Memory politcs and its development of telšiai jewish community after the restoration of the independence of the republic of lithuania

This paper analyzes the memory politics of Telšiai Jewish community since the re-establishment of the state of Lithuania. The main objective of the thesis is to reveal how memory politics of Telšiai Jewish community has changed during the period of re-establishment of the state of Lithuania. This objective was established based on how poorly the Jewish community is commemorated in Telšiai. The main goals: find out what kind of activity and projects were ongoing in order to preserve memory of Jewish people in Telšiai, identify main people who took part in this, reveal the reasons why the current memory is so poor and come up with the suggestions to improve the memory politics of Telšiai Jewish community. The main approach of the thesis is an interview. The thesis is based on an anthropologic tradition. This paper’s basis is A. Assmann’s work “Memory, individual and collective” in which the memory is divided into individual, social political and cultural. In this paper I aim at ascertaining if memory politics selectiveness works in case of Telšiai. In this thesis there is evidence that several actions were taken in order to improve memory politics of Telšiai Jewish community but few of them could be considered to have been brought on an effect. In this research it was uncovered that main people involved in memory politics of Telšiai Jewish community abided by “bottom up” principle. Also, the lack of leadership and initiative is quite apparent and thus, the institutions are left with a supporting role which stems to main four problems: 1) Insufficient information on Jewish ghetto history, unestablished commemoration places to Holocaust victims and their unsuitability for visits 2) there is no currently active Jewish society in Telšiai 3) Lack of leadership and related projects to the cause 4) Deficit of funds for memory politics projects. Two suggestion were made in order to make memory politics in Telšiai more effective: 1) Plan strategy for development of Telšiai Jewish commemoration spaces 2) The municipality needs to take more leadership and start more initiatives