by Paul Kirby, BBC

A monument to a Lithuanian hero in the US city of Chicago has prompted a row over World War Two after criticism from Russia and the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

Adolfas Ramanauskas-Vanagas commanded Lithuania’s resistance to Soviet occupation after World War II.

But the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which researches the Holocaust, says he also led a vigilante gang which persecuted Jews after the 1941 Nazi invasion.

Lithuania has accused Russia of making false statements.

The Lithuanian Foreign Ministry said Tuesday it had summoned the Russian embassy representative in Vilnius in protest and called on Moscow to stop spreading disinformation about Ramanauskas’s “impeccable reputation.”

It has also accused the Simon Wiesenthal Center of making false accusations.

But Efraim Zuroff, the Center’s head in Jerusalem, said that Lithuania had to confront its history. “They’re not telling the people the truth and they’re not facing the truth,” he told the BBC.

Full story here.