View No. 21 (2025)

No. 21 (2025)

ISSN:
1895-247X
eISSN:
2657-3571

Publication Date:
2025-12-27

Section: NEIGHBORS after 25 years

Neighbors look to Neighbors. Debates over the Holocaust in Lithuania

Stanislovas Stasiulis

stanislovas.stasiulis@istorija.lt

PhD, researcher at the Lithuanian Institute of History (Lietuvos istorijos institutas); his research interests focus on the Holocaust and World War II. Co-editor of The Traces of Crimes Do Not Disappear: Mass Killings in the Paneriai Forest, 1941–1944 and Hope Is Stronger Than Life: Vilna Ghetto Diary Zeliga Kalmanovicha (both published in 2021).

ORCID logo https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8788-5846

Lithuanian Institute of History

Violeta Davoliūtė

violeta.davoliute@istorija.lt

Professor, senior researcher at the Lithuanian Institute of History (Lietuvos istorijos institutas); leads the project "Facing the Past: Public History for a Stronger Europe" (Horizon Europe, 2022–2025). Her research interests include forced displacement and national mobilization in the 20th century, historical trauma, politics of memory, and coming to terms with the legacy of the Holocaust in the Baltic states and Europe in general. She has recently held fellowships at Northwestern University, the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena, Yale University, and l’École des hautes études en sciences sociales. She is also co-editor of the CEU Press book series Memory, Heritage and Public History in Central and Eastern Europe.

ORCID logo https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0578-971X

Lithuanian Institute of History

Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały, No. 21 (2025), Pages: 56-69

Submission Date: 2025-07-28
Acceptance Date: 2025-12-27

Publication Date: 2025-12-27

DOI logo https://doi.org/10.32927/zzsim.1131

Abstract

Jan Tomasz Gross’s book Sąsiedzi, published twenty-five years ago, provoked a significant debate on the Holocaust in Poland, with political fallout in Poland and throughout Central and Eastern Europe. This article examines similar debates over the Holocaust in Lithuania, provoked by the popular publications of Rūta Vanagaitė and Silvia Foti. Coming from outside academia, the non-fiction works of these authors have played an important role in bridging the gap between academic historical research and public reckoning with the past by squarely addressing the dark legacy of local collaboration with the Nazi administration, the participation of „ordinary” Lithuanians in genocide, and the plunder of Jewish property, along with the complex biographies of certain leaders of the anti-Soviet resistance.

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Stasiulis, S., & Davoliūtė, V. (2025). Neighbors look to Neighbors. Debates over the Holocaust in Lithuania. Zagłada Żydów. Studia I Materiały, (21), 56–69. https://doi.org/10.32927/zzsim.1131

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                            View No. 21 (2025)

No. 21 (2025)

ISSN:
1895-247X
eISSN:
2657-3571

Data publikacji:
2025-12-27

Dział: NEIGHBORS after 25 years