Watch the Interview with Saulius Sužiedėlis
- kapochunas
- Nov 11
- 1 min read
The interview of Lithuanian historian Saulius Sužiedėlis by Jonathan Brent, Executive Director of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York City, is now available on YouTube. To access a version of the recording without the typical annoying YouTube ads, click the link below, which is hosted by YIVO.
I first met and spoke with Jonathan Brent in New Haven, Connecticut, October 12-13, 2023, at the "Vilnius 700 Symposium" https://macmillan.yale.edu/europe/baltic/vilnius-700-symposium , hosted by Yale's Baltic Studies Program: https://macmillan.yale.edu/europe/baltic . While there, I was lucky to hear (and speak with) Lithuanian poet Tomas Venclova https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomas_Venclova (and his wife), as well as with historian Timothy Snyder https://timothysnyder.org/
I had the opportunity to read an early draft of Sužiedėlis' book, but I still had a revelation while listening to the interview and its Q&A: Lithuanians' perception of WWII vs post-WWII is colored by the fact that while only about 5,000 ethnic Lithuanians were killed during German occupation, after WWII Soviet Russia deported about 130,000 ethnic Lithuanians, some 28,000 dying in exile, mostly from horrible living conditions, and about 50,000 ethnic Lithuanians were killed in guerilla warfare. For ethnic Lithuanians, their deaths during WWII pale beside deaths after WWII. But there's no need for ethnic Lithuanians to try and equate their deaths and suffering vs the deaths and suffering of 90%+ of Lithuania's Jews.
