Memorialization, Historical Justice, and Jewish Property in post-Holocaust Lithuania

• In Event: Perspectives on Holocaust Heritage

Abstract

Our research among Lithuanian Jewish communities illustrates that families of Holocaust survivors and victims remember family property and things as integral part of the Holocaust. However, their memories do not directly resonate with state initiatives that implement the Terezin declaration to commemorate Jewish victims and restore justice via restitution of Jewish property.

Scholars advance ideas that proper memorialisation and “moral remembrance” after the Holocaust can ‘transform and direct nationalist realities in post-conflict societies toward a non-violent course, simultaneously placing them on a safe path to a bright democratic future’ (David 2020). This presentation will explore interconnections between national initiatives to honor the memory of the Holocaust victims and restore justice through restitution of Jewish property and local articulations of history and justice by Lithuania’s Jewish communities in terms of moral materialities. Taking property and things as a new lens into the Holocaust, we argue that memorialisation and “moral remembrance” advanced by the Lithuanian government following international organizations only partially integrate local Jewish community’s moral visions of the past and the present. Moreover, memorialization through restitution of property unintentionally creates boundaries between Lithuanians and Jews that local Jewish communities continuously unmake in their memories of the Holocaust property and things and narratives of post-conflict coexistence and integration into a Lithuanian society.

Short Bio

Dovilė Budrytė is Professor of Political Science at Georgia Gwinnett College in Atlanta and a member of EUROPAST project at Vilnius university. She is current President of the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies (AABS). She has published on memory politics, gender and war and minorities in the Baltic states. Website: www.budrytedovile.com. The project is pursued together with Neringa Klumbyte from Miami University in Ohio.

Author

• Dovilė Budrytė, Georgia Gwinnett College