Publisher recalls books by Lithuanian writer who triggered Holocaust debate
Publisher recalls books by Lithuanian writer who triggered Holocaust debate
One of the oldest publishing houses in independent Lithuania withdrew the books of a best-selling author over her critique of a nationalist who is accused of complicity in Holocaust-related crimes.
The recall of Ruta Vanagaite’s books came a day after she revealed that she is in a relationship with Efraim Zuroff, an Israeli Nazi hunter whom many Lithuanian nationalists despise.
The Alma Littera publishing house on Friday said it began recalling all the books it published by Vanagaite, whose 2016 book Our People, which is about the Holocaust, is credited with breaking some of the taboos in Lithuanian society about collaboration during World War II.
Occurring amid an acrimonious debate in Lithuania about the subject and growing nationalism boosted by Russian aggression, the literary scandal illustrates the borders of what is an acceptable criticism of national heroes in Lithuania. It also has pitted advocates of Vanagaite, who complained of Soviet-like censorship against her, and her critics who insisted she provocatively insulted the memory of a great patriot.
The publisher cited in a statement a remark that Vanagaite, 62, made to a journalist about Adolfas Ramanauskas, an anti-Soviet combatant during the war, who admitted to commanding troops that witnesses claim butchered Jews in the ghetto of Druskininkai, 120 km. southwest of Vilnius.
Vanagaite’s controversial statement was not about the Holocaust.
She said her research into Ramanauskas’s death in 1957 suggested that he committed suicide after betraying the names of fellow nationalists to the KGB, which captured Ramanauskas the previous year.
“Ruta Vanagaite’s statements are unacceptable to us and incompatible with the values of the Alma Littera publishing house,” Alma Littera CEO Danguole Viliuniene said.
The previous evening, Vanagaite revealed for the past year she has been the significant other of the Holocaust historian Efraim Zuroff, who is the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s director for Eastern Europe and a well-known Nazi hunter. Lauded by some Lithuanians for exposing Holocaust-era crimes, Zuroff is also hotly detested by others. He has frequently featured in denigrating caricatures of him in mainstream Lithuanian media, including the country’s leading news website, Delfi.
Zuroff and Vanagaite met in 2015 while researching her best-selling book Our People, which they coauthored.
“The journey through the locations of mass murders ended, the book was published, and a year later unexpectedly another journey began. The journey of life together,” Vanagaite said in an interview with Delfi.
Before meeting Zuroff, she added, he “was a longtime enemy of all of Lithuania, hence my enemy as well. However, during the journey through Lithuania, it turned out that this enemy is an intelligent and deep person, a true friend.”
Lithuania’s first leader after communism, Vytautas Landsbergis, on Friday, published an op-ed on Delfi in which he called Vanagaite a “moral scumbag” and “Mrs. Dushanski” – a reference to the Jewish KGB officer Nachman Dushanski, a Holocaust survivor who was involved in Ramanauskas’s capture.
Landsbergis called on them to “go to the forest, reflect and condemn themselves.” (JTA)