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In order to protect younger generations from dangerous illusions and false theories, the practical implementation of which can cause grievous loss to all mankind, causes and consequences of the Holocaust must be analyzed well, Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania Asta Skaisgirytė Liauškienė says.

As the Vice-Minister wrote in the letter to the participants of the conference “Teaching history about the crimes of the Nazi and Soviet occupation regimes: Theory and Practice” on 1 April in Vilnius, during the times of the Soviet censorship, the Holocaust phenomenon would be avoided.

“The tragedy of the Lithuanian Jews would be mysteriously swallowed by a general World War II fatality statistics. History of the Holocaust or the history of the Gulag, prisons and deportations are not just dry facts and figures. The death of millions is a statistic, an abstraction, which is difficult to understand. The death of every single man is an irrecoverable tragedy,” A.Skaisgirytė Liauškienė emphasized in her letter.

Therefore, according to the Vice-Minister, it is not surprising that this painful part of history is not easy to comprehend and it is especially difficult to convey it in a sensitive and fair way to the younger generation.

“When restoring the Independence of the Lithuanian State, historians had and still have a lot of work, as they open the locked archives and write the pages of our history without white spots of silence. However, this mission is still incomplete. I think we still have a lot to do in encouraging the international academic community, the general public, and especially young people to get interested in our history,” reads the letter of A.Skaisgirytės Liauškienė to the participants the conference.

The conference in Vilnius on teaching history about the crimes of the Nazi and Soviet occupation regimes was co-organized by the History Faculty of Vilnius Pedagogical University and the International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Soviet and the Nazi Regimes in Lithuania.

The event was also attended by Vice-Rector for Science of Vilnius Pedagogical University Rimantas Želvys, the U.S. Ambassador to Lithuania Anne Elizabeth Derse, Head of the International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Soviet and the Nazi Regimes in Lithuania Ronaldas Račinskas and many other representatives from the academic community.

At the conference, history teachers and students were acquainted with the up-to-date historical research materials and educational experiences of history teachers in teaching these topics to students. Lithuanian school teachers, university lecturers and other guests gave presentations on the teaching of the latest research of the Nazi and Soviet crimes to school children, application of active teaching methods, enhancement of students’ motivation for learning about the Nazi and Soviet crimes, and other topics.