VILNIUS - Most Lithuanians want to know the whole truth about the periods of Nazi and Soviet occupation. Yet many are not interested in the persecution of elderly criminals associated with both totalitarian regimes. This is the picture of public opinion revealed in a recent poll by the research company Vilmorus.
The International Commission for the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania commissioned the research, which was conducted in September and presented by Ronaldas Racinskas, executive director of the commission, on Oct. 16.
As many as 77 percent of respondents said that educational institutions should present both the positive and negative facts of Lithuanian history. Very few, 1.6 percent, said that only heroic and positive facts should be given.
But 46.8 percent said it was not worth investigating crimes after so many years, while 40.6 percent said both Nazi and Soviet crimes should be investigated.
Only 1.7 percent said only Nazi crimes should be investigated, and 2.3 percent said only Soviet crimes should be investigated. The commission promotes the idea that bringing criminals of both totalitarian regimes to justice is necessary for any reconciliation to take place.
"The answers given tended to depend on age and social status. The rich and the elderly are much more in favor of investigating genocidal crimes than the young and the poor," Racinskas said.
Understandably, most respondents do not trust historical research into wartime crimes that was done during the Soviet occupation. Only 5.2 percent said such historical studies were objective, 42.9 percent described them as unobjective, and 31.9 percent said they were only partially objective.
Racinskas claims the research shows it was "a wise decision to create our international commission," formed by a decree issued by Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus in September 1998. Commission members include historians from Lithuania, the United States, Russia, Germany and Israel.
The Vilmorus research also shows that two-thirds of Lithuanians think an international institution is the best idea to investigate Nazi and Soviet occupations objectively. Just 3.5 percent said foreign experts alone would be enough, while 12.3 percent said Lithuanian historians alone would act in the most objective way.
Racinskas quoted U.S. Congressman Tomas Lantos, a survivor of the Holocaust, who said during a visit to Lithuania that, "Modern society should only be built on the fundamentals of truth, and the truth is often both unpleasant and hard to find. And we have to find in ourselves the courage to say it publicly."
"The commission's work has been highly esteemed abroad," Dalia Kuodute, general director of the Genocide and Resistance Center and a member of the commission, told The Baltic Times. "Stuart Eizenstat, the former U.S. deputy treasury secretary, said that no other Central and Eastern European country has paid as much attention to researching the Holocaust as Lithuania."
Eizenstat is known as the world's champion in successfully demanding compensation from Germany for the victims of Nazi terror.
