The True Face of Lithuania |
On August 16, 1941, Į laisvę published a feature titled “Grąžinkim garbę Senamiesčiui” — “Let us restore honor to the Old Town.” It was not a German paper translated for local use. It was a Lithuanian-language newspaper, published by Lithuanians, edited by Lithuanians, for Lithuanians. Contemporary research identifies Į laisvę as a publication of the Lithuanian Activist Front, produced in Kaunas by Lithuanian propagandists and editors. The first issue appeared on June 24, 1941, before the Germans had entered Kaunas. This page matters precisely because it shows what Lithuanian society was saying to itself in Lithuanian, in its own voice, at the very moment Lithuanian Jewry was being murdered.
The article’s message is unmistakable. Kaunas Old Town, it says, had been degraded, dirtied, and dishonored by Jews. Now, with Jews gone, it could finally breathe again, be cleaned again, become properly Lithuanian again. The piece does not read like panic. It reads like relief. It does not read like horror. It reads like civic renewal. A society does not publish that kind of article in the language of deodorizing, beautifying, and moral restoration unless the disappearance of Jews is already being normalized as a public good.
While Į laisvę was telling its readers that the Old Town could finally breathe again, a Jewish child was choking on its own blood on a Lithuanian street. While the article celebrated the city becoming cleaner, Jewish women were being raped in Lithuanian detention sites. While the editors wrote about restoring honor, a Jewish man who had fought for Lithuanian independence was being beaten to death by the men he had fought beside. The newspaper was not published in ignorance of........