Holocaust Narrative(s) in Soviet Lithuania: The Case of the Ninth Fort Museum in Kaunas

Sometimes historians assert that in the postwar Soviet Union no discussion on the Holocaust took place. This is not a completely accurate perception. American scholar Thomas C. Fox confirms that “an event of such magnitude could not be airbrushed from history books, not even communist ones, but it could be rewritten within the confines of a comforting teleological narrative.” ¹ This was also the case of Soviet Lithuania, where the Holocaust was not erased, even if this term was not used and Jewish victims were not always identified as such. ² Many publications in Soviet Lithuania exposed the mass murder of the Lithuanian Jews and discussed the issue of collaboration during the Nazi occupation. The Soviet regime tried to illuminate the collaboration of nationalists with fascists and often included in their publications chapters on the Lithuanian Activist Front, Lithuanian police battalions, and their collaboration with the Nazi regime.