Litvak Studies

Обзор языкового состояния Биржая (Литва) и его окрестностей, написанный для сборника статей «Евреи на карте Литвы: Биржай» (М., 2015). Содержит новые материалы говоров старообрядцев деревень Федаришки и Апошча и фрагменты интервью с Шефтелем Меламедом, касающиеся социолингвистики идиша в послевоенной Литве.
NB редактор снял нумерацию примеров, взаимные ссылки между ними,  и характеристики информантов, вследствие чего статья много потеряла во внятности, но тут уж ничего не поделаешь.

The paper argues that the recent history of Holocaust Studies in
Lithuania is characterized by major provision (for research,
teaching and publishing) coming from state-sponsored agencies,
particularly a state commission on both Nazi and Soviet crimes.
Problematically, the commission is itself simultaneously active in
revising the narrative per se of the Holocaust, principally
according to the ‘Double Genocide’ theories of the 2008 Prague
Declaration that insists on ‘equalization’ of Nazi and Soviet crimes.
Lithuanian agencies have played a disproportionate role in that
declaration, in attempts at legislating some of its components in
the European Parliament and other EU bodies, and ‘export’ of the
revisionist model to the West. Much international support for solid
independent Lithuanian Holocaust researchers and NGOs was cut
off as the state commission set out determinedly to dominate the
field, which is perceived to have increasing political implications
in East-West politics. But this history must not obscure an
impressive list of local accomplishments. A tenaciously devoted
group of Holocaust survivors themselves, trained as academics or
professionals in other fields, educated themselves to publish
books, build a mini-museum (that has defied the revisionists)
within the larger state-sponsored Jewish museum, and worked to
educate both pupils and the wider public. Second, a continuing
stream of non-Jewish Lithuanian scholars, educators, documentary
film makers and others have at various points valiantly defied
state pressures and contributed significantly and selflessly. The
wider picture is that Holocaust Studies has been built most
successfully by older Holocaust survivors and younger non-Jews,
in both groups often by those coming to work in it from other
specialties out of a passion for justice and truth in history, while
lavishly financed state initiatives have been anchored in the
inertia of nationalist regional politics.

The successful incorporation of Eastern European states into the European Union, NATO and the Western pro-democratic family of nations usually focuses on the import of ideas, governmental and societal structures, and products, from West to East, and of large movements of East European populations westward. Often overlooked in the export of ideas has been the intensive, expensive and industrial-scale effort to rewrite the history of the Holocaust and World War II in the direction of Double Genocide and Holocaust Obfuscation, a trend spurred on dramatically by the decline in East-West relations and the increasingly frightening movement of Russia toward revanchist authoritarianism that threatens its neighbors. The paper argues that no good can or will come from the adaptation of models of bogus nationalist history rooted in far-right, ultranationalist thought in the liberated states of Eastern Europe. Double Genocide and its corollaries as currently practiced and underwritten by state budgets, represent a threat to history, freedom of thought and speech, equal rights and ultimately, a ruse to insert far-right academic revisionism disguised as anti-Russian activity into Western discourse.

In Lithuanian, the word "landscape" has either a neutral or a rather positive meaning. Especially its element "the land" ("kraštas"). It is rarely said, for example, that a landscape is "nasty"; much more often it is "impressive", "wonderful", "romantic". So, the concept of a "landscape of violence" sounds quite ambivalent. Like the synonyms of this term, "terroscape", "traumascape", "Kontaminierte Landschaften" ("contaminated landscape"). These are the terms by which researchers try to grasp the essence of the subject-to describe the totality of the class-related and "racially" motivated crime sites of the two totalitarian regimes, Soviet and Nazi, that ruled much of Europe in parts of the 20th century. The vastness of such places in Central and Eastern Europe, where the spheres of influence of these two regimes overlapped, allowed the American historian Timothy Snyder to call this territory the "bloodlands". It is estimated that in Central and Eastern Europe there are between 5,000 and 10,000 sites of mass murder carried out by the Nazis, the majority of which are Holocaust by Bullets sites1. More than 200 are in Lithuania, with 239 such sites listed in Jacob Levinson's Book of Pain and 227 in the Holocaust Atlas. You would find them in forests, meadows, fields, quarries, former landfills and anywhere else "away from people's eyes". In the list of cultural heritage created by Lithuania's Department of Cultural Heritage, these sites are called "Graves of Victims of the Holocaust". This is the official name, but road signs-the number of them has increased in recent years-indicate a Site of the Massacre of Jews, a Site of the Massacre of Jews and Graves and sometimes the more abstract Massacre Mass Graves. The totality of these sites is what some researchers of cultural memory, such as Katharina Schramm, call the "landscape of violence".

