Originally Posted by
DanK
Very nice work. I agree--I'd take care of the asymmetry of the foreground.
I once thought I would visit that area, as my family came from a small village 55 km east of the cathedral. I decided against it, however, because of the Lithuanian state's comprehensive failure to confront the history of Lithuanian collaboration in the Holocaust, which was terrible even by Eastern European standards. Much of the abuse and final murder was conducted by Lithuanian nationalists. This was the case in the village my family came from. Of roughly 1,000 Jews remaining in the village at the time of the war, only 5 (2 women and 3 children) are known to have survived. Some were murdered nearby, but the majority were taken to a nearby town, Kaišiadorys, where they and people from a few other nearby villages were shot and dumped into pits. Historical accounts, as you would expect, are fragmentary and inconsistent: some place the primary blame on nationalists, while others say that the nationalists were working with the Nazi Einsatzgruppen.
Over the past 15 years, the Lithuanian state has taken a number of steps to deny all of this, including threatening legal action against now-Israeli scholars who published historical accounts of the roles of some nationalists.
So I figured I'll spend my money someplace else.
Sorry to take this off topic, but this is something that shouldn't be forgotten.