Jews in Lithuanian historiography

ENThe present day press media leads us to believe that in our historical consciousness the problem of Jews has been completely covered by an opaque shadow of the Holocaust. The interest of historians in the investigation of the problem is precluded by moral, political and international motifs. Historians by any means cannot ignore these motifs. However, history is not a calm and indifferent scholarly field, as Phillipe Arie would put it, but is open to contemporary problems and worries. It is the task of history to voice them. The tragic fate of Lithuanian Jews, or litvaks, and the fatal circumstances of World War II should definitely be among the most important tasks of contemporary Lithuanian historiography. On the other hand, from a scholarly perspective, the death of the greatest diaspora of the Jewish nation cannot turn history into a study of fatalism, i. e. the 700-yearlong history of Lithuanian Jews cannot be viewed as an inevitable (or purposive) development towards death. The death of the litvaks shouldn't mean the death of their meaningful history. It is very important that Lithuanian historians undertake an investigation into the past of Lithuanian Jews. Such a study would save history from the tragic fate of the litvaks. A historian has to allow himself a plunge into a contemplation on different possible outcomes of the fate of Lithuanian Jews and to ask how Lithuanian Jews could have been saved, or imagine what Lithuania would have been like without the Holocaust. In a similar manner, sometimes we speculate what Lithuania would have been like without the Soviet invasion in 1940.In the light of the above stated, it should not be surprising that the present study chooses to exclude the existing investigations of Lithuanian historians into the problem of the Jewish genocide. Why? Such a solution is not determined by any precautions of getting involved into unnecessary polemics, rather it is an attempt to demonstrate gaps in the historiography of Lithuanian Jews. So far Lithuanian historians have been reluctant to study the history of the litvaks. Therefore, the present paper will emphasize new beginnings in the field. Besides, a serious contribution is expected from the international conference on the Holocaust which is coming in September to the University of Klaipėda, Lithuania. We assume that not only Lithuanian scholars but also scholarly society abroad looks forward to new investigations of the Holocaust based on archival facts and quantitative methods. This paper aims to survey briefly the Lithuanian historiography of Lithuanian Jews, to demonstrate the most important thematic and polemic intersections, to speculate on the reasons for insufficient attention to the investigation of the problem of Lithuanian Jews, and to explore the relationship between traditional Lithuanian historical consciousness and a diminishing interest in the works of history. In other words, the approaching 200th anniversary of the death of the Vilnius Gaon inspires us to talk not about the death of the diaspora but about the meaningful history before it [p. 9-10].