Since 1990 the Republic of Lithuania has been an independent state. The citizens of Lithuania liberated themselves from the Soviet-government by conquering the television and radio channel in Vilnius. This battle took eleven lives from the Lithuanian side.
The
Lithuanians lost an interesting part of their culture and tradition, which they
are trying to revive. Their culture dates back to the Mesolithic Nemunas culture
and the Mesolithic Kunda culture (7th-4th millennia BC). We call this period the
Mesolithic period. Many centuries later the culture was respectively influenced
by the Romans, the Vikings, the Slaves, Christianity (the Roman Catholic Church)
and later by the Polish, the Russians and the Soviets.
The first Jewish families, to my knowledge, settled in Vilnius, the
capital of Lithuania, at the beginning of the 14th century. The highest number
of Jews, living in Lithuania, was to be found at the end of the 19th century.
During the German-Nazi Occupation in Lithuania from 1941-1944 of the 250.000
Lithuanian Jews only 2000 survived. (Less than 1 %). The other 99 % were killed,
shot, murdered, thrown into fire, burned alive in a locked building, transported
to concentration camps where they were either put to death or subjected to all
kinds of atrocities. The German Nazis fulfilled their task thoroughly, assisted
by Lithuanian, Ukrainian and Latvian people. They destroyed a wonderful and
interesting culture, which had reached a very high standard.