Lithuania: A Holocaust exposé angered nationalists. Now lawmakers want to ban critical scholarship

Via JTA:

The Lithuanian parliament is preparing to vote on a government-sponsored bill that would ban selling material that “distorts historical facts” about the nation.

The bill, which Economy Minister Virginijus Sinkevičius submitted Monday, is widely seen as a response to the controversy in Lithuania around the publication of a 2016 book about the Holocaust titled “Our People.” Viewed by some nationalists as an insult to the Lithuanian nation, it is also credited with breaking some taboos in Lithuanian society about collaboration during World War II.

The bill, which according to the Delfi news agency is an amendment to the Law on Consumer Protection, provoked passionate condemnations in Lithuania and beyond by critics who said it curtails freedom of speech and debate about the genocide, in which 90 percent of Lithuanian Jews were killed, mostly by other Lithuanians.

Whereas several Eastern European countries have laws that limit free speech about the Holocaust, including Poland, Ukraine and Latvia, the bill targeting the sale of critical books “would be, if passed into law, one of the most blatant and harshest of them all,” said Holocaust historian Efraim Zuroff, who co-authored “Our People” with Rūta Vanagaite, a best-selling novelist.

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Lithuania, Poland, and Eastern Europe’s confrontation with the Holocaust

Via Mosaic Magazine:

In the late 1990s, and again a decade later, attempts to prosecute a few Lithuanian citizens for their involvement in the slaughter of Jews during World War II were countered by efforts to prosecute a Nazi hunter and then two Holocaust survivors for committing “crimes” against Lithuanians. At the time, the historian Antony Polonsky wrote an essay on these and related controversies in Lithuania, comparing them with similar controversies in Poland and Germany; the essay was published in Poland in 2010 but has now been made available online for the first time in the wake of the recent Polish law forbidding false statements about the Polish role in the Holocaust:

Lithuanian and Jewish collective memories [are still] very far apart. The Lithuanians, who lost their independence after World War II, felt that the Jews had shown little appreciation for the favorable way they had been treated in interwar Lithuania [which, on the whole, was marginally better than what Jews experienced in neighboring countries, or had experienced under the Tsars] and held the Jews collectively responsible for aiding the first [1940-41] and second [1944-1991] Soviet occupations of their country. Only a small number of Lithuanians had participated in the mass murder of the Jews, comparable to the minority of alleged Jewish collaborators with the Soviets.

Jews for their part highlighted the growth of anti-Semitism [in Lithuania] in the 1930s. They were particularly affronted by what they saw as the massive involvement of Lithuanians in the mass murder of the Jews, both just before the establishment of Nazi rule and particularly in cooperation with the Nazi occupiers, and were shocked by the brutal behavior of Lithuanians in such incidents as the massacre at the Lietukis garage in Kaunas on June 27, 1941.

Given the large-scale complicity of Lithuanians in the mass murder of Jews in 1941, the traumatic effect of the two Soviet occupations of Lithuania, the second lasting nearly a half-century, and the unstable nature of the Lithuanian political scene, with the temptation this offers to demagogic politicians to engage in populist rhetoric, it is not surprising that the discussion of wartime issues has proved a difficult and painful topic and has led to bitter exchanges between Jews and Lithuanians. . . .

From the first days of independence, a series of public statements by Lithuanian leaders expressed regret at the participation of Lithuanians in the Holocaust and condemned the genocide. The culminating point was the visit of then-President Brazauskas to Israel during which, in his address to the Knesset in March 1995, he publicly asked forgiveness “for [the actions of] those Lithuanians who mercilessly murdered, shot, deported, and robbed Jews.” This was not universally well-received in Lithuania and led to calls for the Jews in response to apologize for their “crimes” against the Lithuanian nation during the Soviet occupation.

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, Polish public figures have begun making similar appeals for Jewish apologies in recent days.

Read more at Tablet

Lithuania: Official offers cash reward for thesis pinning war crimes on Jews

Via JTA:

A Lithuanian official responsible for ethics in academia offered a cash reward for students or scholars willing to write a thesis about Jews’ involvement in war crimes or murder.

Vigilijus Sadauskas, ombudsman for academic ethics and procedures, made the offer for subsidy on his blog. The speaker of the Lithuanian parliament, Viktoras Pranckietis, called on Sadauskas to resign.

