by Mindaugas Jackevičius, www.lrt.lt

Lithuania’s Jews have asked for a memorial plaque commemorating the officer Jonas Noreika to be removed from a library located in the center of Vilnius by September 23. The influential newspaper the New York Times put Lithuania and Noreika on the front page last week and called the issue of the officer a test for Lithuania.

The Lithuanian side isn’t sure how to react to all this attention. Historians claim they have investigated all of it: Noreika, aka General Vėtra, didn’t murder Jews but did collaborate with the Nazis. Arūnas Gumuliauskas, the chairman of the parliament’s State Commission for Historical Memory, called the articles amateur but wouldn’t say whether the Noreika plaque should be taken down.

Full story in Lithuanian here.