2014-07-11 Walk with Irena Veisaitė

Just a few weeks ago Arūnas Gelūnas said in the broadcast Alchemy LVIII. Intellect and Freedom: “The word idiotos was discovered by ancient Greeks to name a person who is educated but does not participate in public life of the city”. While we have not made any misleading conclusions that only such people exist in Lithuania, the example of an intelligent person of Lithuania is presented in the Walk.

The 86-year-old Irena Veisaitė, who has survived holocaust and who lost her family during the years of the World War II, was awarded with Goethe's medal a couple of years ago “for activity of all life, which was the driving force of cultural exchange between Germans and Lithuanians, for her creativity and political courage to say what is not enjoyed by everybody”. How? Simply, Ms. Irena says in the broadcast: “I never identified German culture with Nazism.”

The idealism of the theatre and literature critic Veisaitė is not a consequence of life in abstract world of ideas. Her daily behaviour is the newly written manifest of light. “I do not want to multiply injustice, anger, hatred. It seems that if we multiply hatred, it will mean that Hitler, Stalin, Putin have won.”

Monika