In the blog entry, Sadauskas offered 1,000 euros, or $1,221, to “a school student, a university student, a postgraduate student, a teacher, or a scientist who will collect information, documents, materials and write a thesis (at least 10 printed pages) or a publication about individuals of the Jewish nationality who killed people, contributed to deportations or tortures,” the LETA news agency reported Thursday.

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Lithuania: Israeli attacked by Egyptian for "occupying Palestinian land"

Via Facebook:

Well Jew hatred is alive and well in the world, as I learned the other night when I was targeted for being an Israeli Jew. I arrived to Lithuania on Tuesday to travel and that same evening signed up for a pub crawl organized by my hostel. At one of the bars our group was standing outside when a random guy not connected to our group asked me where I'm from. I told him Israel then his eyes widened and he said that he's from my "enemy country." I asked him what he meant and he said that he's from Egypt. I tried to be diplomatic and told him that we're not enemies since there's a peace treaty, and that I've traveled to Egypt before and it's a nice place. He asked me if I'd served in the army, and what I "think of politics," and if I think the land of Israel belongs to Jews or to Palestinians. I continued to try to diffuse the situation so I just told him that I'm not at the bar to discuss politics. He kept asking and I kept dismissing him with the same answer. After a few times I shook his hand, told him to have a good evening, and went inside.

Later on throughout the night while inside I noticed that he kept staring at me. After about an hour he came up to me uninvited and told me "You're not from Israel because there is no Israel there is only Palestine." I still was trying to diffuse the situation despite the fact that he was obviously trying to manipulate me into a confrontation, so all I said was, "Look I don't know what you want me to say I'm from Israel." He repeated that there's no such thing as Israel, there is only Palestine, that we are occupying their land. Then he stuck his middle finger in my face. I was shocked and next thing I knew he also grabbed my cheek.

At this point he crossed the line by putting his hands on me so I straightened by hand between him and myself to create distance. I told him to get lost. His buddy came and told me to stop "attacking" his friend. I still was trying to keep my cool after all this continued to hold my hand out so that they wouldn't get close. Aside from keeping them away I was not physical. They still tried though with increasing aggressiveness to get close to me and I started to fear for my safety. Then the original one that spoke to me outside punched me in the face. I didn't try to punch him back and still just held my arm out to create distance. Then he took a glass beer cup, and smashed it over my head, shattering the cup.

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European study shows 10 per cent of people don’t want Jews in their countries

Via Jewish Chronicle:

More than 10 per cent of central and eastern Europeans do not want Jews as citizens of their countries, according to a new report.

The study, carried out by the Pew Research Centre, found that while 80 per cent of people surveyed would accept Jews as fellow citizens, the rest were not sure or declined to answer.

Less than half from the 18 countries surveyed would accept Jews as family and fewer than three quarters said they were happy to have them as neighbours.

The study, entitled Religious Belief and National Belonging in Central and Eastern Europe, found that Jews were a lot less popular in some countries than others.

In Armenia a third of respondents said Jews should not be citizens.

Countries which had large Jewish populations before the Holocaust were more likely not to want Jews as citizens.

Lithuanians surveyed were against the idea at 23 per cent, while in Romania 22 per cent said they did not want Jews as citizens.

In the Czech Republic the figure was 19 per cent, and in Poland, 18 per cent.

Respondents from more educated backgrounds were more likely to accept Jews as family, neighbours and citizens, researchers found.

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Lithuania discriminated against Jews seeking passports

Via The Jewish Chronicle:

An investigation has revealed that Lithuania has discriminated against Jews who applied for passports. 

Data complied by Daniel Lutrin, a South African whose great-grandmother was Lithuanian, showed that between January 2015 and April 2016, 170 Jewish applicants (with either Israeli or Jewish South-African names) had been turned down, versus 110 non-Jewish applicants. There was an even stronger disparity between January 2016 and April 2016, with 90 Jewish and 20 non-Jewish applications rejected.  

Mr Lutrin’s allegations were seen as so incontrovertible that after he made his case, Lithuania’s parliament voted to change part of the country’s citizenship requirements to end the discrimination. 

Over 90 per cent of the South African Jewish community are Litvaks — Jews of Lithuanian origin.  

Mr Lutrin had decided to apply for a Lithuanian passport in 2012 and was told his application was in order and that a final decision would be made within a year. However, a year on he was told that there was a new requirement for citizenship, which affected anyone whose ancestors had left Lithuania between 1919 and 1940.  (...)

“Time and time again, the unsuccessful were overwhelmingly Jewish South Africans or Jewish Israelis.” 

