Sergey Kanovich, of the Maceva Lithuania Jewish Cemetery Project, which documents and restores Jewish cemeteries in Lithuania, has written a powerful piece about the eradication of Holocaust memory, both by the passing of time and by deliberate acts of erasure. It’s time, he says, 25 years after the fall of communism and Lithuania’s rebirth as an independent state, to rectify that. The piece was originally published as an op-ed at delfi.lt
Read the full op-ed in our Issues section in the left-hand sidebar
Holocaust Museum and Holocaust of Memory
Sergey Kanovich
Last autumn, helping to clean some forgotten graves of Lithuanian Jews, I was invited to visit a forest by the road. Like many other forests on the outskirts of the towns of Lithuania, this one, too, was marked by a black marble commemorative already partly broken marker, one of those that are used to designate the several hundred mass-killing sites of Lithuanian Jews. […] During the summer or in early fall perhaps, the site is stumbled upon
by random mushroom and berry pickers; when those don’t come, some local youths that haven’t yet emigrated, get together to drink a beer or two. Even metal hunters don’t come anymore – all the metal plaques were stolen long ago.
The rest of the time, the pit where the centuries-long history of the Jews of the adjacent town is commemorated, is merely surrounded by a derelict, concrete frame built by the Soviets, lop-sided and black with age. In the middle of the pit, stands a Soviet era monument built from the same cheap and crumbly concrete. The only positive change in this place since the regaining of independence is the new inscription on the monument. The first one spoke of some nameless “Soviet people” murdered here by “fascists and their local henchmen”. Now it reads: “At this place, the Nazi occupiers and their local collaborators killed 300 local Jewish people.” […]
‘Sergey,’ I heard. I turned around and saw my friend. ‘Look what I found,’ he extended his hand.
I leaned over the palm of his hand, because I did not immediately understand what kind of tiny, round earthy object lay there. I took off my gloves and carefully took it, so I could get a better look. I wiped off the dirt and what I saw left me stupefied. It was a bullet shell. I was holding death. And memory. They both, apparently, are inseparable from the existence of Lithuanian Jews. […]
We should once and for all admit that the story of the life and death of Lithuanian Jewry has fallen victim to political games and the memory war. It’s a handy tool for history manipulators. Those games must end. If not out of respect to the victims, then out of respect for the living ones. We should once and for all stop the Holocaust of memory, when one tragedy has all the attention and funds, and the other is kept far from the city, the textbooks and, finally, from the public historical memory.