Subscribe to Print Edition | Tue., September 02, 2008 Elul 2, 5768 | | Israel Time: 20:30 (EST+7)
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Jakovas Bunka, the last Jewish resident of the Lithuanian town of Plunge (Plungyan in Yiddish.) (Reuven Malone)
Last update - 09:12 16/09/2007
Vilnius institute teaches Yiddish, Jewish culture and history
By Yoav Stern, Haaretz Correspondent
Tags: Nazis, Lithuania

The sign above the door of the Vilnius University building was surprising. "Vilner Yiddisher Institute" was written in Hebrew letters, with an English translation of the Yiddish. Outside was a sign in Lithuanian explaining that this was the home of the Vilnius Yiddish Institute, which every summer draws students from around the world, and from Lithuania itself, for an intensive course in the Yiddish language and to learn about Eastern Europe's Jewish culture.

Over 90 percent of Lithuania's estimated pre-World War II Jewish population of 240,000 died in the Holocaust. In most of the country's villages and smaller cities, the executions were performed by Lithuanian partisans, who took advantage of the Soviet withdrawal in the face of the Nazi occupation in order to avenge those who were perceived as Russia's allies. The individuals who are lionized by the Lithuanian public as anti-Soviet freedom fighters in 1941 are seen as despicable murderers and Nazi collaborators by the descendants of the country's Jews.

Assistant Director of the institute Ruta Puisyte, 32, researched the behavior of Lithuanians toward the country's Jews as part of her graduate studies. Puisyte, who grew up in a town near the western Lithuania city of Klaipeda, wrote a very critical study of the crimes perpetrated by Lithuanians on their Jewish neighbors.
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Puisyte's thesis examiners did not believe that the incidents she described actually took place.

"It's difficult to believe that the same people who fought to liberate Lithuania from the Soviets, using the same weapons, uniform and flag, viciously killed their Jewish neighbors ... but they were the same as us. It wasn't in the Stone Age," Puisyte told a visiting reporter at VVI.

During her studies, Puisyte "devoured" everything written in English on the subject that had found its way to the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum. "There was no one I could talk to about the subject. It consoled me to find more material on the topic, despite the fact that my English wasn't very good," she related.

Puisyte's interest in the fate of the Jews began when she heard her parents using a Lithuanian slang term for 'Jew-killer.' Her father explained that they had killed innocent people, but in the Soviet education system in which she studied they were mentioned as having operated against "Soviet citizens," but not against Jews.

Puisyte's parents once avoided telling friends and neighbors about the nature of their daughter's work, but today the atmosphere in Lithuania is more comfortable. "My friends support me," she says, but also notes that there are still some signs of classic anti-Semitism: "One woman told me once that she was sorry about what happened but if all the Jews still lived here today they would have become so dominant that we would be their servants," Puisyte said.

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  1.   vilnius institute 07:59  |  sweis Melbourne 16/09/07
  2.   Most Lithuanian Jews are not Communists 08:20  |  Johnny Weintraub 16/09/07
  3.   Ruta, as a Jew, I thank you very, very much for your efforts in 09:43  |  Dani Harel 16/09/07
  4.   Communism as punishment 10:00  |  Logic 16/09/07
  5.   The Vilner Yiddisher Institut (the Jewish Istitute of Vilna) is 10:32  |  Avi Moskowitz 16/09/07
  6.   I would like to confirm Johny Weintraubs Post 14:10  |  Alan 16/09/07
  7.   It is so wonderful in Lithuania+Poland that... 14:20  |  Alan 16/09/07
  8.   Yiddish language 17:05  |  Nahum Zaidel 16/09/07
  9.   Land of the Dead 19:07  |  Black Cat 16/09/07
  10.   Nahum Zaidel, you can hear Yiddish daily at 12.00 on Radio Reka. 19:47  |  Dina 16/09/07
  11.   Nahum Zaidel (Post No. 8) 23:13  |  Johnny Weintraub 16/09/07
  12.   More Yiddish radio 00:35  |  jordan 17/09/07
  13.   Yiddish news 00:39  |  Jordan 17/09/07
  14.   plungyan 03:28  |  brando 17/09/07
  15.   They held us all responsible 11:33  |  sweis Melbourne 17/09/07
  16.   To brando from sydney 20:25  |  Bunka 02/09/08
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