My position is very clear: heroism doesn’t remove responsibility for committing crimes against humanity. On the contrary, this discredits the status of hero.

In this case I’m talking about post-war partisan Jonas Noreika. Several side questions, but they’re to the point: was Christianity abolished during the June uprising in Lithuania in 1941? It was not. Therefore the Ten Commandments had not been rescinded. Do those cleaning their uniforms still remember “Thou shalt not kill,” “Thou shalt not steal,” “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s?” Apparently not. Is there direct evidence Jonas Noreika took part in a mass murder of Jews? No. But there is oral testimony he did. So what’s the problem?

The problem is that for the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania as an institution, it seems, it’s only important to answer one question: did Noreika kill or not? Lithuania is signatory to international conventions, however, to stop and to prosecute genocide, and the Center fully understands that. They know there are different degrees in the crime of genocide. They know full well that incarcerating Jewish fellow citizens in ghettos, stealing their property, imprisoning them in inhumane conditions, guarding and transporting them with the goal of extermination–all of this is judged a crime against humanity. It is participation in genocide, for which one may be sent to the court in the Hague, if it’s too late for Nuremberg. This interpretation has also been confirmed by the Supreme Court of Lithuania, which has issued verdicts many times to abolish rehabilitations issued earlier to people who turned out to have looted Jewish property and guarded Jews used as forced labor and on the way to the killing pits. At this point I will repeat: there is no direct proof Noreika murdered. At the same time, Center director Teresė Birutė Burauskaitė doesn’t dispute the fact Noreika really did collaborate with the Nazis over a specific time-span. Neither does she dispute documents demonstrating Noreika was appointed director of the Šiauliai district at that time and was also responsible for the Šiauliai ghetto. Neither does she dispute that “Noreika’s actions cannot be judged in a single way.” That’s what the Center said in a document they issued in 2015.

Some questions really to the point. Did Noreika as a military officer know nothing about the 3,000 Jews who fought for Lithuanian independence from 1919 to 1923? Did he know nothing of Jewish heroism? He knew. Did that stop him from writing his anti-Semitic booklet “Lift Your Head High, Lithuania?” No. Did he know that during the June Uprising, in which he took part, Jews were murdered by order of the Lithuanian Activist Front? He did. Did he, of his own volition and not compelled by anyone, choose to collaborate with the Nazi invaders? He did. Was he the kommandant of the Šiauliai ghetto? He was. Did he know the Jews in the ghetto were being prepared for extermination? He did. Did he sign orders for the seizure of Jewish property and rules for parceling it out? He did. There is proof. So why does this young, handsome officer remain the gold standard for heroism? That he was young and handsome is not a real reason to defend him tooth and nail.

I have just presented the reader the legal side of the case whose reasoning probably won’t be disputed by anyone. I will present a few thoughts about the moral side of the case. Do you remember the tortured partisan Adolfas Ramanauskas “Vanagas?” For me, he is a hero of the highest caliber with an untarnished reputation. He was an officer whose example should be followed by Lithuania’s soldiers, youth and politicians. But something bad is happening with certain Lithuanian institutions, it seems they don’t care about the reputations of their directors and staff. You’ll agree it has become fashionable today to not care about one’s reputation, because the parliaments, ministries and municipalities are full of people who don’t care about it. Is Noreika of unblemished reputation compared with Adolfas Ramanauskas “Vanagas?” Hardly. This is a proven fact. So why is Noreika still being lionized?

Onward. By what arguments is Noreika’s heroism justified, and is that heroism so heroic that like some sort of magic wand it makes his crimes against humanity vanish? (I know the dead don’t face trial, but the Lithuanian Supreme Court found him not guilty, because he wasn’t convicted of crimes against humanity. But this paragraph is about moral judgment, which is not forbidden by law). So Noreika spit at the Nazis and suddenly opposed them by ruining, probably together with general Plechavičius or even called upon to do so by the general, by ruining the Nazi attempt to set up a Lithuanian SS battalion. Unlike the Latvians, Lithuanians can take pride in this. Noreika was apprehended, served a sentence at Stutthof, and survived. (Many of the Lithuanian Jews and Roma held there didn’t survive). After the war Noreika wasn’t afraid, he returned home to continue resistance against the Communist occupiers. He was arrested (apparently some sort of average Lithuanian informed on him) and tortured to death in the basement of the NKVD. All of these are true facts.

But there suddenly appears Noreika’s granddaughter, Silvia Foti, saying her grandfather was no hero, on the contrary, he was a Nazi collaborator and furthermore he did murder Jews. She says her grandmother, Noreika’s wife, asked her not to write a book about him before her death. Silvia Foti says she finally understood the subtext of that. There are more strange gaps and silences. Question: why would the granddaughter slander her heroic grandfather? I don’t know, but in conjunction with the existing, indisputable documents demonstrating Noreika’s role in the Holocaust (which the director of the Center, acting honestly, does not deny), one cannot ignore statements by even his close family members, not to mention the stories of others. To put it briefly, we have here a person with a controversial reputation, and that controversy is well founded, that the argument he has just a little gear in big crime is no longer funny.

I don’t see any legal or moral basis for considering Jonas Noreika such a clear hero that schools are named after him, schools whose pupils will not be able to understand at all why their school was named after a man who contributed to the looting of people of their own age in preparation for their extermination. Or maybe their history teachers will lie to them, or pathetically belittle his role in the Holocaust not as a victim but as a perpetrator. But it is an indisputable fact that he did carry out the orders of the fascist Nazi invaders. What if he had carried out the orders of the Communist occupiers, but later was very sorry about it. Would that sort of person also become a hero in today’s Lithuania? I don’t think so.

So why is Noreika still being lionized? I can only speculate: perhaps it is the petty political and personal interests of those who have power but not conscience, who do not have clear moral principles. By defending a hero one day and a Holocaust perpetrator the next, they aren’t hoping our children and their parents learn to respect the law and moral principles. To learn to differentiate good from evil, a good reputation from a bad one or true heroes from those with blood on their hands. Lithuania doesn’t need tainted heroes.

Full text in Lithuanian here.