"No More Lies. My Grandfather Was a Nazi" Topic

"When I was growing up in Chicago during the Cold War, my parents taught me to revere my Lithuanian heritage. We sang Lithuanian songs and recited Lithuanian poems; after Lithuanian school on Saturdays, I would eat Lithuanian-style potato pancakes.

My grandfather, Jonas Noreika, was a particularly important part of my family story: He was the mastermind of a 1945-1946 revolt against the Soviet Union, and was executed. A picture of him in his military uniform hung in our living room. Today, he is a hero not just in my family. He has streets, plaques and a school named after him. He was awarded the Cross of the Vytis, Lithuania's highest posthumous honor…"
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Amicalement
Armand

What a horrible thing to find out, especially when you were raised to consider your grandfather a hero.

One of my grad students a number of years back told me about her Dad, who had moved to Canada after the war; she said that during WWII he had "fought against the Nazis in the Slovak Home Guard". That twigged a memory so I looked it up – there certainly was a Slovak Home Guard but they didn't fight the Nazis, they were very loyal Nazi allies

I can imagine how someone who moved to a small town in Ontario might not want to say he fought with the Nazis might embellish the story a bit when his little girl asked what he did during the war – needless to say I did not correct her story

Knowing that Tango is from Argentina, I half-expected this to be a story about his grandfather, who may have been one of the many Nazis who fled there after the war.

Doesn't everyone have skeletons in their closet?

The son is not responsible for his father. Better a bitter truth than a sweet lie.

This is a difficult situation for anyone to be in. Pogroms were common in Eastern Europe prior to the war. Did he know that when the Jews were being rounded up they were going to what would become the Holocaust? Did he think it was another Pogrom and they were to be shipped somewhere else to live?

I've read a bit about the Russo-Polish war between the Soviets-Poles-Ukrainians-Lithuanians-etc. Pogroms, displacing civilians, and massacres were common all around as each group vied to get various ethnicities out of areas recently conquered by each group.

He's obviously considered a hero back home and loved his freedom and his country enough to die for it.

If it was my ancestor I would follow Cromwell's advice and write the story 'warts and all'. I understand that we all have the capacity of good and evil within us.

Grim, but no-one knows how they would've acted in the same situation.

"The son is not responsible for his father.", or ancestors, theoretically, though even that olde maxim is now being turned on its head of late.

My good friend… not needed nazi ancestors here… I lived in a Nazi country…. Peronismo is that….

Fortunately… some times changes…

Amicalement
Armand

I think that it took a lot of courage to stand up to the national myth and the backlash that her work caused.

I agree that the sins of the parents do not belong to the children but should be acknowledged.

If he had chosen to side with the communists and they won would he have been rounding up the loyal Lithuanians for transfer to gulags? Or if he rejected both options would he have been shipped off himself? A Hobbesian choice to be sure

What would happen to the Lithuanians (to the whole people) if the Nazis won? The Lithuanians would be gone. At all.
What happened to the Lithuanians when the Soviets won? Many have suffered. But they still had their own national republic, their own science, their own culture, their own language, etc.
It seems to me that the difference is significant.
So what to call the one who fought for the destruction of his own people? And which choice was preferable?

Cuprum2. I don't know, where you get your argument. Both sides wanted the Lithuanian nation destroyed. National socialism would have tried to germanize the country, victims have and would have been Jews and the "Slavic" people. The sowjet Union introduced communism, victims were burgers and peasants. I don't think you can make a hierarchy what was/would be worse. But more Lithuanians fought for Germany than for the Sowjet Union.

Destroy the Lithuanian people? The communists had strange methods of exterminating the people:

The number of Lithuanians grew continuously in the USSR: link

Apparently, the Academy of Sciences of the Lithuanian USSR was founded by the communists to destroy Lithuanian science: link

What Lithuania entered the Soviet Union with and what it came out with: education and culture: link

The reliability of these numbers is easy to verify.

So there is no talk of any destruction of the people by the communists. But yes, this does not negate the very fact of occupation and repression against dissidents.

And what could the Nazis offer the Lithuanians? The role of executioners and guards in death camps?

Yes, it really was foolish of the Lithuanians not to understand how great things would be under the Soviets.

After all the Soviets only wanted to; kill their leaders, destroy their religion, seize all private property, and force the people to work for the greater good.

Why do you think people fought so hard against the Communists?

Do I understand correctly that if the Nazis won, the Lithuanians would have lived in a beautiful Nazi paradise?
Then they had only two alternatives. And I see which one you sympathize more)))

Did he think it was another Pogrom and they were to be shipped somewhere else to live?

Pogroms weren't polite invitations to move elsewhere. They were violent, murderous acts of ethnic cleansing in which hundreds of thousands died over the years (Bogdan Hmnelnitsky hero of the Ukraine, probably managed 100,000 Jews on his own).

The Shoah was a pogrom on a massive scale and better organised than others, but the guiding principle was the same. So no excuse for the grandfather in the original article if he thought it was a pogrom.

Lithuania was the area than managed to exterminate the highest percentage of its Jewish population. The invading Germans may have kicked it off but the Lithuanians were enthusiastic self starters and managed to surpass their mentors to achieve a 95% extermination rate of Lithuanian Jews.

Not all Lithuanians were involved in the murderous spree and the ones who shielded, hid and saved Jews deserve remembrance and praise.
The remainder deserve to be remembered for what they did too.

Agree!….

Amicalement
Armand

Thanks Armand.
I should have said – interesting article – good find. Thanks for posting.

A votre service mon cher ami! (smile)

Amicalement
Armand

National socialism would have tried to germanize the country, victims have and would have been Jews and the "Slavic" people.

Not quite.

The Nazi plan was to "depopulate" Lithuania by 85%. That is to say that 85% of the population had to "go".

This depopulation plan was about the same as in Poland. How was this to be achieved? Let us refer to Hitler's own words:

"I have issued a command – and I will have everyone who utters even a single word of criticism shot – that the aim of war lies not in reaching particular lines but in the physical annihilation of the enemy. Thus, so far only in the east, I have put my Death's Head formations at the ready with the command to send man, woman and child of Polish descent and language to their deaths, pitilessly and remorsely …. Poland will be depopulated and settled with Germans."

The plan for Lithuania was notably worse than for Estonia and Latvia, which were only to be depopulated to about 50%.

The Soviets, however we might wish to criticize, did not have any such plan for the people of Lithuania. As brutal as the Soviet regime might have been, it sought to subjugate and rule over populations, not to exterminate them.

The Nazis had a different approach. They wanted empty space in the east for their uber-race to expand into. And that meant that there had to be no existing population there.

By helping the Nazis the Lithuanians were fighting for their own extinction. Not that they all knew this. In many cases I expect they were just filled with enough anger at their more ancient enemies that they would overlook all the indicators of who they were allying with. In other cases they may have knowingly made their deals with the devil to survive just a bit longer. Almost like the Sonderkommandos in the death camps, but on a larger scale.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

youtu.be/iMhhvWcPJLg

As brutal as the Soviet regime might have been, it sought to subjugate and rule over populations, not to exterminate them

I'm sure the Ukrainians agree with that statement

Ukrainians Khrushchev and Brezhnev?