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Death in the Forests of Lithuania

(Jerusalem Post) Barbara Sofer - Ruta Vanagaite, one of Lithuania's most popular authors, used her celebrity and talent to co-author a volume about the shameful and shocking past of her homeland, where 96% of the Jewish community was murdered during the German occupation in World War II. The vast majority of Lithuania's 220,000 Jews weren't deported to death camps. The Jews of Lithuania were slaughtered by their neighbors, with more than 20,000 Lithuanians taking part in the murder. Vanagaite discovered her relatives were involved. Her grandfather had made a list of Communist Jews for the Germans, and one uncle was a high-ranking police office. Her co-author is Dr. Efraim Zuroff, the Israeli Nazi-hunter who heads the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem. Together, they visited 35 of the 227 mass-murder sites in the villages and forests of the country. Their book, Our People: Journey With an Enemy, published in Lithuanian in January 2016, has become a best-seller, to the surprise of the publishers and despite the topic.
2016-04-22 00:00:00
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