Lithuanian Conservative/Union of Christian Democrats MP Žygimantas Pavilionis attended a special concert to mark the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust held in Vilnius Monday night also attended by Lithuanian president Gitanas Nausėda and the ambassadors from the Netherlands and Israel. The president and the two ambassadors delivered speeches about the meaning of “Never again!” and the Israeli ambassador told the story of her family which included two survivors of Auschwitz, the date of the liberation of which back in 1945 was chosen for commemoration by UNESCO back in 2005. The concert was called Music for Future Generations: Concert for the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust and featured performances by Rafailas Karpis and others.

After the concert, MP Žygimantas Pavilionis posted to his facebook page:

“… A rabbi from New York who sat next to me, having listened to all the speeches with the sacred words ‘never again,’ asked me numerous times about anti-Semites in the current [governing] coalition. I don’t know what the ambassador of Israel felt in her heart, but the eyes and hearts of many [of us] were together. All of us together also felt that alien shame for those who feel no shame at all [speaking from] the highest podiums and who continue to present black as white.”

Pavilionis was remarking on the inclusion of Remigijus Žemaitaitis’s Nemuno Aušra party as a constituent member of the ruling coalition. Žemaitaitis was promised the right to delegate a member of his party as deputy speaker of parliament but coalition partners have said that person must not be Žemaitaitis himself following a continuing slew of anti-Semitic statements he posted to facebook and made to Lithuanian media starting back in the spring of 2023.