| NO SERIOUS DISCUSSION | | A documentary film called “Litvakes. From Vilnius to Jerusalem” (producer “Media team”, author Rūta Sinkevičienė, cameramen Aurimas Račiukaitis and Alvydas Laurinavičius), sponsored by the Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and widely publicised, premiered at the “Skalvija” film theatre to a larger than capacity audience. It was introduced by deputy minister of Foreign Affairs Šarūnas Adomavičius. Known philosopher Leonidas Donskis spoke about the film personalities, about their professional work and achievements. R.Sinkevičienė talked about her meetings with Litvakes in Israel.
The film begins in Vilnius. The audience anticipates seeing some of the Jews of Vilnius.
Passing shots from the film include a kindergarten, the memorial at the mass killing site in Paneriai, an illustration of the Great Synagogue which was torn down by the Soviets, another synagogue, returned to the Jews by independent Lithuania. More monuments: to Tsemach Shabad in Vilnius, Daniel Dolski in Kaunas. Not a single living Jew – only monuments.
We hear the narrator's text, cleverly evading all issues related to the history of Lithuania's Jews during 1940-2008. Even the synagogue was filmed when it was empty. According to the narrator, “the synagogue celebrated its 100th anniversary". How about that? It simply celebrated! On its own! Without any people! One has a sneaking suspicion that there are no living Jews in Vilnius.
Back to the kindergarten. Four and five year-olds light the Saturday candles and sing Jewish songs. The narrator announces that children at the kindergarten are taught Jewish traditions and Hebrew, and that they read the Torah on Fridays. Where is this kindergarten? Who knows? Where are the parents to take pleasure in their children's achievements? Where are the grandmothers and grandfathers? They don't exist - it's as if one was talking about an orphanage.
The narrator says that after the war, two thousand of the nearly 250,000 pre-war Jews survived in Lithuania. Where does that figure – 2,000 – come from?
Next we have an official commemoration of the victims of the Holocaust at the Paneriai memorial. The narrator announces that government representatives and foreign guests honour the memory of the Jews who were annihilated by the Nazis, that government and public organisations organise commemorative events. Where are the Vilnius Jews? Why no mention of the Jewish Community? It doesn't attend commemorations? Or does it not even exist in Lithuania?
The film camera slides across children wearing white kippot - who are they? The narrator is silent. Why no mention that these are the pupils of the Sholom Aleichem Jewish Secondary School? And who are those old people at the monument, holding candles and flowers? Not a word about them from the narrator. Only their families and friends know that they are former ghetto and concentration camp prisoners, former partisans and soldiers who fought against the Nazis and their local collaborators. They always sing the Jewish partisan hymn, which is taken up by the participants, at Paneriai. Perhaps the film group didn't like that? This episode also doesn't show kaddish being spoken. Even in the Soviet period the Jews said kaddish at the gravesite.
In the narrator’s words, the killing of 70,000 Jews at Paneriai is a "Nazi killing". True, the killings were organised by the Nazis, but their local henchmen were in it up to their elbows as well. And they terrified people not only in Lithuania. Of that – not a word.
Having taken care of Vilnius, which has no Jews, the filmmakers take off to Jerusalem, which occupies 85% of the screen time. The narrator explains that after the Second World War, there were two waves of repatriates from Lithuania to Israel: the first in the 1970s, the second in the 1990s. Where did this information come from?
After the Second World War, the Jews repatriated out of Lithuania either in a swift torrent, or via a barely perceptible stream. There were four waves of mass repatriation. Each had its own particularities, which must be researched. The first in 1944-1948; the second during Khruschev’s “thaw” in 1956-1959; the third in 1972-1975; the fourth in 1987-1994.
The third wave (which the filmmakers here call the first) included celebrated people recorded in the film “Litvakes”: writer Yitzhak Meras, cardiologist Elijahu Stupel, and others.
The fourth wave brought the composer and famous jazz pianist Vyacheslav Ganelin, sculptor David Zundelovich, building engineer Moisej Rozenblum, former “Kertuk" rock group founders Semion Tarsh and Elija Tatarski, as well as many other talented and interesting people to Israel. None of them made it into the filmmakers' field of vision.
During the 65 years after the war, many thousands of Jews left Lithuania. The filmmakers chose seven of them – people who had acquired a high education, practical work experience, and a high social status in Lithuania. Why did they throw it all away, and leave for Israel? In their historical homeland each one of them had to adapt to new living conditions, to work while studying Hebrew, to accommodate to another environment, other people, work conditions, etc.
All seven of them respond in approximately the same way: they are patriots of their historical homeland. “We have to be where our people are,” - explains S.Tarsh. E.Tatarski claims: “It's such a great joy to feel that here you're not just renting a room." V.Ganelin has Israel in mind when he says: “You have to live in your own country.”
D.Zundelovich has no complaints against Lithuania, even though a monument to the great sculptor Jacques Lipchitz, which was finished before he left for Israel, stands in his workshop, and not in Druskininkai, where it belongs. D.Zundelovich, like the other film personalities, comes willingly to Lithuania, where he meets up with his friends and colleagues.
M.Rozenblum, son of the legendary engineer Anatolij Rozenblum, does not forget that he and his parents were hidden and saved from the Nazi collaborators by Lithuanian families. Would I.Meras have forgotten that Nazi collaborators killed his family in Lithuania, and that he, an orphan condemned to death, was hidden and saved by a Lithuanian woman, who became his second mother? He says that neither country is a substitute for the other. Thousands of repatriates could put their signature to this. The Jews are a grateful people.
The filmmakers included an interview with Israeli president Shimon Peres, who considers himself a Litvak. As a child he was taken to Eretz Israel from a town not far from Vilnius, and he talks more about the family discussions about Vilnius, than about the city itself. There are no signs in this episode that Sh.Peres even spoke with this film group. No-one asks him anything. There is no interviewer at all - instead, the narrator talks, and it is impossible to discern what kinds of questions the filmmakers had asked the speakers.
The film thus brings to mind many questions for the filmmakers. Why did they ignore representatives from the first wave of post-war repatriation? Were they afraid of hearing the truth about what they had to experience in Lithuania during the Holocaust, and why they left? Why do the filmmakers introduce representatives of only one Israeli social level? Why are there no interviews with women? After all, in Israel they and men have equal rights. Why not a word about the fact that there is an Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel? Why didn't they find out about the “Beit Vilna” organisation?
Cinematographic material could encourage research into the reasons and results of post-war Jewish emigration from Lithuania to the historical homeland; it could provide important historical, demographic, political, and social-psychological information; explain to some degree the relations between Lithuanians and Jews in the latter half of the 20th century; and help to search for ways to improve relations between both nations after the tragedy that separated the Litvakes from the Lithuanians during the Second World War.
Unfortunately, the filmmakers appear not to have been interested in a serious discussion about the Jewish emigration from Lithuania. Perhaps they were given some other task? What? Why did they not give a single present-day Lithuanian Jew the opportunity to speak, and why didn’t they even come near the Lithuanian Jewish Community Centre with their camera? Who was the film “Litvakes. From Vilnius to Jerusalem” made for? Clearly not for the Jews. Not in Lithuania, nor in Israel. Perhaps for those who wish to see Lithuania without Jews?
That has already happened once. How sad.
REVIEWER
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