Our People

Our People
Author: Ruta Vanagaite
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2020-03-15
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1538133040

A famous Nazi hunter and a descendent of Nazi collaborators team up on a journey to uncover Lithuania’s Holocaust secrets. This remarkable book traces the quest for the truth about the Holocaust in Lithuania by two ostensible enemies: Rūta a descendant of the perpetrators, Efraim a descendant of the victims. Rūta Vanagaitė, a successful Lithuanian writer, was motivated by her recent discoveries that some of her relatives had played a role in the mass murder of Jews and that Lithuanian officials had tried to hide the complicity of local collaborators. Efraim Zuroff, a noted Israeli Nazi hunter, had both professional and personal motivations. He had worked for years to bring Lithuanian war criminals to justice and to compel local authorities to tell the truth about the Holocaust in their country. The facts that his maternal grandparents were born in Lithuania and that he was named for a great-uncle who was murdered with his family in Vilnius with the active help of Lithuanians made his search personal as well. Our People exposes the significant role in implementing the Final Solution played by local political leaders and the prewar Lithuanian administration that remained in place during the Nazi occupation. It also tackles the sensitive issue of the motivation of thousands of ordinary Lithuanians who were complicit in the murder of their Jewish neighbors. At the heart of the book, these are the issues that Rūta and Efraim discuss, debate, and analyze as they crisscross the country to visit dozens of Holocaust mass murder sites in Lithuania and neighboring Belarus. This book follows them on their remarkable journey as they search for neglected graves, interview eyewitnesses, and uncover hints of the rich life that had existed in hundreds of Jewish communities throughout Lithuania.

Lithuania in the 1920s

Lithuania in the 1920s
Author: Robert W. Heingartner
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2009-01-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9042027614

Robert W. Heingartner kept this diary during his two year service as American consul in Kaunas, the provisional capital of Lithuania, 1926-1928. First titling the work “Impressions of Kaunas,” he wanted to record all his impressions of this small city about which he actually knew very little. He started with negative impressions, but he soon came to like it. He watched its growth with considerable sympathy. The diary’s appeal lies in its picture of daily life in Kaunas as the “provisional capital” of a newly independent small state – the conditions of life in the city, the social life of the diplomats, and backstage episodes in the life of the foreign diplomats. The diary records some unusual details about the family of Antanas Smetona, the ruler of Lithuania from 1926 to 1940, and it abounds in interesting commentary on the attitudes of both Lithuanians and foreigners.

Lithuania, Independent Again

Lithuania, Independent Again
Author: Vytautas Landsbergis
Publisher:
Total Pages: 430
Release: 2000
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

Landsbergis (former president of Lithuania) offers a first-person account of the movement for Lithuanian independence and the ensuing conflict with the Soviet Union. He discusses the influence of German and Soviet occupations, mass deportations, and censorship, as well as describing the tone of everyday life under Soviet rule. He also offers details of the difficulties faced by the Lithuanian government after Parliament declared a new independence in 1990. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR

Our People

Our People
Author: Rūta Vanagaitė
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2020-03-15
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781538133033

This compelling book traces the quest for the truth about the Holocaust in Lithuania by two ostensible enemies: Rūta a descendant of the perpetrators, Efraim a descendant of the victims. Focusing on the central role played by ordinary Lithuanians, they expose the efforts of past and current Lithuanian governments to hide these crimes.

The Vanished World of Lithuanian Jews

The Vanished World of Lithuanian Jews
Author: Alvydas Nikžentaitis
Publisher: Rodopi
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2004
Genre: Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
ISBN: 9789042008502

The Lithuanian Jews, Litvaks, played an important and unique role not only within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but in a wider context of Jewish life and culture in Eastern Europe, too. The changing world around them at the end of the nineteenth century and during the first decades of the twentieth had a profound impact not only on the Jewish communities, but also on a parallel world of the "others," that is, those who lived with them side by side. Exploring and demonstrating this development from various angles is one of the themes and objectives of this book. Another is the analysis of the Shoah, which ended the centuries of Jewish culture in Lithuania: a world of its own had vanished within months. This book, therefore, "recalls" that vanished world. In doing so, it sheds new light on what has been lost. The papers presented in this collection were delivered at the international conferences in Nida (1997) and Telsiai (2001), Lithuania. Participants came from Israel, the USA, Great Britain, Poland, Russia, Belarus, Germany, and Lithuania.

1939: The Year that Changed Everything in Lithuania’s History

1939: The Year that Changed Everything in Lithuania’s History
Author: Sarunas Liekis
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 402
Release: 2010-01-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9042027630

"This gripping and well-documented account of the history of the town of Vilnius and its surrounding region from the Polish ultimatum of March 1938, which forced Lithuania to open diplomatic relations with Poland, to the incorporation of Lithuania into the Soviet Union in June 1940 is set against the evolution of Lithuania's relations with her neighbours during this crucial period. It is a major contribution to the outbreak of war in September 1939 and the subsequent evolution of Nazi Soviet relations. Prof. Liekis presents a remarkable history based on archival sources never before utilized in any English-language study. In revealing the geopolitical, ideological, economic, social and ethnic dimensions of an immense tragedy in the heart of Europe, the author provides a new perspective on the unraveling of a society and nation during the initial days of World War II as prelude to the most violent period in European history."--Publisher's description.