Jews in Lithuania

Whether Deborah Lurya (letter, Oct. 11) likes it or not, it is a plain fact that till June, 1941, there were in Lithuania no Jewish pogroms, i.e., random killings of Jews initiated and perpetrated by the local population.

As for her late grandmother’s recollections, they surely relate to the discrimination and persecution of Jews in the Russian empire, an integral part of which Lithuania at the turn of the century had been. The perpetrators of that persecution were not Lithuanians but Russian imperial authorities and their armed forces. They used violence not only against the Jews--who, it is true, were the first to suffer--but also against Lithuanians, Poles and other “disloyal” ethnic and religious groups.

There is no controversy over some Lithuanians (along with some nationals of most other German-occupied European countries) having helped the Nazis murder the Jews or over the Holocaust having put an end to the flourishing Jewish life in Vilnius. What Lurya failed to notice is the fact that as long as Vilnius was under Poland’s or Lithuania’s rule Jewish life continued to flourish there unhindered. It was Nazi Germany’s rule (1941-1944), which annihilated the Jewish community in Vilnius physically, and the Soviet rule (1944-1990) which, by prohibiting the revival of Jewish traditions and by actively destroying whatever has remained of them in Vilnius, terminated Jewish life there spiritually. The Lithuanians as nation had nothing to do with either of these Jewish tragedies despite of these tragedies having taken place on Lithuanian soil.

ALEKSANDRAS SHTROMAS

Professor of Political Science

Hillsdale College, Mich.