The research compiled by Mr Lutrin was sent in May 2016 to the Lithuanian Consul General in Los Angeles by Grant Gochin, who himself spent years fighting the Lithuanian government to gain citizenship. The resultant publicity — in Lithuania, South Africa and Israel — led to the law change. The new language made it clear Jews who “withdrew” or “fled” and those who “left” were to be treated in the same way.  

Mr Lutrin has since gained a passport. He says things are now “a lot better” for Jews applying for passports.  

A spokesperson for the Lithuanian embassy said: “Since the 2016 amendment came into force, the Lithuanian authorities have made every effort to individually inform every person whose application was unsuccessful between 2010-2015 about the possibility to resubmit their application.”  

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Lithuania: Vilnius University to honor Jewish Holocaust victims — unless they fought Nazis

Via JTA:

Vilnius University in Lithuania said it would award academic degrees posthumously to Jewish students who were murdered in the Holocaust — unless they were partisans.

In a statement published Wednesday on its website announcing the initiative titled Recovering Memory, the university encouraged relatives of Holocaust victims to apply for recognition through a special procedure set up this year.

But in a twist connected to the Lithuanian state’s complicated attitude to its wartime history, the procedure excludes any Jewish student who fought with communist or pro-Soviet partisans against the Nazis. Diplomas will not be issued “if evidence of collaboration with political and police structures of totalitarian regimes is determined,” the procedure states.

Virtually all resistance movements in Lithuania during World War II were supported or otherwise linked to the Soviet Union.

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Lithuania: Hook-Nosed Jew Image Embellishes Official Invitation to End-of-Winter Festival

Via Algemeiner (h/t Honestly Concerned):

Jews in Lithuania were outraged when the official invitation to an annual end-of-winter festival in the city of Naisiai included pictures of hook-nosed Jews, Israel’s Channel 2 reported on Wednesday.

According to the report, the president of the Jewish Community of Lithuania, Faina Kukliansky, said that this kind of Nazi-reminiscent imagery has been increasing in the country.

“You can find it daily in the media,” she said.

Viki Lev, a Lithuanian immigrant to Israel, told Channel 2 that though the festival in question is supposed to be about driving off the winter, it has been characterized by an offensive portrayal of Jews. Some Lithuanians, she said, even claim that “the Jews are trying to steal our holiday.”

Lev added, “I wouldn’t want to raise a Jewish child in Lithuania today. I wouldn’t be able to explain to him what is happening. You can hear slogans there like, ‘Take a stick and beat a Jew.’”

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Lithuania: Teacher fired for helping students with Holocaust film

Via Jerusalem Post (h/t Honestly Concerned):

 It’s not every day that Lithuanian high school students block the entrance to their school to keep out their principal and demand the return to work of a beloved teacher who, in their opinion, was unfairly dismissed. In fact, as far as I could determine, the action taken recently by students at the Laisves (freedom) Gymnasium (high school) in Naujoji Vilnia, a suburb of the capital, Vilnius (Vilna), is unprecedented since Lithuania regained its independence in 1990.

So what prompted this unusual case of student insubordination, which garnered headlines in the largest of the Baltic republics? At this point, we must differentiate between the official version of the story and what appears to be the real reason for the events which took place at the high school several weeks ago. According to the principal, the teacher in question, Marius Janulevicius, who teaches Lithuanian language and literature, had spoken harshly to one of the school’s female cleaning staff, which prompted his immediate dismissal. Such a step might seem unduly harsh, but the real reason for his dismissal apparently had nothing to do with that incident. It was because of an unusual, and unprecedented, film project undertaken by Andzej Davlevic, Dominykas Versalovicius and Deividas Svencionis, three of the school’s pupils, with the encouragement and tutelage of Janulevicius. The film, The Forgotten, commemorates the Jewish victims of the Holocaust in Lithuania.

These same students had originally approached their history teacher with the idea for the film, but she strongly discouraged them, suggesting it would be far better to deal with historical tragedies which had befallen Lithuanians.

“Don’t deal with the fate of the Jews,” was her unequivocal message. But the three boys were determined to deal with the Holocaust and were able to carry out the project in their free time, with the enthusiastic help of Janulevicius.

The film was produced and put online (but has still not been screened at the school), and once it became public knowledge the reprisal from the school came very swiftly – once an excuse presented itself to fire Janulevicius. The authorities, however, did not anticipate the reaction of the students, who rallied to his defense, barricading the school and locking the principal in her office.

