An Unimagined community? Examining narratives of the Holocaust in Lithuanian textbooks

• BRILL: straipsnio tekstas (prieiga teikiama iš LMA bibliotekos kompiuterių tinklo)

ENAt some point, every country in the world must acknowledge its participation in events that reflect negatively on the political systems or members of that country, but the ability to discuss such events accurately and openly is a barometer of the democratic maturity of that country. In Lithuania, discussions about anti-Semitism and the Holocaust have become important markers for understanding democratic transformation because there was no historical precedent for these discussions under the Soviets, and there are historical accounts documenting Lithuanian cooperation with the Nazi occupation regime. However, coming to terms with this history doesn’t mean just changing the content of educational resources, it means changing the very way that Lithuania imagines itself as an community. Despite the criticisms throughout this paper, Lithuanian textbooks demonstrate that a political motivation exists to begin conversations about the significance of the Holocaust in Lithuanian national identity. However, these textbooks also highlight that incorporating such difficult conversations into educational resources might still be a long way off.