Soviet regime treated places of Holocaust pragmatically – they considered it politically useful. However, the regime did not care about the memory of its victims and was interested in these events insofar they were useful for Soviet propaganda about People‘s War against the Nazi according to which Jewish suffering was universalized, nationalized or internationalized. However, after the reestablishment of independence Paneriai became common space of Lithuania and Israel, Lithuanian and Jewish communities, Lithuanian and Poland.

The paper argues that the recent history of Holocaust Studies in Lithuania is characterized by major provision (for research, teaching and publishing) coming from state-sponsored agencies, particularly a state commission on both Nazi and Soviet crimes. Problematically, the commission is itself simultaneously active in revising the narrative per se of the Holocaust, principally according to the 'Double Genocide' theories of the 2008 Prague Declaration that insists on 'equalization' of Nazi and Soviet crimes. Lithuanian agencies have played a disproportionate role in that declaration, in attempts at legislating some of its components in the European Parliament and other EU bodies, and 'export' of the revisionist model to the West. Much international support for solid independent Lithuanian Holocaust researchers and NGOs was cut off as the state commission set out determinedly to dominate the field, which is perceived to have increasing political implications in East-West politics. But this history must not obscure an impressive list of local accomplishments. A tenaciously devoted group of Holocaust survivors themselves, trained as academics or professionals in other fields, educated themselves to publish books, build a mini-museum (that has defied the revisionists) within the larger state-sponsored Jewish museum, and worked to educate both pupils and the wider public. Second, a continuing stream of non-Jewish Lithuanian scholars, educators, documentary film makers and others have at various points valiantly defied state pressures and contributed significantly and selflessly. The wider picture is that Holocaust Studies has been built most successfully by older Holocaust survivors and younger non-Jews, in both groups often by those coming to work in it from other specialties out of a passion for justice and truth in history, while lavishly financed state initiatives have been anchored in the inertia of nationalist regional politics.

A far-right East European grouping within the European Parliament and EU more generally continues to obtain EU funding for the "Double Genocide" inspired revisionism of Holocaust history. This segment relates to the latest episode of a sponsored competition that has entangled a Holocaust remembrance organization for the desired legitimization. Like ALL my items on Academia.edu, it is available by LINK, not downloaded: https://gianalytics.org/992-when-the-eu-finances-far-right-holocaust-revisionism

Although this essay emerges from two current matters (Defending History's annual naming of a new year for a Lithuanian Rescuer; the Lithuanian Parliament's recent decision to name 2021 for a "Lithuanian Activist Front" perpetrator), it ventures into historic territory by claiming unique historic status for The First Week (from 22/23 June to whatever day German forces arrived and set took control): first, the massacre (often by barbaric means including beheading) of thousands of Jews by  local white-armbanders who took on the mantle of the Berlin-established "Lithuanian Activist Front" (LAF) before there was any German administration about; second, the Savers of the First Week: Lithuanian citizens who performed Good Samaritan acts of insisting that Jewish friends get on a train to the east, his them when the LAFers came to their locate (in sharp distinction to the later organized genocide of virtually all of Lithuanian Jewry, and to the classic Rescuers who hid people for years). The paper argues that in 2021, when some EU states sadly glorify the perpetrators, it is time to commemorate the victims and the local courageous people who just did the right thing and saved a neighbour FROM the LAF.