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Lithuania: Actress on game show makes Hitler salute to describe Jewish composer

Via Times of Israel:

Lithuania’s public television apologized Wednesday for a live show in which a popular actress made gestures to represent Adolf Hitler’s moustache while raising her arm in a Nazi-style salute.

Virginija Buneviciute, a spokeswoman for Lithuanian National Radio and Television LRT, told The Associated Press the contract with the production company behind the popular “Guess the Melody” show was immediately terminated.

During Friday’s contest, which actress Asta Baukute was about to win, she jumped off her seat when recognizing a melody by a Lithuanian composer of Jewish heritage. She then made the gestures and yelled “Jew, Jew, Jew” in Lithuanian.

Hours after the show was aired, LRT’s deputy manager Rimvydas Paleckis said on the channel’s Facebook page he was shocked, adding “this is in no way compatible with our values.”

“The show is closed,” he added.

Buneviciute said in an email: “As a public broadcaster, we stick to the policy of non-censorship, yet I can hardly imagine a situation (in which) she would be invited to one of our programs now.”

Local media said Baukute, a former lawmaker with a populist party in Lithuania, later apologized and said she didn’t want to hurt anyone. She was not immediately available for comments.

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Lithuania Is Building a Convention Center Over Vilna’s Jewish Cemetery

Via Tablet:

For centuries, the city of Vilna (today Vilnius) was the center of Jewish life in what was then known as Polish-Lithuania. By the turn of the 20th century, the Lithuanian capital boasted over 100 synagogues, an array of Jewish newspapers, and scores of other cultural and religious institutions. It played host to the famed Gaon of Vilna, one of Judaism’s spiritual giants, and also to the socialist Bund, the secular Jewish labor movement.

Today, after the Holocaust, little is left of that historic Jewish community, which once comprised half of Vilna’s population, but now constitutes less than 1 percent of it. One remaining vestige of the city’s illustrious past, however, is its old Jewish cemetery, in which “a galaxy of eminent European rabbinic scholars and authors” were buried, as one leading scholar put it. Yet compounding tragedy upon tragedy, the Lithuanian government, reportedly with European Union funding, is preparing to build a $25 million convention center on the site.

In response, an alliance of local Jews and preeminent Jewish historians has taken up the cause of saving the cemetery. They are currently gathering signatures internationally for a petition to pressure the Lithuanian government. It can be signed here. “For us, it is [about] plain and simple human rights which include the right of the deceased to lie in peace, and the honoring of grave-plot purchases in perpetuity as sacrosanct,” said Dr. Dovid Katz, who taught Yiddish Studies at Oxford from 1978-1996, served as professor of Judaic studies at the University of Vilnius from 1999-2010, and now teaches at Vilnius Gediminas Technical University. “Then there is the slight issue of discrimination and anti-Semitism,” he added. “This fate would not be proposed for a more than 500-year-old Lithuanian cemetery in the nation’s capital.”

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Lithuania: City defends recreational events at former Nazi concentration camp

Via JTA:

The city of Kaunas in Lithuania defended the operator of a former concentration camp where recreational events are held near the graves of thousands of Jews killed by Nazis and local collaborators.

Deputy Mayor Povilas Maciulis made his defense of the Seventh Fort this week following an article published last month by JTA about summer camps, barbecue parties, treasure hunts and camping activities there. In 2009 the city privatized the site, which is run by a nongovernmental organization, the Military Heritage Center, headed by 37-year-old amateur historian, Vladimir Orlov.

“Yes, there are activities carried out in the museum, however, they are exclusively educational and pertaining to the museum’s purpose,” Maciulis wrote in a statement that he sent to several people a few days after the Israel director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Efraim Zuroff, asked the mayor to intervene to have festivities banned from the Seventh Fort – a former military complex that was turned into a camp in 1941.

During a July 12 visit to the Seventh Fort, JTA documented children playing and dancing near the barbecue corner at the entrance to the camp. Asked whether one could have a wedding reception at the site, Orlov told a JTA reporter: “This is not a problem, it sometimes happens here,” and said he would send a price quote in an email, which never arrived.

(...)

Zuroff told JTA he hoped the city would follow through but that the official reaction so far “is a cop-out.”

The failure to reply to his letter, he said, is indicative of a larger lack of motivation on the part of authorities in Lithuania to commemorate Holocaust victims seriously.

“Instead of treating the problem,” Zuroff said, “the municipality denies its existence.”

