Dealing with the Family Past

Ancestors of Holocaust Perpetrators in Lithuania

Authors

  • Rasa Baločkaitė Vytautas Magnus University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.23777/SN.0121/ART_RBAL01

Keywords:

Holocaust, Ancestors of Holocaust perpetrators, Lithuania, Memory, Soviet

Abstract

This article deals with the question of how the (grand)children of local Nazi collaborators in Lithuania have dealt with their family histories and with their (grand)parents’ crimes. On the basis of archival materials and interviews, it illuminates how Holocaust perpetrators were convicted, how families were affected by these convictions, and how their lives evolved afterwards, how families coped with uncertainties or family secrets and developed mecha- nisms of denial or family mythologies. Furthermore, the article illuminates developments after 1990 – the revision of Soviet sentences, processes of rehabilitation and de-rehabilita- tion, the opening of archives, and the clash between imagined and documented realities.

Author Biography

  • Rasa Baločkaitė, Vytautas Magnus University

    Rasa Baločkaitė is Associate Professor of Sociology at Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania. Her scholarly interests include Soviet and post-Soviet studies. She was a Fulbright scholar at UC Berkeley in 2011 and a visiting fellow at the Centre for Contem- porary History in Potsdam in 2013. Rasa Baločkaitė has published in leading journals such as Problems of Post Communism, Language Policy, and European History Quarterly. She has also written extensively on traumatic and post-traumatic experiences for Lithuanian media.

Downloads

Published

2021-06-07

Issue

Vol. 8 No. 1 (2021): S:I.M.O.N. SHOAH: INTERVENTION. METHODS. DOCUMENTATION.

Section

ARTICLES

License

S:I.M.O.N. operates under the Creative Commons Licence CC-BY-NC-ND (Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives). This allows for the reproduction of all articles, free of charge, for non-commercial use, and with appropriate citation information. Authors publishing with S:I.M.O.N. should accept these as the terms of publication. The copyright of all articles remains with the author of the article. The copyright of the layout and design of articles published in S:I.M.O.N. remains with S:I.M.O.N. and may not be used in any other publications.

How to Cite

“Dealing With the Family Past: Ancestors of Holocaust Perpetrators in Lithuania”. 2021. S: I.M.O.N. Shoah: Intervention. Methods. Documentation. 8 (1): 63-85. https://doi.org/10.23777/SN.0121/ART_RBAL01.