Our People

Discovering Lithuania's Hidden Holocaust

Rūta Vanagaitė and Efraim Zuroff

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.

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 240 • Trim: 6 x 9

978-1-5381-3303-3 • Hardback • March 2020 • $24.95 • (£15.95)

978-1-5381-3304-0 • eBook • March 2020 • $23.50 • (£15.95) (coming soon)

Subjects: History / Jewish, History / Europe / Russia & the Former Soviet Union, History / Holocaust, History / Military / World War II, Biography & Autobiography / Social Activists, Political Science / Genocide & War Crimes

Our People

Discovering Lithuania's Hidden Holocaust

Hardback

Summary

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.

Details

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 240 • Trim: 6 x 9

978-1-5381-3303-3 • Hardback • March 2020 • $24.95 • (£15.95)

978-1-5381-3304-0 • eBook • March 2020 • $23.50 • (£15.95) (coming soon)

Subjects: History / Jewish, History / Europe / Russia & the Former Soviet Union, History / Holocaust, History / Military / World War II, Biography & Autobiography / Social Activists, Political Science / Genocide & War Crimes

Author

Rūta Vanagaitė, one of Lithuania’s most popular public personalities and the successful author of numerous best sellers, became persona non grata in her homeland after this book was originally published in Lithuania. She now lives in Jerusalem.

Efraim Zuroff is the chief Nazi hunter of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and director of the center’s Israel Office and Eastern European Affairs. A Holocaust historian, popular lecturer, and author, he lives in Jerusalem.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction: Efraim Zuroff: Lithuania and the Holocaust

Part I: Before the Journey

1 Efraim Zuroff: My Connection to Lithuania

2 Rūta Vanagaitė: My Connection to the Holocaust

3 Meeting the Enemy

Part II: Preparation for the Journey

4 Lithuania, 1941: Getting Rid of the Jews

5 Lithuania Today: Minimizing the Crimes

6 Mission Impossible?

Part III: Journey with the Enemy: Thirteen Destinations

7 Kaunas/Kovno

8 Linkmenys/Ligmiyan

9 Švenčionys/Shventzyan

10 Kavarskas/Kovarsk

11 Ukmergė/Vilkomir

12 Šeduva/Shadeve

13 Telšiai/Telz

14 Plungė/Plungyan

15 Plateliai/Plotel

16 Tauragė/Tavrig

17 Butrimonys/Butrimants

18 Panevėžys/Ponevezh

19 Belarus

Part IV: The Hell of Vilnius/Vilna

20 Portraits of the Witnesses

21 Portrait of a Student

22 Portrait of a Postman

23 Dreams of a Killer

24 Portraits of the Victims

25 Portrait of a Corpse-Burner

26 The Fates of the Killers

27 The Last Day

Part V: Conclusion

28 Human Faces of the Murderers

29 Lithuania Got Richer

30 The Farewell

Afterword: Rūta Vanagaitė: Lithuania Is Angry, Lithuania Is Sad

Index

Reviews

This is a painful and important book—painful because so much of it consists of excruciating eyewitness accounts to the torment inflicted on Lithuanian Jews by their fellow citizens, and important because so little has appeared in English on not only this terrible dimension of the Holocaust but also the reluctance, even refusal, of the descendants of the killers to acknowledge their role in the murders all these years later. The account of the Lithuanian government’s vacillations in dealing with the nation’s past is particularly eye-opening.
— Peter Hayes, author of Why? Explaining the Holocaust

Our People is an immensely valuable addition to our knowledge about the genocidal murder of Lithuanian Jews. The authors’ remarkable investigation has brought to light the active role played by Lithuanian citizens, often with minimal oversight by Nazi occupiers, at hundreds of killing sites. It will serve as a powerful wake-up call for grappling with the complicit legacy of World War II.
— Yehuda Bauer, Holocaust historian, academic advisor, Yad Vashem

A powerful, poignant, and painful exploration of the ‘murder by bullets’ of Lithuanian Jews by their Lithuanian neighbors. Authors Rūta Vanagaitė, a prominent Lithuanian journalist, and Efraim Zuroff, the preeminent Nazi hunter, are forced to confront history and memory, shattering conventional understandings of both. A best-selling and controversial book when first published in Lithuania, Our People has challenged many convenient truths that Lithuanians have told themselves about their national heroes, offering a clear and unapologetic portrait of Lithuania’s ‘hidden Holocaust.’
— Michael Berenbaum, director, Sigi Ziering Institute, American Jewish University

Our People

Discovering Lithuania's Hidden Holocaust

Rūta Vanagaitė and Efraim Zuroff

Our People

Discovering Lithuania's Hidden Holocaust

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