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This article is part of the special cluster titled Conceptualizations of the Holocaust in Germany, Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine since the 1990s, guest edited by Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe. The Holocaust is the darkest page of Lithuanian history: Nearly the whole Jewish community in Lithuania was destroyed, while a part of ethnic Lithuanians participated in this destruction. This article discusses three layers and periods of the Holocaust in Lithuania that have made a considerable impact on the perception of this traumatic period in Lithuanian society. The first period deals with the Lithuanian–Jewish relations during the German occupation in Lithuania (1941–1944). The second one is related to the Soviet reoccupation of Lithuania and discussions among Lithuanian émigrés in the West (1944–1990), which shaped the history of the Holocaust in Lithuania from the ideological (Soviet) and defensive (Lithuanian émigré) perspectives. The final part of this article discusses the historiography and Holocaust memory in independent Lithuania after the 1990s. Almost thirty years of independence mark not only the re-creation of some old myths and stereotypes in Lithuania, but also new groundbreaking and open discussions in society, concerning the perception of this dark page of Lithuanian history.

The main aim of this article is to discuss the Holocaust in Lithuania as it appears in the discourse of Western historiography. This aim and the structure of this article have two goals: first, to discuss the Western historiographic perspective on the Holocaust during the period of the Cold War; second, to review the shifts in the historiography after the Cold War and the Fall of the Soviet Union. The first chapter of this article underlines that during the first period, the historiography of the Holocaust was mainly based on the sources of the Trials of the Major War Criminals (the Nuremberg Trials) and the legal proceedings during the subsequent years. This provided the foundation for historians to write studies about the Holocaust. However, these studies focused mainly on the criminal character of the Nazi party, the military and security forces, while the voices of the victims were silenced – at least until the Eichmann Trial; in addition, the question about the collaboration of locals in the Final Solution during the German occupation was also kept out. It should be underlined that this narrative was quite suitable for those Lithuanians who lived in Western Europe or the US, as it mainly stressed the guilt of the Nazi Germans. The Fall of the Soviet Union initiated a significant shift in the research of the Holocaust in Lithuania. The main factor of this shift was the opening of the archives in Eastern Europe, which provided the conditions to carry out research on the Holocaust in Lithuania. These studies made new conclusions about the relations between Lithuanians and Jews, anti-Semitism in Lithuania, the anti-Soviet underground and its anti-Semitic attitudes, the first pogroms in German-occupied Lithuania during the first days of the War against the Soviet Union etc. This shift pushed the topic of the Holocaust in Lithuania to the top of the priorities of the agenda of Western historians and, in the broader sense, of the whole research centered around the persecution and eradication of the European Jews. ; Straipsnyje siekiama išanalizuoti esamą Vakarų istoriografijos atliktų holokausto Lietuvoje tyrimų būklę. Pirmoje straipsnio dalyje daugiausia dėmesio yra skiriama pokario ir Šaltojo karo laikotar­pio istoriografijai. Nors šis laikotarpis nepasižymėjo būtent Lietuvai skirtų tyrimų gausa, jis turėjo didelę reikšmę holokausto suvokimui, jo istoriniam, teisiniam, moraliniam vertinimui bei pagrindinių sąvokų, tyrimo metodų, kurie vėliau buvo pritaikyti ir vertinant holokaustą Lietuvoje, suformavimui. Antroji straipsnio dalis skirta apžvelgti Vakarų istoriografijos pokyčius, įvykusius pasibaigus Šaltajam karui ir sugriuvus Sovietų Sąjungai. Būtent šis laikotarpis, prasidėjęs XX a. paskutiniame dešimtmetyje, Vakarų istorikų dėmesį nukreipė į Rytų Europą, o Lietuvą padarė vienu iš svarbiausių holokausto tyrėjų vykdomų tyrimų objektu.