crimes committed by totalitarian regimes - Ministrstvo za pravosodje

Crimes committed by totalitarian regimes
Emanuelis Zingeris
Transition from the “Gulag Empire” to the Western
civilisation – issues of remembrance and education
In Eastern Europe, knowledge about repressions is as incidental as it is in Western Europe. Despite
institutions set up in a wish to learn what happened during the Soviet occupation, information hardly
finds its way into a European routine. The tragedy lies not only in the reluctance of Western Europe
to learn about the Soviet regime crimes, but also in the fact that while fighting for its welfare, Western
Europe finds little space for historical and humanitarian issues. Besides, as time flies, nostalgia for
“their youth without problems” cloaks the memory of middle-aged and aged people, when half a litre
of milk cost 13 kopecks and you need not care for your life as others did it for you under the socialist
dictatorship. The legacy of millions of victims of Communism is still waiting for artistic personification,
for its Spielberg, Andrzej Wajda, for their Schindler’s List. A young man from Central Europe feels that
Communism wronged his parents and therefore he is a second-grade European. When he walks along
the streets of London, Paris and Brussels, he does not know who is to blame. New and old EU members
are becoming increasingly more similar, but Eastern European people subconsciously continue to feel
the five-decade long injustice and particular humiliation they experienced. The approach of Central and
Western Europeans to racism and xenophobia might be the same.
In an effort to complement the Soviet and Nazi occupation experience which has already found
its way to educational programmes, the International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes
of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania has established over 40 Tolerance Centres
in secondary schools so they help the children realise the extent of the communist crimes through
learning the fates of individual persons. This includes learning about the crimes committed by the
Nazi occupation in specific towns. Certainly, the students are reminded of this during the official state
days as well. For instance, Lithuania commemorates the Black Ribbon Day on 23 August when the
Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact was signed. The Genocide Centre established in Lithuania hosts a number
of extensive programmes on 13 June. The Centre has also established a KGB Museum with what were
formerly torture cells, which are now very popular with visitors. The Grūtas Park in Druskininkai,
which holds the idolatry sculptures of Lenin, Stalin and others, provides an hour or two of merriment
for thousands of visitors. There is a canteen in the Park, where visitors may enjoy the meals distributed
in small portions into Soviet plates made of aluminium, and Soviet sausages, which may evoke a variety
of emotions starting with contempt and finishing with nostalgia. This sculpture museum is mainly
sarcastic in tone, though. It does not create that sense of menace which was at heart of human existence
in the USSR, where everyone were ready to hear a knock on the door at any moment and expect the
fatal meeting with their “friends” from the security force.
Unfortunately, Lithuania has no all-inclusive Anne Frank diary of Soviet times. But it does exist,
in decay among thousands of archives: in Bucharest, Prague or Vilnius. For this history to reach the
level of perception by the entire EU, we have to set up the EU Foundation to investigate, and raise
awareness about, the crimes committed by the totalitarian regimes as well as report on and personify
the lives of the people who suffered.
Here, I remember my classmate Ms Kristina Žiurkevičiūtė at the Atheism Class (or the exercise on
religion denial), who boldly stood up to say: “My granny and I go to church on Sundays.” The teacher
dressed up in sportswear from the German Democratic Republic cried out: “Kristina, please sit down,
for nobody asked you.” Actually, all children were secret churchgoers and Kristina had better merely
kept quiet and lied in the way all others did as they were taught. Instead, Kristina remained standing
and asked to make a record in a large red book that she was going to church on Sundays together with
her grandmother, since her parents were sent into exile. This happened in 1964, quite a “relaxed time”:
the bas-relief of Vladimir Lenin above the ‘Atheism/Lying teacher’ was shining with traces of the
sponge thrown by the pupils. As for me, I was in a better position as a Jew, since nobody would make
enquiries about my religious loyalty. So, Kristina was standing there alone insisting: “Please write in
your book that I am a churchgoer.” Then, the teacher turned to the audience of pupils, mostly children
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