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Lithuania: Concentration camp is now a wedding venue

Via JTA:

In this drab city 55 miles west of Vilnius, there are few heritage sites as mysterious and lovely looking as the Seventh Fort.

This 18-acre red-brick bunker complex, which dates to 1882, features massive underground passages that connect its halls and chambers. Above ground, the hilltop fortress is carpeted with lush grass and flowers whose yellow blooms attract bees and songbirds along with families who come here to frolic in the brief Baltic summer.

It’s also a popular venue for graduation parties and wedding receptions, complete with buffets and barbecues, as well as summer camps for children who enjoy the elaborate treasure hunts around the premises.

Most of the visitors are unaware that they are playing, dining and celebrating at a former concentration camp.

In 1941, thousands of Jews were imprisoned, starved and finally massacred by Lithuanian Nazi collaborators at the Seventh Fort in what was then the largest mass killing in the country’s history. The complex is believed to be the first concentration camp located on territory that Nazi Germany conquered following its eastward invasion.

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Lithuania: "They think I’m betraying my people, betraying my country, and [they say] maybe Jews are paying for this [project]"

Via Newsweek:

“I know it will be very controversial,” said Vanagaite of the book, speaking before Our People was published. “I have lost already a couple of friends because…because they think I’m betraying my people, betraying my country, and [they say] maybe Jews are paying for this [project].” Some members of her family are angry that she wrote about relatives and have refused to read the book.

It may feel like “shock therapy,” she says, “but I think it’s a healing book.”

(...)

The book bolstered Zuroff’s vile reputation in Lithuania, and in some quarters, it made Vanagaite the country’s most despised daughter. She was giving an interview to a TV crew at her home one day when they suddenly demanded to see her birth certificate to prove she was, in fact, Lithuanian (and not Jewish), she says. She’s also been told to “go back to Israel,” and she had to explain to a concerned taxi driver that she doesn’t carry a weapon to protect herself, despite the many vitriolic comments about her and the book on the internet.

Some suggested the book was funded by Jews or the Kremlin. Others claimed it discredits the Lithuanian partisan movement and serves Putin’s propaganda machine as a spokesman for the Lithuanian State Security Department insinuated, Vanagaite says. Vanagaite was particularly incensed by critics who faulted the book for not including more positive elements of Lithuania’s actions during the war, like the Lithuanians who saved Jews. “I was so pissed off that I said, ‘OK, you know, this book is about the Holocaust, about the murder of the Jews. I’m very sorry that it’s so negative. I’m sorry the Jews didn’t smile when we were killing them.’”

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Lithuania: Holocaust memorial vandalized

Via CFCA, Jewish Vilkaviskis:

Vilkaviškis - The Holocaust Memorial in Vilkaviškis, a city in southwestern Lithuania, was vandalized on the 20th April.

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Lithuania: Jewish stall at Kaziukas Fair offers shoppers opportunity to haggle over prices

The local Jewish community might support or be involved in this, but it sounds wrong.

Via JTA:

The Jewish presence at the March 4-6 Kaziukas Fair — a large annual Lithuanian folk arts and crafts event dating back to 1604 — will include a stand where shoppers can haggle over prices, the news portal www.zw.lt reported last week based on an interview with Algis Gurevicius, director of the Lithuania state’s Jewish Culture and Information Center.

“In the Jewish area, prices will include VAT, and there will also be the opportunity to bargain,” Gurevicius said, adding: “”Probably, no one will deny that it was the Jews who taught Lithuanians trade.” In the 19th century, Vilnius alone had 70 Jewish guilds, the news site 15min.lt quoted him as saying.

The Jewish area at the Kaziukas Fair will offer Jewish music concerts featuring the dance ensemble “Fajerlech” and will feature Jewish cuisine. The local Jewish community is involved in operating the Jewish corner at the fair, Gurevicius said. The market will have 500 stand operators from 16 countries.

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Lithuania: Church Uses Jewish Headstones as Stairs

Via The Forward:

Lithuania’s chief rabbi urged the country’s Evangelical Reformed Church to remove Jewish headstones being used as stairs to a Vilnius church.

Rabbi Chaim Burshtein’s call on Facebook last month concerns a 30-foot-long staircase made out of Jewish headstones that leads to the main entrance of the church’s largest building in the Lithuanian capital. The headstones were installed when Lithuania was part of the Soviet Union.

“We regret the deplorable state and destruction of the last remnants of the memory of Lithuanian Jewry,” Burshtein told JTA. Lithuania, he added, “has many places built out of Jewish headstones. I think the authorities and the Jewish community need to perform thorough research and correct at least this historic wrong.”

