In an open letter to the editor of the newspaper and website Lietuvos Žinios [Lithuanian News] published July 27, the Union of Freedom Fighters of Lithuania called upon Vilnius mayor Remigijus Šimašis and director of the Center for the Study of the Genocide and the Resistance of the Residents of Lithuania Teresė Birutė Burauskaitė to allow a memorial plaque commemorating Jonas Noreika, also known by his post-war partisan appellation as General Vėtra, to remain in place upon the wall of the library of the Academy of Sciences building in Vilnius. The call was made seemingly as a result of a recent editorial by Lithuanian veteran of journalism and opinion-maker Rimvydas Valatka in which he recounted Noreika’s Holocaust crimes and deconstructed his image as national hero on multiple fronts. Here is the text of the open letter by the Noreika supporters:
Vilnius, July 27, 2015
ADDRESS
On the unfounded attempts to destroy the commemoration of the memory of a member of the resistance
After the removal of the [socialist realist] statues on the Green Bridge in Vilnius marking the Soviet occupation and annexation, a counter-operation began: demands with all the hallmarks of an information war attack to annul decisions [made earlier] connected with the commemoration of the memory of famous members of the anti-Soviet armed resistance and Lithuanian freedom fighters.
Chosen as the main target was the well-known resistance fighter and captain in the military of independent Lithuania, jurist, writer, journalist-publicist, member of the June, 1941 Uprising, prisoner of Stutthof Concentration Camp, chairman of the Lithuanian National Council and organizer of the armed resistance to the Soviet occupation (of underground armed forces) Jonas Noreika (secret resistance name General Vėtra). He was sentenced to death by the repressive structures of the Soviet occupational regime and shot on February 16, 1947.
Opponents accuse him of the death of the Jews of the Plungė ir Šiauliai districts and have proclaimed him a Nazi collaborator and war criminal.
On August 3, 1941 Jonas Noreika was appointed to the duties of head of the Šiauliai district not by Nazi Germany, but by the legitimate and legally constituted provisional government of Lithuania formed after the successful anti-Soviet uprising, which was done away with by the occupational regime of the Reich of Germany because of its actions representing the national interests of Lithuania.
Opponents claim Jonas Noreika was the initiator in and organizer of the establishment of the Žagarė ghetto. This is a lie. The Žagarė ghetto was established in July of 1941 before Noreika’s appointment to the duties of district head.
In truth the initiators and organizers of the transport of the Jews of Šiauliai to the ghetto established in Žagarė were Reich kommissar for the East Lohse, Reich kommissar for Lithuania Dr. Renteln and general kommissar for the city and district of Šiauliai Geweke [sic, Hans Gewecke].
Urbutis, who had carried out the duties of Šiauliai district head before Jonas Noreika, indicated that from July 25, 1941, Jews have to wear the star of David on the left side of the chest; Jews are allowed to walk in public areas from 6 A.M. to 8 P.M.; from July 25 to August 15 Jews must move and live in the locations indicated by aldermen (note: Jonas Noreika’s letter to rural district aldermen is [dated] August 22); Jews who have real estate in the towns must liquidate it, in the first instance by trading with the residents into whose homes there would be moved; it is forbidden to take ownership of property left by the Jews; remaining Jewish property is inventoried by the municipalities and held in their protection until [the promulgation of] another order.
Only a portion of the agencies operating in the districts were subordinate to the head of the district. The police, security and others were not subordinate. The powers of the district head were quite limited. Jonas Noreika informed the rural district aldermen in writing about the decision by the aforementioned high-ranking Nazi officials.
Jonas Noreika refused to carry out the mobilization of Lithuanians planned by the occupation regime of Nazi Germany for an SS battalion (legion). He took personal responsibility in ignoring the mobilization order and used the influence he had with subordinate administration officials and spectacularly contributed to the failure of the mobilization into SS units. Jonas Noreika directly boycotted the orders by the Nazi regime for the mobilization of an SS legion. General finance advisor [to the Nazi administration in Lithuania] Jonas Matulionis noted this in his diary. The diary has been published as a separate book called “Neramios dienos” [“Days of Unrest”].
There are known cases, for example, when Jewish ghetto police tried to the extent of their abilities to help ghetto residents even while at the same time they carried out some of the orders of the Germans. But they aren’t considered war criminals.
It was exactly because of his anti-German anti-Nazi activities that Jonas Noreika was arrested by the Nazi Gestapo and taken away to a death camp, to the Stutthof Concentration Camp, where he was imprisoned for almost two years.
On February 23, 1943, head of the political department of the Šiauliai district kommissar Braun called Jonas Noreika at work and, after he arrived at his office, told him that due to the failure to carry out orders by the German government as of February 23, 1943, by order of the kommissar general, Jonas Noreika was terminated from employment as the head of the Šiauliai district and was under arrest. He remained in the Šiauliai jail until March 3. With mediation by the intelligentsia and after making an undertaking not to go anywhere, he was released from the Šiauliai jail. Two weeks later, however, on March 17, he was arrested again in his apartment.
German security police and SD commander [sic, commander of SD Einsatzkommando 3a] in Lithuania Karl Jäger formulated the accusation against Jonas Noreika. The accusation ran thus: “led a Lithuanian resistance movement and especially sowed dissent against a mobilization of the Lithuanian nation announced by the Reich kommissar.”
There is no material in the archives which prove or confirm that Jonas Noreika perpetrated Jewish genocide. He never gave the order to murder Jews, he did not participate in any mass murder operations. His young daughter Dalia Noreikaitė, according to the testimony of Šiauliai resident Stanislovas Grunskis, passed out buns especially baked by her mother for passing out to Jews passing by on the street.
The Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of the Residents of Lithuania has already competently proven that Jonas Noreika in no way contributed to the death of the Jews of Plungė. But here he is even to this day being accused of this.
It is impossible to deny the obvious merits and accomplishments of Jonas Noreika: an active organization agitating for the reestablishment of an independent Lithuanian state through anti-Soviet activities, for which he gave his life.
The Supreme Court of Lithuania has rehabilitated Jonas Noreika of the accusations leading to a violent death made by the Soviet occupational regime, recognizing him as innocent of having committed a crime against the Republic of Lithuania.
The resistance biography of Jonas Noreika is provided in detail in the book “Generolas Vėtra” [“General Vėtra”] by Jonas Noreika’s comrade-in-arms Viktoras Ašmenskas published by the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of the Residents of Lithuania. In this book he is correctly called an enemy of Hitler’s order. During the period of German occupation the Lithuanian Freedom Army operated actively and the Lithuanian Front and its military section Kęstutis were established in the underground. Both the Lithuanian Freedom Army and Kęstutis group operated in the Šiauliai district among others, where they were commanded by Šiauliai district head and Lithuanian Front representative Jonas Noreika. Incidentally, Viktoras Ašmenskas is the only living direct fellow soldier of Jonas Noreika capable of providing testimony about him, although he is now 103 years old.
We demand the memorial informational plaque of the armed anti-Soviet resistance organizer and unarmed anti-Nazi resistance member Jonas Noreika-General Vėtra be left in place on the façade of the library building of the Academy of Sciences.
Ernestas Subačius, chairman
Union of Lithuanian Freedom Fighters