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2009-01-27
The VYI's Ruta Puisyte lectures in Israel
The VYI’s Ruta Puisyte Lectures in Israel
Ruta Puisyte speaks at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, January 18, 2009
On 18 January 2009, VYI assistant director Ruta Puisyte lectured at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs as part of the Eighth Herbert Berman Memorial Series. Ruta’s lecture was titled “Lithuania’s Views Toward Its Holocaust Past.” Presentation was organized by initiation of Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center - Israel Office, Dr. Efraim Zuroff.
The lecture began with a brief introduction to Holocaust history in Lithuania from 1941to 1944; it then dealt with the obfuscation of the Nazi genocide of the Jews in the Soviet period 1944-1991; further, Holocaust commemoration and Holocaust education in independent Lithuania 1991-2008; the Holocaust and Lithuanian collective memory; issues of justice; and the problem of reconciliation with the past.
The sizeable audience, which included numerous former Jewish residents of Lithuania, followed Ruta’s lecture raptly and rewarded it with warm applause. The lively discussion that followed proved once again that Holocaust history remains a vital topic today, when the last direct witnesses to the Jewish catastrophe are fading from our presence. Thus, it deeply impressed the Jerusalem audience that the young non-Jewish Lithuanian historian Ruta Puisyte has devoted herself to that history as it unfolded and continues to unfold in her native country.