The church on Pylimo Street was featured in an article published in 2013 on the website DefendingHistory.com, run by Dovid Katz, a Yiddish scholar and member of the Jewish Community of Lithuania.

The building, which was confiscated by the government during communist rule, was returned to the church after Lithuania’s independence and, following renovations, reopened in 2007.

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Lithuania: Town plans to name street after priest who organized gang that murdered Jews

Via Jerusalem Post:

In the latest scrap over historical memory, the small town of Moletai has come under fire for its announcement that it intends to name a street after Jonas Zvinys, a local priest accused of organizing a gang that murdered the city’s Jews in 1941.

Lithuanian writer Ruta Vanagaite launched an investigation into Zvinys at the behest of Simon Wiesenthal Center Nazi hunter Dr. Efraim Zuroff, with whom she recently co-authored a book on Lithuanians and the Holocaust.

Speaking with The Jerusalem Post from Vilnius on Thursday, Vanagaite said that after searching through KGB archives she discovered that the priest indeed set up the gang in question, one of whose leaders was his own brother, who would later confess to his role in the massacre.

At Vanagaite’s urging, local news portal delfi.it investigated the matter as well, discovering that Zvinys had been awarded a colonelcy in 2002 by the office of the president at the behest of the country’s state-sponsored Study of the Genocide and Resistance of the Residents of Lithuania.

Delfi asked the center about Zvinys and was referred to the president’s office and the Moletai municipality, with the local mayor, who is related to Zvinys, asking why there should be a problem in honoring him if he was already feted by the government.

“They were all throwing the ball to each other and no one wants to investigate without somebody else asking for it,” Vanagaite said. “I think it’s good because it shows that the whole system doesn’t work because there is nobody who takes responsibility to investigate without anybody asking for it and nobody asks for it.

The media exposure that this case has generated may serve as a deterrent to other towns interested in glorifying Holocaust collaborators, she said. 

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Lithuania: Jews call for government to publish list of Nazi collaborators

Via Jerusalem Post:

The government of Lithuania must publicly disclose its list of citizens who collaborated with the Nazis during World War II, the former Soviet republic’s organized Jewish community has demanded.

Information regarding the document, which records more than 2,000 Lithuanians “alleged to have committed or contributed to the murder of Jews during World War II” must be published, along with a detailed breakdown of the government’s subsequent actions toward the accused, demanded Faina Kukliansky, the president of the organized community, in an open letter to the country’s prosecutor general and the government-sponsored Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of the Residents of Lithuania last Thursday.

“The Lithuanian Jewish Community believes refusal to release the list could have negative repercussions at the international as well as national level and could give rise to various theories that would damage the reputation of the Lithuanian state – for example, that Lithuania is avoiding the criminal prosecution in cases of still-living Holocaust perpetrators – and that might be exploited and manipulated for political aims unfavorable to the Lithuanian state,” Kukliansky wrote.

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Lithuania: New book prompts soul-searching about Holocaust-era complicity

Via JTA:

As the author of a best-seller that deals with female sexuality after 50, the Lithuanian novelist Ruta Vanagaite is used to embarrassing questions from journalists about her private life.

But even she was astonished when a reporter for a popular television station demanded to see her birth certificate to ascertain the veracity of claims that she is Jewish.

The question came during an interview about Vanagaite’s latest book, “Musiskiai” (“Our People”), a travelogue about the Holocaust consisting of interviews with witnesses to the atrocities perpetrated by Lithuanians against their Jewish neighbors.

The book’s publication last month has triggered the first major public debate in Lithuania about local Lithuanians’ complicity in the genocide of the Jews. It currently tops the best-seller list of the Pegasas chain of bookstores and has prompted officials to promise to publish this year the names of 1,000 Holocaust perpetrators they have been keeping under wraps for years.

READ: In Lithuania, Yiddish teacher becomes unlikely bulwark against far right

Vanagaite, who is 61 and not Jewish, visited killing fields in Lithuania and Belarus to research the book, which she co-authored with Efraim Zuroff, the renowned Nazi hunter and director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israel office. Though she found the journalist’s request to see her birth certificate unsettling, she complied anyway.

“I know where it’s coming from,” Vanagaite told JTA. “Lithuanian involvement in the Holocaust is such a taboo that being a Jew or a Russian spy are the only explanations for wanting to talk about it.”

But that is beginning to change thanks to Vanagaite’s book.

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