the killing of Jews, who also fought as partisans, and who have enjoyed a long history as known and named heroes, an issue not unique to Lithuania. Exposing their wartime crimes and reversing their hero status is not an easy task for those who manage museums. The Forts can help fill in important gaps, including on whether the Lithuanian perpetrators were from Kaunas or other cities, how many there were, their motive for killing Jews, and how the local population reacted to the massacres. Sites play an important role in helping societies broach difficult subjects such as these, and work against the temptation to distort this history.
“The silences and absences of crucial information for visitors mean that, while visitors can learn that something terrible happened here, they lack the full picture. Without this, they cannot fully learn from it,” Project Chair Dr. Gilly Carr said.
Taking a realistic approach to safeguarding history
Holocaust sites are crucial to reversing the trend of rehabilitation and Holocaust distortion. Dealing openly and accurately with this difficult past is not an impossible task. The Safeguarding Sites team emphasizes taking a pragmatic and realistic approach to addressing silences and lack of information. Even seemingly small changes can make a big difference.
The team has, for example, recommended the development of a Holocaust heritage trail for Kaunas, linking all nearby sites in chronological order to help visitors get a fuller picture of this history. Other recommendations involve tackling the silences in forthcoming exhibitions at the Ninth Forth, providing visitors and the local community with greater context on how the Holocaust unfolded in Lithuania. Such steps turn traces of the past into an important foundation for deeper and more honest engagement with history.
Learning from the silences
Each visit provides invaluable input for the forthcoming Safeguarding Sites charter. “All sites face challenges. Our aim is to produce a truly holistic heritage charter for Holocaust sites to help them address these,” Dr. Carr explained. “And this means becoming familiar with sites with a wide range of challenges, and in different geographical and political areas. It’s like weaving a huge tapestry. Each visit and each conversation we have with site managers, local tour guides, political representatives, and communities provides us with another colorful thread.”
The Lithuania visit signaled to the team that their draft heritage charter should include guidance on addressing gaps and silences. It was, they came to realize, an issue they had come across before on a previous site visit. “Visiting one site improves our understanding of other sites,” Dr. Carr said.
It also sharpened their understanding of the role sites will play in the future in countering distortion and safeguarding the record of the Holocaust and the genocide of the Roma. “In the future,” Dr. Carr said, “when we can no longer depend on survivors to fill in the gaps, sites will bear a special responsibility to say what is left unsaid. Our duty today, as the guardians of these sites for our generation, is to make sure they are prepared to do so.”