enemies throughout their 600 years of living in the country,
that West European intellectuals as well as US and British leaders had collaborated
with the Soviets, and that only a handful of Lithuanians had murdered Jews.
The chief editor of the cultural weekly Septynios meno dienos , Linas
Vildziunas, responded to this article. He said, among other things: "I
am surprised and stupefied by the fact that similar 'arguments' continuously
penetrate into the press and that they are tolerated . . . that they are
shrouded in complying silence. Is it so difficult . . . to admit honestly
that the Holocaust of Lithuania's Jews is at the same time a spiritual tragedy
of our nation, one of the most horrible pages in our history? Do not the
concealing, diminishing and justifying of the crime make us all its accomplices?"
Anti-Jewish articles can be found in various publications. The weekly Europa
, published in Kaunas, was particularly vociferous. In the view of the
Press Control Board (which no longer exists), an article entitled "Jews-Murderers",
published on 14 February in the aforementioned paper, was guilty of inciting
national discord and was "harmful to all Lithuanian journalism and
to the traditionally good relations between people of different nations
living in our country".
Other media publications also print a number of anti-Jewish articles. For
example, there was a series of articles entitled "Jews and Russians
Won't Run Us" about the opposition to Jewish business investments in
Kaunas in the popular weekly journal Veidas (see BUSINESS AND COMMERCE).
Kauno diena printed malicious articles about Jewish individuals who
wished to reclaim their family property, as well as further articles that
were negative towards Jews. Anti-Jewish writings appeared in the journal
Kardas , in the newspapers Literatura ir menas, Valstieciu laikrastis,
Respublikos varpai and a host of others. The daily Diena printed a number
of articles offensive to Jewish religious sentiments. And Respublikos
varpai published a piece by A. Asrunas, who was indignant that, among
other things, the 200th anniversary of the death of the Gaon of Vilnius
was to be widely commemorated and that a fund had been established for that
purpose.
Although in general the main Lithuanian dailies present objective information
on Lithuanian-Jewish relations, even they occasionally publish articles
that are of an antisemitic nature.
The film "Between the Two Occupations" by the director A. Digimas,
which is biased in its presentation of the Jewish role during the Soviet
occupation and identifies Jews with communists and the KGB, was shown on
national television on 11 March. It was also being prepared for use in secondary
schools but, due to the efforts of the Lithuanian Jewish community and other
institutions, the ministry of education and science decided not to include
it as teaching material.
On the same national television channel's programme "If You Know the
Word You Know the Way" a teacher read out a rhyme that could be regarded
as inciting prejudice towards Jews. In response to a protest from the department
of national minorities and regional problems, the director-general of Lithuanian
Radio and Television apologized for this incident.
One of the most sensitive problems is the exoneration of participants
in the Holocaust and calling them to account for their activities. A law
"for the exoneration of individuals who were repressed for their resistance
against occupational forces" passed in 1990 states that exoneration
could not be applied to individuals who had taken part in genocide or had
killed and tortured unarmed civilians. According to official data, based
on this law approximately 700 persons were denied exoneration. Of these,
about 150 participated in the Holocaust in Lithuania. However, the legal
protocols of exoneration were never properly regulated. The law was applied
quickly and received worldwide criticism. Pressure from various organizations
resulted in the revoking of exoneration certificates, which then cast a
shadow over the entire rehabilitation procedure. There is still serious
reason to doubt the validity for exoneration of a certain number of persons.
More and more Lithuanians accused of killing Jews in Lithuania during the
Second World War are being deported from the USA and Canada-A. Mineikis,
Juozas Budreikis, A. Milinavicius, K. Gimzauskas, A. Dailyde and a host
of others. One of the latest, Jonas Stelmokas, is accused of serving in
a Nazi-formed army battalion and of taking part in the murder of 9,200 Jews,
including over 4,000 children.
None of these individuals has been brought to trial. Facts indicate that
law and order institutions are indifferent to cases of this nature.
Criminal proceedings have been brought only against Aleksandras Lileikis,
former head of the Vilnius and district Lithuanian security police, accused
of the genocide of Jews during the Nazi occupation (see page 69). He was
deprived of US citizenship in May 1996 and arrived in Lithuania with his
Lithuanian passport in June, without waiting to hear the US court decision
regarding his appeal. This case is effectively at a standstill: the impression
is that it is being deliberately delayed by the legal authorities. Promises
by top government officials to conclude the case as quickly as possible
have not been kept. Criminal proceedings in connection with a pogrom carried
out in a garage in central Kaunas by local accomplices of the Nazis fifty-five
years ago have not yet been completed. The event was photographed by a German
officer and the photograph surfaced at the Nuremberg trials. The case was
renewed in 1994 when the then president, Vytautas Landsbergis, called for
an investigation by the general prosecutor's office, but was called off
due to lack of evidence. The case has again been brought to the prosecutor's
office.
Much of the mass media and even some politicians attempt to deny or to justify
the large number of Lithuanians who were involved in the Holocaust (the
Jewish commu-nity has never accused the Lithuanian nation of genocide against
the Jews). To that end a "double genocide" theory has been devised,
according to which Jews led a genocide against Lithuanians during the Soviet
occupation and the Lithuanian participation in the genocide of the Jews
was only a reaction to Jewish crimes. Now this has gone beyond the theory
stage-proceedings have been brought against two Jewish individuals, former
KGB workers. Prosecutor G. Starkus, who is also in charge of the Lileikis
case, categorically denied that these proceedings were a rejoinder to the
Jewish attempt to expose those who destroyed their fellow countrymen. However,
the facts indicate otherwise. Not a single case had been brought against
any former KGB workers in Lithuania-Lithuanians, Russians or otherwise.
But information about the two Jews is regularly presented at the same time
as that about the Lileikis case.
The Israeli ambassador to the Baltic countries, Oded Ben-Hur, in reference
to this affair, has emphasized that it would be "cynical to compare
the quarter of a million Jews murdered in Lithuania with a few Jewish collaborators
who had worked in Russia's special services".
There are no indications that antisemitism was a more serious issue in
1996 than in previous recent years. Relations between the Jewish minority
and the authorities generally remain very good. Nevertheless, there must
be concern in particular over the continued appearance of anti-Jewish items
in the media and specifically the attacks on stereotypes of Jewish businessmen.
There are also some problems on a grassroots level, mainly with regard to
acts of vandalism and the inability to reclaim Jewish public property.
© JPR 1997