Lithuania and the Holocaust

CNN recently ran a fascinating piece on the life of Efraim Zuroff, a Jewish American whose uncle, aunt, and two cousins were among the victims of the Holocaust in Lithuania.  While great attention has been paid, of course, to the impact of the Holocaust in Germany, Poland, and other parts of Eastern Europe, Lithuania has traditionally been neglected, both because of its size and its government.  Since independence in 1991, Lithuania has not punished any of its WWII war criminals and, in Zuroff’s words, “Nowhere in the world has a government gone to such lengths to obscure their role in the Holocaust.”

Shockingly, the percentage of Lithuanian Jews killed during the Holocaust was a high mark for Europe, falling between 90-96% of the total Jewish population.  According to Zuroff, the “success” of the final solution in Lithuania was a product of strong local support.  There is support for this view.  The infamous Jaeger Report doles out extensive credit to local Lithuanians for eliminating Jews without any Nazi support.  While other European countries that committed grave crimes during the Holocaust – Germany foremost among them – have sought to make amends, to the limited degree possible, Lithuania remains largely dismissive.  According to one MP, “quite a large segment of Lithuanian society is still inclined to consider Jews as collectively responsible for the mass killings and deportations of civilians.”

The CNN report tracks the controversy into the present, outlining the struggle to prosecute accused criminals and to document the “truth” of what occurred.