Baltic Diary III: Shoah vs. Shame

I now reach back in order to continue my meditations on Eastern Europe, the Baltic States in particular, and, in this case, Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. This is the city that was once known as “the Jerusalem of the North” because of its large Jewish population accompanied by many centers of Jewish learning and culture. This, of course, all came to a sudden end with the occupation of the area by Germany in World War II, and now the rich Jewish cultural life of old is just a memory, with one synagogue (referred to, stoically, as The Synagogue) remaining and a Jewish State Museum which is currently housed in a barracks-like building painted what we used to call (when I worked in a county park back home) “park bench green” -- although I understand a new building is under construction. (Interestingly, the Museum of Genocide Victims is not about the Holocaust but about the Soviet occupation.) And as far as the local tourist information and the tour guides are concerned, the Jewish history of Vilnius is nothing to either be ashamed about or to overly promote; they will tell you precisely which blocks of the city constituted the ghetto (although that was not the only place Jews could settle), and then leave you to explore on your own. And the old ghetto is, in fact, quite a picturesque place, with its winding cobblestone streets, shops, cafes, and what not. If you didn't know the history it would be hard to believe that anything unpleasant had ever happened there. (I should mention that it also seems to be a favorite location for various foreign embassies.)

But here's the point. There is none of the hesitation, awkwardness, or subdued hysteria on the subject that one might observe in Germany, where the trouble really started – or, for that matter, in this country. The Holocaust swept over Lithuania like a tidal wave, and yet the people there are less apologetic about it than Americans are! And, I suppose, less worried about “reparations” -- assuming there's anyone left to demand any. (Well, there are the people at the museum, after all – and I did see one man who was clearly an Orthodox Jew; he and I were the only people in the city with facial hair.) And I suppose that what it takes for this attitude to arise is actual experience – not merely high-school history book narratives, or media with a political agenda. The Baltic States were occupied by the Germans in both world wars and by the Soviets from World War II up until 1990. They know as well as anyone that occupation is a real, solid, tangible thing; it's not just an abstraction. When you're under occupation, you don't get to do things your way; you do them the occupier's way, or else. And in the case of the Holocaust, when the occupying force has all the weapons and controls all the infrastructure, including transportation and communications, and the currency, and has first dibs on food and other resources, and you have, basically, nothing... well, it's asking a bit much for people to look back nearly 70 years later and start feeling guilty, as if they could have “done” anything. And this is not to say that there weren't partisans and underground movements operating... and, likewise, that there were not collaborators helping the process along; these elements are going to appear in any situation of this sort, as they have down through history. Yes, Hitler had his “willing executioners” just as Stalin did... but I imagine that the vast majority of the populace was just trying to stay out of the way and stay in one piece, and keep from starving. (Again, these are the usual priorities, American sentimentality and delusional idealism notwithstanding. And we only fall for those things because we have no living memory of war – as civilians – or of being under occupation.)

So what I'm saying is that the Lithuanians are unapologetic about the Holocaust – and rightly so. They don't attempt to sweep it under the rug, but they also don't spend every spare moment, as we do, shoving it in each other's faces. And history has not kept them from developing, or renewing, a healthy sense of nationalism (as opposed to the more morbid variety represented by the Nazis) accompanied by an equally unabashed assertiveness about their Catholic faith, which seems to have survived the Soviet era quite intact, as it did in Poland. They have, after all – again, unlike Americans – seen the consequences of secular humanism up close and personal, and have stayed on the road of faith instead. But they do not equate this faith – as the chic set in Western Europe and America does – with “fascism”. Nor does faith represent, as some would have it, a “middle way” between the artificial political polarities of communism and fascism; it is on an entirely different dimension. The Nazis were every bit as hostile toward the Catholic Church as the Soviets were – another fact that is almost universally ignored by contemporary “historians”. The answer to one political extreme is not to embrace its alleged opposite; it's to denounce politics altogether in favor of the eternal.