NATO summit in Vilnius: War plotting at the site of a historic crime - World Socialist Web Site
EXCERPT:
In the aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the new Lithuanian bourgeoisie promoted the rehabilitation of its Nazi-collaborating ancestors. While occasionally issuing, for reasons of political expediency, pro forma and callous statements of official regret over the extermination of Lithuanian Jewry, the government and major parties minimized and covered up the scale of the crimes committed between 1941 and 1945.
As one of its first acts, the new Lithuanian parliament rehabilitated Lithuanians convicted of collaboration with the Nazis by the Soviet government. Streets were named after LAF leaders like Škirpa. Lithuania’s state-run Military Academy, which is affiliated with other NATO military academies, was named after Jonas Žemaitis, another infamous Nazi collaborator. Meanwhile, Holocaust survivors who fought with the Soviet partisans against the Nazis and their Lithuanian allies were put on trial for “collaboration” and “war crimes.”
The case of the Lithuanian fascist Jonas Noreika has acquired international notoriety. Executed in the Soviet Union after the war, he was posthumously celebrated by the post-1991 Lithuanian regime as a fighter against “communist tyranny.” Streets were renamed in his honor, and Noreika was awarded the Cross of Vytis, the highest honor bestowed by Lithuania upon a deceased person. But in the year 2000 Noreika’s granddaughter came across long concealed family documents that revealed that he had “ordered all Jews in his region of Lithuania to be rounded up and sent to a ghetto where they were beaten, starved, tortured, raped and then murdered.” [Op-ed published on January 27, 2021 in the New York Times, “No More Lies. My Grandfather Was a Nazi,” by Silvia Foti]
Despite these revelations, Noreika is still honored in Lithuania as a national hero. A memorial plaque honoring his memory remains in place at the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences. A documentary denouncing this travesty of historical truth, titled J’Accuse, has been recently completed and was viewed in December 2022 at the Miami Jewish Film Festival.
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