Are you of Lithuanian extraction, Foxy?

Perhaps bearing the weight of a somewhat Buddhist view I tend to stay away from personal statements.
I tend to take people upon their merits while lightly balancing their foibles against what I can discover of their innate decency.

I cannot accept strident statements from individuals declaiming that this group sub-set or faction was innocent of blame – guilty of mayhem – or just enjoyed stirring the pot because they were there.
The world is no longer black and white but has become a wash of grey interspersed with momentary flashes of colour.

We all need to remain alert for those flashes of colour.
We can all look inwards and discover our own faults – so why not accept that and act upon that self-knowledge?

Which leads me back to addressing my belief about this thread -
Was the hate a Pan-European event?

It was no single event –
It is constant; a continuum caused by the human condition and the refusal of the majority to accept their responsibility to others.

The hate continues and is caused by some basal immaturity within each of us – difficult to control but manageable if we exercise our will.

Whether we are nothing more than ‘lemmings’ – or whether we simply ’inhabit the corrosive littoral zone of habit’ – or whether we are just too plain stupid to get past our primate ancestry doesn’t matter overmuch.

But anyway – it all continues as expressed above.
Our little lives are so stratified that we tend to believe the first things we read – about in the same way we’d bond with the first team that would rescue us from a situation of danger.
That is the way of the world and most cannot escape that – probably because most are too poorly equipped even to begin the first stages of reason.

Go and look in your mirror. You might discover some truth about yourself there.

Foxy,

Again I am sorry if I am hurting your feelings but facts are facts.

POPULATION DECLINE

Lithuania may have celebrated its 1,000th anniversary but, if current demographic trends continue, it will not be around to celebrate its 1,100th. The birth rate is well below replacement level. The total population is shrinking because of an excess of deaths over births. As the population continues to age the gap between deaths and births will widen.

In addition there is significant net immigration. This exacerbates the population decline.

Of course a beautiful and fertile country like Lithuania will not remain empty. Eventually people from other countries will move in. In effect people from high birth rate countries, perhaps from North Africa, the Middle-East, or India, will colonise the territory that is currently called Lithuania.

This sort of thing has happened before and it will happen again. Countries and cultures are not immortal.

JEW HATRED

I grew up in South Africa. I would never deny that racism was an important element of the culture of White South Africa. That does not mean that every White South African was a racist. But racism was one of the defining characteristics of the culture as a whole.

I also grew up among Jews who traced their origins to Lithuania. I heard many eye-witness accounts of how contempt for Jews was part of the warp and weft of pre-World War 2 Lithuanian culture.

When I visited Yad Vashem I learned that the majority of Lithuanian Jews were murdered by Lithuanians; not by Germans.

I am not accusing you of being a Jew Hater Foxy. And I hope you would not accuse me of being a racist. But the facts about pre-World War 2 Lithuanian culture are no more in doubt than the facts about Apartheid era White culture in South Africa.

First a correction.

Lithuania suffers net e-migration not im-migration.

This brings me to a comment about Australian and European culture.

Living cultures are not static. They are a constantly evolving LANDSCAPE. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Australia. Most of us dwell mainly in one part of the landscape; but we tend to move freely into adjacent valleys. Sometimes we vacation on distant hills of the Australian cultural landscape.

This broad ever changing cultural landscape is one of the factors that makes Australia such a vibrant society.

We talk about mutli-culturalism but that does not really describe Australia. Almost every individual Australian is multi-cultural in the sense of being a member of more than one culture.

The cultures of the European nations seems to me to be more brittle; less able to change and renew themselves. Perhaps in Europe individual national cultures will be subsumed into a larger pan-European culture. As is the case in Australia, much of the renewal and dynamism of any pan-European culture will be driven by folk who trace their ancestry to distant lands.

Perhaps we shall eventually see the emergence of a pan-Mediterranean culture that encompasses Europe, North Africa and the Middle-East.

What form this culture will take, assuming it emerges, I cannot say. Hopefully it will be less xenophobic than the European cultures of the recent past. And hopefully organised religion will play a lesser role

Dear Steven,

Lithuanians for 2,000 have been constantly attcked,
invaded, occupied by neighbouring tribes, distant
invaders, and in the last few centuries - neighbouring
nations. The weaker Lithuanian tribes have been
absorbed into neighbouring countries or as in the case
of the Letts through the early Germanic invasions have
become a separate entity. The remaining five tribes
who were the strongest, nationalistic, and stubborn
have survived to this day. And it is in the nature
of these tribes never to give up no matter what the
odds. But they absorb people from neighbouring countries
who are prepared to adapt to their conditions.

It will be interesting to see what the future brings.

On the Jewish issue Steven, as I wrote in my earlier post -
one camp may call for uncompromising indictment of all
deemed guilty, while another, if not denying the guilt,
may argue extenuating circumstances, ranging from
temporary insanity through provocation.

A historian can establish that an act took place on a
certain day, but this, by historical standards
constitutes only chronology, or, as East Europeans call it,
"factologija," (factology). The moment the historian begins
to look critically at motivation, circumstances, context,
or any other such considerations, it becomes unacceptable for
one or another of the parties involved.

Survivors and victims' relatives are usually more intersted in
condemnation and punishment than in explanation.

Explanations seem tantamount to sympathizing and excusing.
And as I said before - the determination to write indictments
in mass killings, leads all too easily onto the questionable
practice of stereotyping nations.

I can understand Jews and other people wanting the world
to remember what the Nazis and their collaborators did.
But I fail to see why one tragedy gets ignored while
another is constantly harped on. Just look at the mass media.
You're guaranteed to see lots of special about Hitler and
the Nazis, but rarely can you watch anything critical of
communism's evils.

Why?

Was Hitler more evil than Stalin? Or was Stalin more
evil than Hitler?

cont'd

Steven, on a more positive side:

There is a new International Commission for
Research on Nazi and Soviet Genocide.

Vilnius University has established the
Vilnius Yiddish Institute, "the first Yiddish
center of higher learning to be established in
post-Holocaust Eastern Europe.

At the Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas,
the "Sugihara Center" sponsors research and
cultural activities. The young filmmaker Saulius
Berzinis has released a new documentary Sunset in
Lithuania based on many hours of interviews with
eye witnesses and survivors. Educators and journalists
are getting involved in projects raising awareness
and fostering tolerance. For young people, preparations
are underway for a nationwide program of Holocaust
education in schools.

At the University of Vilnius the Center for Stateless
Cultures has been established under the direction of
Dovid Katz. Professor Katz is involved in collecting
and analyzing remnants of Yiddish language and culture
in Lithuania and Belarus and teaching Yiddish and Judaic
studies at the University of Vilnius.

I can't list everything here due to the word limit -
but all these are welcome trends indicative of a spirit
on all sides to come together and establish a mutually
productive dialog.