Full of admiration

In interview, Lithuanian PM Andrius Kubilius says admires Israel, that ‘we are proud of Lithuanian Jewish history.’

By MICHAEL FREUND
Lithuanian PM Kubilius (photo credit: Michael Freund)
Lithuanian PM Kubilius
(photo credit: Michael Freund)
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Lithuania and Israel. Though the bilateral connection between the two states is relatively young, Jews and Lithuanians have been interacting for centuries.
Indeed, the streets of the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, known to Jews as Vilna, have borne witness to some of the greatest heights of Jewish scholarship. It was here that giants such as Rabbi Elijah, the Gaon of Vilna, and Rabbi Haim Ozer Grodzinski left an indelible mark on Jewish life.
But Vilnius was also the scene of some of the darkest acts of brutality ever committed against the Jewish people. More than 96 percent of the Jews living in Lithuania on the eve of World War II were murdered in the Holocaust, many of them by their neighbors. Against this complex backdrop, Lithuanian Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius granted an exclusive interview to The Jerusalem Post.
Let’s begin by discussing the relationship between Lithuania and the Jewish people. How would you describe the relationship, and to what extent does the past still play a role in affecting it? Well, of course historical issues have an emotional influence on what is happening.
For example, relations between Lithuania and the Polish people are influenced by history, and of course relations between Lithuania and the Jewish people are influenced by the past. But I would like to make two points. One is of course the tragic past of the Jewish people, the tragedy of the Holocaust, where unfortunately some Lithuanians took part, and for us they are painful pages of our history, but we are openly speaking about that.
And of course the tragedy of the Jewish people when a majority of a very strong community was destroyed. That is a tragedy for the whole of Lithuania, which brings me to the second point which I am always emphasizing: For us as Lithuanians who are living here today, we are still discovering the heritage that we had from the time before the Holocaust, when powerful Jewish and Polish communities were living here in Vilnius, and how much we can be proud of what they managed to achieve. That is the heritage of Lithuanian history.
And so that is why, besides being quite open to what are in the pages of the tragic history, we are also putting a lot of effort [toward opening] the pages of that historical heritage. For example, it was very emotional for all of us who took part in the opening of the excavations of the remains of the Vilnius Great Synagogue. And there you can see both pages – how the synagogue was destroyed and how the old quarter of the town looked when the synagogue was in place and how different it was. So I would say that our government has made a lot of efforts to resolve some problems for which the previous governments were not able to find solutions. We passed a law on the compensation of property, and it was not very easy – there were a lot of debates both in the parliament and in the Jewish community – but we managed because of the very good understanding that exists between the government and the leadership of the Jewish community.
Recently there have been a number of anti-Semitic incidents, including one in which vandals tossed paint onto the outside walls of the Vilnius synagogue.

And members of the Lithuanian Jewish community have told me they are frequently the targets of anti-Semitism.

What steps is your government taking to combat anti-Semitism? First of all, we always condemn very strongly and without any hesitation all those acts of vandalism. The police investigate all such incidents and criminal behavior. Unfortunately it still happens, but I do not see it as a kind of major trend in Lithuania. Perhaps because of the painful economic and financial crisis in the Baltic states over the past four years, there has been a kind of radicalization in society, and therefore you can sometimes see such developments. But I am pretty sure it’s temporary, and of course if you speak about incidents of anti-Semitism, what really needs to be done is education, both on Holocaust issues and also in general on Jewish history and Lithuanian Jewish history. We are trying to show that we need to be proud of the Lithuanian Jewish community and what they achieved.
Personally, when we visited Jerusalem, everyone from the president to the prime minister to the speaker of parliament and opposition leaders – all of them declared in a very proud way that they are Litvaks [Jews of Lithuanian descent]. You really feel that it is something we can be proud of.
Your government recently oversaw the return and reburial of the remains of the head of the 1941 provisional Lithuanian government, despite its anti-Semitic record and collaboration with the Nazis. How do you justify such an act? First of all, the government was not officially involved, except that we were under certain legal obligations because of our laws. But it is quite a complicated historical issue, and I should say that there are two sides and we need to be open to both sides. There were some Lithuanians whom I would call naïve, romantic people who were captured by historical circumstances and very complicated times when they were trying to achieve the independence of Lithuania. The same people became leaders of the anti-Nazi movement, and some of them were sent by Nazi authorities to concentration camps. But of course nearly 200,000 Lithuanian Jews were killed, and a significant number were killed during the transitional government.
For Lithuanians it was very hard, it was a period when terrible things were happening.
But our government has distanced itself from the reburial in quite a conspicuous way.
Nonetheless, this incident caused a lot of shock and pain among many Jews.

