J’Accuse! filmmaker urges ‘Honesty’ urged on Lithuania
Some 220,000 Jews, 96 per cent of Lithuanian Jewry, perished in the Holocaust, many at the hands of Lithuanians.
“Lithuania, let’s have an honest conversation.” That line – from J’Accuse!, UK filmmaker Michael Kretzmer’s searing documentary about a World War II Lithuanian militia figure’s role in anti-Jewish atrocities – was emphasised by US activist Grant Gochin during a panel discussion after a Melbourne screening at Classic Cinemas last Sunday.
J’Accuse! has been screened in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth.
Some 220,000 Jews, 96 per cent of Lithuanian Jewry, perished in the Holocaust, many at the hands of Lithuanians.
Visiting Australia, Gochin and Kretzmer, who have Lithuanian Jewish forebears, were joined by Silvia Foti, a US journalist who discovered her Lithuanian grandfather Jonas Noreika was a Nazi collaborator involved in wartime atrocities against Jews, and wrote a book about him.
In Lithuania, Noreika, executed by the Soviets in 1947, is featured on plaques, has had streets and a school named after him, and was commemorated with a Lithuanian presidential commendation in 1997.
Emphasising many Lithuanians were not collaborators, Gochin, who launched lawsuits against Lithuania over public memorials lauding figures who also took part in the slaughter of Jews, said his grandparents were among those murdered by Noreika’s followers.
Gochin condemned “the vicious cruelty that they displayed towards our family, the relish and the zeal that they exercised”.
Expressing admiration for Australian Jews, Kretzmer exclaimed, “I really believe Australia could be the resistance movement that we’re trying to create.”
Foti said if Lithuania fully admitted its Holocaust complicity, a process of national healing could begin. She described the harrowing experience of exposing the truth about Noreika and how it frayed ties within her family, the US Lithuanian community and Lithuania.
“I do believe in God and that the hand of God has been helping me all the way through in writing this story.”
Communal figure Danny Lamm, whose wife Rolene is of Lithuanian Jewish descent, thanked Jewish schools participating in an education project, J’Accuse!
“What’s important is at least to teach our children,” he said.
Gochin noted Lithuania’s embassy failed to send representatives to J’Accuse! screenings.
Contacted by The AJN, Lithuania’s ambassador Darius Degutis stated he could not attend the Sydney event “due to working commitments” and pointed to a government memorandum which states, “We dare to admit that Lithuanians also collaborated with the Nazis in the atrocities of the Holocaust.”
However, the embassy did not respond directly to The AJN on whether it regards Noreika as a Nazi collaborator.
Add your name to a petition from the Commission on Nazi Monument Removals in Lithuania, supported by the makers of the J’Accuse! documentary.
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