I want to pay tribute to my long time friend and collaborator, Irena Veisaitė. We knew each other for thirty years, we were close in age and had similar wartime experiences—as teenagers we both survived the ravages of Nazism, protected by courageous elders, I in Budapest, she in Kaunas. Also in common, we emerged from the first hand experience of Nazism with strong convictions in favor of open society and optimism.
In Lithuania, Irena set an example of critical thinking and tolerance, and lifted up education and the humanities. She seized upon the ideas of open society as essential to help her country navigate a path away from its difficult Soviet past into a broader and better European future. To help open her country as it left the Soviet Union, she and I co-founded the Open Lithuania Foundation, which among its many achievements sponsored the translation of thousands of books into Lithuanian, an intellectual and cultural achievement in its own right.
She was an internationalist, with an irrepressible intellectual curiosity and steadfast commitment to tolerance, and she kept a vigorously open mind. She saw close cultural ties with other Baltic states, and with countries who had troubled histories with Lithuania—Poland and Germany—as essential to anchoring Lithuania in a regional and European setting, thinking not only of the past but of a common future. Her efforts continued to bear fruit: she campaigned successfully for Vilnius to be recognized as a European capital of culture. For her scholarship and services to culture, she received the Goethe Medal for civic courage. Particularly when reflecting on Lithuania’s past and when turning to the crucial questions of Lithuania’s history during the Second World War, Irena even as a survivor of the Holocaust avoided easy simplistic answers but held up a critical mode of thinking, in particular constant self-reflection, a commitment to understanding the other, and empathy as a way forward for Lithuanian society.
Through it all, Irena’s positive outlook for Lithuania was bound up with a vision of the European Union as a guarantor of prosperity, the rule of law, and security, but also an institution with the potential to defend open society. She played a vital and trusted role as well in our foundation in Europe and far away from it, imparting her values upon us, and serving as foundation Ombudsperson for many years.
From the time of our first acquaintance, we worked together for an open society. I consider her a dear friend, one of the closest of those with whom I was fortunate to collaborate.