Detached Holocaust Memory: The Lithuanian-American Community’s View of the Holocaust in the First Decades after the Second World War

Abstract

In the decades immediately following the Second World War, the Lithuanian-American community in the United States exhibited a complex and often contentious relationship with Holocaust memory, characterised by divergent interpretations of Jewish-Lithuanian relations and events during the Nazi occupation of Lithuania. This complexity arose largely due to the heterogeneous nature of the diaspora, combining earlier waves of economic migrants with postwar refugees who directly experienced the trauma of wartime violence and Soviet occupation. The earlier migrants viewed Lithuanian Jews primarily through the lens of localised coexistence, without first-hand knowledge of wartime atrocities, whereas postwar immigrants’ perspectives were shaped by direct exposure to both Lithuanian independence and the atrocities of the Holocaust. Initially, Holocaust discourse in this community was fragmented and reactive, emerging mainly in response to the testimonies of Jewish survivors, rather than from introspective community dialogue. From the late 1940s, Lithuanian-American newspapers revealed a significant ideological polarisation, from cautious attempts at reconciliation to aggressive ethno-nationalist deflections of Lithuanian complicity. Unpublished literary manuscripts by Lithuanian émigrés, preserved in diaspora archives, further demonstrate the nuanced ways Lithuanian-American writers approached these traumatic memories, ranging from empathy and moral reckoning to antisemitic stereotypes and ideological defensiveness. This paper investigates early Lithuanian- American narratives about the Holocaust, highlighting the notable tension between acknowledging Jewish suffering and preserving Lithuanian national identity, often constructed through narratives of collective victimhood under Soviet rule. Through an analysis of press material and émigré literature, this study identifies an initial reluctance to confront complicity alongside early forms of the preservation of cultural memory, reflecting broader East European trends in postwar Holocaust representation. Ultimately, the analysis underscores how the Lithuanian-American Holocaust memory was less an internal reckoning than a negotiation shaped by external pressures and competing historical narratives.