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Your Excellencies Ministers,

Members of Knesset and Lithuanian Seimas,

Ambassadors,

Honorable Professors,

Distinguished Participants,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Please accept my sincere gratitude for the invitation to address this conference of exceptional significance.

The memory of Shoah is an eternal warning for the humanity to keep vigil, to recognise and prevent all possible manifestations of anti-Semitism. Half a century after the tragedy, anti-Semitism has not disappeared. It is still alive, virulent and more resistant than any modern day pandemic. Like a constantly morphing virus of evil, it aims at the human soul and threatens the very core of human nature – the foundations of humankind as a community of Homo sapiens endowed with the divine spark of reason.

A reliable safeguard against anti-Semitism can only be provided by the concerted efforts of the entire international community. All of us who have gathered here today- politicians, researchers, historians and NGO leaders- must do everything possible to combat anti-Semitism. No one else can do it for us.  We all share this responsibility of deterring anti-Semitism from ever becoming a new pandemic.

Researchers and historians from a variety of countries, including Israel, the United States and Lithuania have already undertaken a through analysis of this issue. And yet no research can ever providing exhausting answers to many a painful question, including the question why this ugliest of evils had taken root in my country? Lithuanians and Jews had for centuries lived side by side in peace during our millennium-long history.  No wonder that the Jewish people had come to refer to Lithuania in their native tongue as Lita, while Lithuania’s capital Vilnius became known as Jerusalem of Lithuania (Jerushalaim shel Lita).

During the Nazi occupation of Lithuania, we had lost almost the entire 200 thousand strong community of Lithuanian Jewry. We had lost our Jewish fellow citizens whose rights and freedoms had been granted by the privileges of Vytautas, the Grand Duke of Lithuania, back in the 14th century. How could it be that while some Lithuanians were risking their lives to save their Jewish neighbours, others were committing crimes by sending them to death?

I come from a generation born after the atrocities of World War II, which cannot be held guilty for the great tragedy that had happened. However, it is our duty to keep raising this question again and again. It is not only the memory of the victims of the Holocaust that calls for historical truth and justice. This truth and justice must be restored not only for the Jews, but also for the sake of the citizens of modern democratic Lithuania.

For half a century, Lithuania, like the other Baltic States, was held captive behind the Iron Curtain, cut off from the democratic world. We were subject to a political system that did not recognize and in fact rejected the values which are at the heart of Western democracy. In contrast to the democratic nations of the world, respect for human life, human rights and freedoms, and intolerance for all possible manifestations of anti-Semitism, xenophobia and racial discrimination were not instilled in our citizens.

Generations grew up under the totalitarian rule without ever being allowed an adequate understanding of the tragedy of the Holocaust and its scale in Lithuania. No discussion, no education on the matter was available. Let me give you an example from my own experience to illustrate what I mean.

As a secondary school graduate in my native town of Skuodas (in north-west Lithuania close to the Latvian border), I once had a job of painting a few old houses. I can still recall my amazement when upon removing the old coat of paint from the walls I found inscriptions showing that these houses had been a Jewish pharmacy or a Jewish store…

I had lived in Skuodas for eighteen years and had not met a single Jew. As was common during the Soviet regime, I was fully ignorant of the fact that during the years of the independent Republic of Lithuania, Skuodas had three Jewish pharmacists and five physicians; that a Jewish secondary school operated in Skuodas and offered instruction in the Hebrew language. I knew nothing of the large Skuodas Jewish community with their own cinema theatre and their charity and cultural organization Ezro. I had no idea whatsoever of the rich and unique religious and cultural life led by the Jewish community in my native town.

Nor did I know the truth of the extermination of the entire Jewish community of my native town in July 1941 by the Nazis and their Lithuanian collaborators. A well in the old town of Skuodas where the Jewish used to draw water and a cemetery on the edge of the town is all what remained there after the Shoah…

It is a heavy emotion for me to be saying this on my first visit to Israel, the country where thousands of Litvaks have found their Promised Land. As the writer Grigorii Kanovich, a laureate of the Lithuanian National Award for Culture, currently living in Israel, has said, only penance, the truth and the courage to admit it have the power to revive and strengthen the relations between the Lithuanian and Jewish nations.

This goal has been at the heart of national policy of the democratic Republic of Lithuania since its reestablishment in 1990. The first steps in this direction were made by a relevant declaration of the Supreme Council under the leadership of Vytautas Landsbergis, the first head of the re-established Lithuanian State, and by Lithuanian President Algirdas Brazauskas on behalf of the Lithuanians guilty of the collaboration with the Nazi occupants. The work of the international commission of historians initiated by President Valdas Adamkus is helping to restore the historic memory and the truth, as do the state-sponsored programmes on the Holocaust education and tolerance.

The Lithuanian Government has started consolidating efforts directed at preserving the disappearing cultural heritage of Litvaks. Relevant decisions were adopted regarding the compensation of the Jewish property. A long-term state programme is being initiated in order to provide all these initiatives with a consistent and continuous framework. 

Today schoolchildren from my native Skuodas, just like school kids all over Lithuania, are taking part in the Holocaust education programmes, learning of the Jewish history and culture and paying tribute to the Holocaust victims at Ponar and other places. Their knowledge of that horrendous stage in our history by far surpasses my own when I was their age. However, the work is far from complete, and we still need the advice and support of the international community to continue our efforts.