Do you regret that? I would like to see that both communities – the Lithuanian and Jewish communities – have a better understanding of what the very sensitive issues are on both sides. For example, for Lithuanians, this would be the loss of independence when Stalin came and the attempts to find a way to regain independence. We need to find on both sides a proper understanding of that historical period when terrible things were happening, and the only way to do so is to be very open.
Here in Vilnius, I attended the 90th birthday party of Fania Brantsovsky, a Jewish partisan who heroically resisted the Nazis during World War II. Nonetheless, the Lithuanian government has accused her, along with other Holocaust survivors, of being war criminals, and the cases against them are still technically open. Isn’t it time to close those cases and apologize to Fania and the others? As we understand it, the investigations are finished, and we consider the case as closed. We understand all the pain and all the emotions, and that is why from our side, from the government’s side, there is a very clear position that the history should not be made the issue. The history should bring us to reconciliation, and that is why I asked my adviser to go to that celebration of Fania’s birthday, and I remember that last summer we took part in a very nice event in which Fania, despite her advanced age, took us around the old parts of Vilnius for a guided tour for something like two hours, telling the story of the Jewish people in a very emotional and convincing way, and we could not help but fall in love with her.
So the investigation against her is officially closed? From our point of view, it is closed. We cannot say to the prosecutors in our system to close a case, but our political will is very clear.
Various critics have accused Lithuania of trying to obfuscate or minimize the crimes of the Holocaust by putting them in the same category as communism.

So I wanted to give you an opportunity to set the record straight. Do you think the crimes of communism and those of the Holocaust were equivalent, or was the Holocaust unique in the annals of genocide? I think that this is in some ways the wrong question. I do not see the reason why we need to try to compare or make some kind of mathematical equation of those terrible crimes. The only reason we are speaking of them in some similar way is that they happened at the same time and in the same place. That is the only reason, and there is no way to split them in Lithuanian history. It is impossible not to speak about both crimes. But there is no reason to speak of them as equal or not equal. There were 14 million people killed in this area between the middle of the ’30s and the middle of the ’40s, which happened because of two criminal dictators who were going back and forth through this part of Europe – that is what happened here. And we and Jewish people, of course, suffered the most terrible fate, but also other people who were living here became victims, too.
So were the Lithuanians victims or perpetrators, or both? They were victims of history, I would say, and of course in [that] terrible history there are different pages. There are pages where it is very painful to read that Lithuanians also took part in the atrocities of the Holocaust, and there is more and more new historical evidence with clear numbers regarding how many Lithuanians took part in those atrocities. From other pages, we are also reading about the terrible history of how hundreds of thousands of Lithuanians were sent to Siberia and how they were killed in the military resistance of the Second World War. In general terms, one out of every three people living in Lithuania before the war – including Jews, Poles and Lithuanians – suffered in one way or another.
How would you characterize the bilateral diplomatic relationship with the State of Israel? Are relations improving? I see very good progress in recent years, and we have a lot of bilateral exchanges of visits of ministers. Of course, what we are hoping is that Israel will open an embassy here in Vilnius – that is our wish. We feel there is good understanding on both sides, not only in regard to the main issues in our bilateral relations, but also on global and European developments. In the second half of next year, we will assume the presidency of the European Union, and I think that we can do a good job in cooperation with the State of Israel.
Iran is moving closer to obtaining nuclear weapons, and Iranian leaders speak openly about wiping Israel off the map. Many Israeli Jews are concerned about the possibility of a second Holocaust.

If Israel decides there is no alternative other than to use military force against Iranian nuclear installations, what will your government’s position be? What is the next question? [Laughs.] But of course we are concerned about how things are developing in relation to Iran and how the international negotiations are proceeding. We understand the concern especially in the State of Israel among the government and the people, knowing what the leaders of Iran have been expressing. We understand very well all those concerns. We hope that a peaceful solution of that issue will be achieved.
Lithuania is a small country with a large and historically hostile neighbor, and Israel is a small country with large and historically hostile neighbors. Do you think that similarity creates a certain level of understanding between the two countries? I am always saying that this is exactly the reason why we understand the concerns of the State of Israel on geopolitical security much better than some other, bigger countries from “old Europe.” From our history, we know very well how much we suffered because of the neighborhood in which we live. I personally admire how the State of Israel during the second half of the 20th century managed to survive in such surroundings despite all the challenges and all the attempts to destroy it.
And that is why we are looking to Israel as an example of how a country should develop itself. Of course there are a lot of historical differences and circumstances, but there is a lot of admiration among Lithuanians toward the people of Israel because of what you managed to achieve.
Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, and your embassy is in Tel Aviv. If Israel decided to open an embassy in Lithuania and put it in the city of Kaunas rather than Vilnius, I think it would be considered an insult to the Lithuanian people. So why don’t you move your embassy to Jerusalem? We have had no such discussion in the cabinet, realizing that of course it is a question which perhaps can be resolved as part of a more general approach with the European Union and with others from the international diplomatic community.
Do you speak any Yiddish? No, not really. But perhaps we can start to learn.