Lithuania has their own Bandera
The final step refuses to accept that two seemingly contradictory truths can coexist: Noreika bravely fought against the Communists and shamefully participated in killing Jews.
lmao in what possible way could those be contradictory?
Weird how all these anti-communists just happen to also be fascist butchers
anti-semitism in my reactionary anti-communism it's more likely than you think
Love blaming the Soviets for the Lithuanians "forgetting" that they rounded up and killed Jews.
That monster, Joseph Stalin, used his big spoon to scoop the memories out of our brains.
Lithuania is like many other countries that spent 50 years under Soviet occupation. During this time, there was a deep freeze on the truth: Lithuanians were only allowed to talk about how many Soviet citizens were killed during World War II. References to Jewish victims were scrubbed away by the occupiers. I would like to think that if Lithuania had been a free and independent nation after World War II, it might have acknowledged its own role in the Holocaust
bruh
yes I'm sure the nazi collaborators would have taken a less anti-semitic line than the people who liberated Auschwitz
It's as if considering Jews to be their own nationality apart from their German/Polish/Soviet citizenship might be a little... antisemitic?
Suddenly, I no longer had any idea who my grandfather was, what Lithuania was, and how my own story fit in. How could I reconcile two realities? Was Jonas Noreika a monster who slaughtered thousands of Jews or a hero who fought to save his country from the Communists? Those questions began a journey that led me to understand the power of the politics of memory and the importance of getting the recounting right, even at great personal cost. I concluded that my grandfather was a man of paradoxes, just as Lithuania — a country caught between the Nazi and Communist occupations during World War II, then trapped behind the Iron Curtain for the next 50 years — is full of contradictions.
unironically doing "Lithuania is a land of contrasts" but to excuse the nazis
So in other words, you won’t move on
Suddenly, I no longer had any idea who my grandfather was, what Lithuania was, and how my own story fit in. How could I reconcile two realities? Was Jonas Noreika a monster who slaughtered thousands of Jews or a hero who fought to save his country from the Communists?
Feel like one of these is worst than the other if you claim to not be a fascist
Pretty much every country in Europe is the same. All of them were totally on board with "the crusade" until the train derailed and suddenly they all had belonged to La Resistance all along.
Looked around and this got posted on /r/europe when it was published, comments as bad as you'd expect
Par for the :reddit-logo: course over there. This whole Ukriane bit has been en eye opener for me on Europe.
- My grandfather fought the communists
- my grandfather was a nazi
you repeat yourself
The only Lithuanian people I've ever known were unabashed Nazis, straight up 4chan caricatures in real life, so this doesn't surprise me.
In honor of this brave author, who has apparently never read a book, I am going to also not read this dogshit article.
Comments here do the article justice. Posted it because Lithuanian president seems to not give a fuck qbout nuclear Armageddon and has a hard on for article 5. So I wondered if they have a hard on about Nazis too. Yadda yadda Lithuanian Bandera.
Yeah. Appreciate the post for the same reasons. But the excerpts in the comments here were more than enough to dissuade me from actually reading the whole thing and getting myself all riled up on a Friday night. I don’t understand how you could be interested enough in history to write an article like this but also be so clueless about it as to think the Nazis and anti communists in Eastern Europe were not the same people.
It's always the fucking Americans (and Canadians) whose families fled after WWII for... reasons.
Ma'am, by executing your grandfather and those like him, the USSR was trying to bring your nasty little country a bit closer to moral redemption. Show some gratitude.