I am of the opinion that Lithuanian and Jewish young people should not be limited to learning of each other from books: they should have direct opportunities to interact and make friends, to learn the languages of each other and to see the cultural and historic monuments of our respective countries.

Fighting ant-Semitism will be one of priorities of the Lithuanian OSCE chair beginning in 2011.

We must continue to implement the laws that prohibit anti-Semitism and the instigation of national discord. And there can be no term of limitation for the crimes committed by the Nazis and their henchmen. But laws alone cannot defeat anti-Semitism. Building a mature civil society is equally important, and the active stand of the brightest minds of the nation is vital in this respect. These individuals, the people of great moral authority, were the first to speak up when one Lithuanian daily ran articles instigating anti-Semitic passions five years ago. The voice of such individuals who are the moral fibre and backbone of the society is often heard and heeded much better than legal language and sanctions applied by the state.

The instances of abuse of the freedom of press, of polluting the Internet with anti-Semitic rubbish, as well as cases of neo-Nazi marches under the pretext of the freedom of assembly – all these alarming facts call for a renewed focus on the enormity of the task.  What actions should we take in order to uproot the seeds of evil?

I am convinced that we do have a good chance to build a future free from the mistakes of the past. We must be patiently working on defeating indifference and ignorance, on filling in the gaps in popular knowledge about the Shoah. We also must continue reviewing our own historical myths, shattering the images and stereotypes engrained in our consciousness which damage our historical memory and our national identity.

Distinguished participants,

As I speak, I cannot leave out the question of tensions generated by the evaluation of Stalinism. A resolution of the European Parliament and a parliamentary OSCE invitation to the European nations to hold a day of remembrance for the victims of both, Nazi and Stalinist totalitarian regimes, and to give an assessment of their crimes, was received with varied responses and interpretations. 

Let me stress that we do not apply a common measure to the Holocaust and the crimes committed by the Stalinist terror. The condemnation of the crimes of Stalinism in Eastern Europe should never be applied to diminish the moral and political lessons of the Holocaust. No matter how grave the crimes of totalitarianism against nations and countries are, the Holocaust is an unprecedented phenomenon that sought to employ a modern industrial state and even the entire European civilization with the goal of extermination of the entire Jewish nation.

We cannot tolerate any relativism in relation to the memory of the Holocaust. Lithuania, having experienced both, the horrors of Nazism and the repressions of Stalinism, holds in deepest respect all the fighters – living and dead – of the anti-Nazi resistance and the anti-Hitler coalition. 

However, in contrast to Nazi-committed crimes which have been universally condemned by all civilized humanity, it took long before the crimes of Stalin’s regime received a due legal evaluation and the tragedy of its victims was recognized. The uncensored history of Eastern and Central European states and nations has long remained a taboo even in the states that had suffered from Stalinist terror. Therefore, it is no surprise that some facts emerging from a long silence can cause controversy and tension. They disturb a picture of the history engrained into public consciousness and upset the convenient patterns which often appear too tight for the fate of an individual human being who has been through the mill of history.

Not only the Lithuanians, but also Lithuanian Jews, Russians and many other nationalities had suffered historical losses under Stalin’s regime by way of forced deportations, death in the Gulags, confiscation of property, repressions of language and culture and persecutions on grounds of religion, race, ethnicity or some other pretext.

Therefore, we expect that the state of Israel and the Jewish nation all over the world will understand our attempts to jointly pay tribute to the memory of all the victims of Stalinism, to restore the historical memory and to educate the young people in the spirit of a firm opposition to totalitarianism. Should any miscommunications from a different treatment of any concept emerge, I urge to pursue an open dialogue on each question of concern, thus precluding the possibility of tensions overshadowing the relationship of our nations.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Let me assure you that the Lithuanian nation, which had to rebuild its state from scratch several times after it was “erased” from the world map against the will of its people, feels a special kinship with Israel. The strong relationship, embedded in the history of our nations, is manifested by the support of the Republic of Lithuania, both over the years from 1918 to 1940 and after regaining independence in 1990, to the right of self-determination of the Jewish people realized by the State of Israel. We take pride in the fact that the Litvaks contributed to the building of the foundations of the State of Israel and its prosperity.

The Lithuanian Jewry was also in the ranks of the independence fighters of 1918. They – diplomats, writers, scholars, artists, businesspeople, teachers and doctors –were among the builders of the Lithuanian state under complex international circumstances. Jews in Lithuania, the USA, Russia, Israel and elsewhere supported the Lithuanian cause of freedom. In the Baltic Way that led to the reestablishment of the independent Lithuanian state, whose 20th anniversary we are soon to celebrate, we stood hand in hand with the patriots of Lithuania: Jewish and Polish, Russians and Belarusian, Karaites and Tartars.  

I am therefore confident that the prophetic words Shimon Peres, President of the State of Israel, that “our common future will be better than the past”, will come true. I also hope that the ideas and works of all the participants of this conference will become an important contribution in achieving this noble goal.

Before I finish, I would like to share with you my vision cherished also by most Lithuanians who look to the future of the Lithuanian-Jewish relationship with high hopes.

I believe that Vilnius, which keeps radiating the spirit of Lithuanian Jerusalem even today, will also regain its glory by becoming the capital of the Litvaks of the world. I hope that in Lithuania the Jewish will always feel the warmth of their home country and enjoy our hospitality.