Photo: Lithuanian auxiliary forces carried out many murders of the country’s 141,000 Holocaust victims.

by Lianne Kolirin, Thursday, September 28, 2023, The Times of London

Streets and schools are named after citizens who colluded in the Holocaust

The head of Yad Vashem called for an end to the “glorification of war criminals associated with the massacre of Jews” in an address to Lithuania’s parliament.

Dani Dayan, chairman of the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, was invited to address the Seimas in Vilnius to mark the 80th anniversary of the liquidation of the city’s ghetto in 1943.

According to Yad Vashem, Lithuania welcomed the Nazis, “seeing them as liberators from Soviet occupation.” About 141,000 of Lithuania’s 168,000 Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, with “a significant part carried out by Lithuanian auxiliary forces,” its website states.

While Dayan praised the Seimas for its “gradual but substantial progress” regarding Holocaust remembrance, he sharply criticized the “national remembrance” of Lithuanians known to have colluded in the genocide.

The granddaughter of a Lithuanian accused of collaborating with the Nazis to kill thousands of Jews has previously called on the country to stop treating him as a hero.

Silvia Foti, 61, said that Jonas Noreika was directly involved in the deaths of tens of thousands of Jews during the Holocaust. Nevertheless, streets and schools across Lithuania are named after him and bronze plaques bearing his image can be found at numerous locations.

Foti has denounced her grandfather in the prize-winning documentary J’Accuse, in which she appears alongside Grant Gochin, whose relatives were among her grandfather’s victims and who has spent years petitioning Lithuania to admit “the truth.”

In his speech Dayan said: “An anti-Semite, especially a murderer, cannot be considered ‘otherwise a good person,’ let alone a hero. In addition to refraining from attributing public honor to such butchers, Lithuania must consistently acknowledge that many of the Lithuanian Jews massacred in the Holocaust died at the hands of their Lithuanian co-nationals, and that Lithuanians also took part in the extermination of Jews in neighboring countries.”

He said: “Forgetfulness is an unacceptable educational option for your youth.”

He went on to name names, including other officers accused of war crimes but treated as heroes in Lithuania, saying: “We should show zero tolerance towards anti-Semitism, including in this chamber. That zero-tolerance policy must apply also towards glorification of war criminals associated with the massacre of Jews. Such names as Noreika, Škirpa and Krikštaponis do not add to the honor of your nation, nor to its adherence of international norms of appropriate national remembrance.”