Local Testimony and the (Un)Silencing of Sexual Violence in Lithuania under German Occupation during WWII

Abstract

The memory of sexual violence in Eastern Europe under German occupation during WWII has long been silenced by the opacity of local events to outside observers, a conspiracy of silence on the issue of collaboration, and conventions on how the Holocaust should be represented. Since the collapse of the USSR, the opening of archives has stimulated the production of a large and growing literature on the nature and causes of communal violence, but with relatively limited attention to sexual violence as an aspect of genocide. Based on a qualitative analysis of select audio-visual testimonies collected from non-Jewish Lithuanians since the 1990s, this paper demonstrates that local knowledge of sexual violence has persisted for decades in the post-genocidal space. However, these testimonies have been overshadowed by politicized narratives of national martyrology, and neglected by local and international researchers alike, despite their importance to the process of historical reckoning.