Jerusalem – The Simon Wiesenthal Center today blasted the current campaign conducted by the Baltic countries of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia to grant Communist crimes equal recognition to the crimes of the Holocaust . In an op-ed article featured in the Israeli English-language daily Jerusalem Post, the Center’s Israel director Holocaust historian Dr. Efraim Zuroff severely criticized the recently-intensified campaign by the Baltic republics and other post-Communist governments to mark August 23 as a joint remembrance day for the victims of Nazism and Communism, and to establish an “Institute of European Memory and Conscience” as a museum, research and educational center on totalitarian crimes in order to “reunite [European] history [and] recognize communism and Nazism as a common legacy.” According to Zuroff: “While one can sympathize with the legitimate desire of the victims of Communism for recognition, there is nothing innocent about this declaration which clearly seeks to undermine the current status of the Holocaust as a unique historical tragedy and relativize it to divert attention from the extensive collaboration of Balts with the Nazis and the abysmal failure of all their governments since independence to adequately deal with these issues. “It is clear that the time has come to start paying attention to this insidious campaign being conducted primarily by Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia to alleviate their guilt for Holocaust crimes and displace the Shoa from its unique status. If not, we are likely to soon find ourselves facing the cancellation of the numerous important achievements of the past decade in Holocaust commemoration and education and forced to fight an uphill battle against a new and distorted World War II historical narrative.”

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According to Zuroff:

“This is only the latest in a long series of farces produced by Lithuanian prosecutors and judges who are clearly incapable of punishing local Holocaust criminals. Despite the presence in Lithuania since independence of numerous Nazi war criminals, not a single one has ever been punished, a fact which clearly shows the total inability of Lithuanian society to face its bloody past of extensive participation in the mass murder of Jews. It is high time that the international community start paying attention to the serious judicial and educational failures of Lithuania.”

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According to Zuroff:
“The case against Dr. Arad is only the tip of an ugly iceberg created in Vilnius by government officials and institutions determined to hide the truth about the critical and extremely significant role played by local Nazi collaborators in the annihilation of Lithuanian Jewry and the mass murder of Jews in Belarus and Poland. Thus the Lithuanians did everything possible to avoid prosecution of their own Nazi war criminals, and when pressured to prosecute the three cases brought to trial [Lileikis, Gimzauskas, and Dailide], made sure by devious legal tactics that none of the three would ever be punished, thereby reinforcing the myth propagated by the authorities that only a few local hooligans mistreated Jews. The latest campaign to prosecute Soviet anti-Nazi Jewish partisans was merely another link in this chain of historical duplicity and distortion. It’s high time that the truth about the Shoa will finally be told in Vilnius and the investigations of Jewish partisans Rachel Margolis and Fania Brantsovsky be closed as well.”

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According to Zuroff:

“Given the woefully inadequate response by the government to the neo-Nazi march through the center of Vilnius less than half a year ago, I believe that the time has come for unequivocal, resolute and immediate action to identify and punish those responsible for this anti-Semitic attack.

“There is no doubt in my mind that these outbreaks of anti-Jewish violence are the direct result of Lithuania’s failure to punish its Nazi collaborators, the recent campaign against Soviet Jewish partisans and the ongoing efforts to minimize the role of Lithuanians in the mass murder of their Jewish neighbors during the Holocaust. Today’s anti-Semitic violence is the direct result of ignoring the crimes of the past.”

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According to Zuroff:

“On May 5 and 13, 2008 plainclothes policemen came looking for Fania Brantsovsky, the librarian of the Vilnius Yiddish Institute, and Rachel Margolis in connection with an investigation against the former for supposed war crimes during World War II. The irony of such allegations is that on April 30, 2008 Fania Brantsovsky has just been honored by the American Embassy for “her struggles as a partisan fighting the Nazi occupiers.”

“If we add this investigation to the one currently being conducted by the Lithuanian authorities against former Yad Vashem Chairman and anti-Nazi partisan Dr. Yitzchak Arad, it is absolutely clear that a deliberate campaign is currently underway to discredit the brave Jewish heroes of the anti-Nazi resistance and help deflect attention from the infinitely more numerous crimes by Lithuanians against Jews during the Holocaust.

“I want to point out that we have every intention of exposing and responding to this malicious campaign against innocent heroes of the anti-Nazi resistance whose only “crime” was to fight against the occupiers of Lithuania who sought with the help of local collaborators to annihilate the Jewish people.”

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In a statement issued today in Jerusalem by its chief Nazi-hunter Israel director Dr. Efraim Zuroff, the Center praised Prof. Levin for taking “an unequivocal stand against the attempts by the Lithuanian judicial authorities to delegitimize the courageous struggle of the Soviet partisan movement against the Nazis and their numerous Lithuanian collaborators. This is merely another attempt by Lithuania to minimize or relativize the extensive participation by Lithuanians in the mass murder of Jews during the Holocaust,” said Zuroff, who urged other honorees to follow Levin’s example.

In his letter to President Adamkus, Prof. Levin explained why he took this unprecedented step:

“As a former comrade-in-arms of Dr. Arad, and as someone who has very closely followed the efforts of Lithuanian society to erase the guilt of Lithuanian complicity in Holocaust crimes, I want to strenuously protest the absolutely disgusting demand to extradite this Jewish hero to stand trial in Lithuania. Out of a sense of solidarity with Dr.Arad and deep disgust and anger at this despicable step, which attempts to delegitimize the courageous struggle of myself and my comrades against the Nazi invaders and their Lithuanian collaborators, I hereby return the certificate of honor whose contents have been rendered meaningless by the recent actions and events in Lithuania as explained above.


“In that context, I cannot refrain from mentioning my deep sense of shock and indignation at the recent demonstration by some two hundred neo-Nazis, who brazenly marched in the main streets of our beloved Vilna [Vilnius] shouting anti-Semitic slogans such as "Juden raus" under the protection of the local police, who stood by passively despite this blatant exhibition of incitement against Jews and Russians. And thus it is perhaps no coincidence that this disgusting anti-Semitic event took place not long after the insulting demand by the Lithuanian authorities to extradite our comrade Dr. Yitzchak Arad.”

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In a letter sent by its chief Nazi-hunter, Israel director Dr. Efraim Zuroff to the Lithuanian ambassador to Israel, the Center demanded that the demonstrators be punished as quickly as possible, noting that public opinion poll published today in Vilnius indicated widespread public support of the march, which clearly shows that Lithuanian society in acute need of a lesson about the dangers of Nazism.

According to Zuroff:

“The Wiesenthal Center would therefore request that you transmit to Vilnius not only the sense of shock and outrage felt by Jews the world over, but our demand that those responsible for this outrage be prosecuted and punished in an expeditious manner. I would also add that the failure of the police to respond to the march raises serious questions about the willingness of the Lithuanian authorities to take the necessary measures to prevent such cases in the future.

“In fact, based on the public opinion poll which appeared in today’s’ Lietuvos Rytas in which 32% of the respondents expressed approval for the anti-Semitic and racist slogans chanted by the neo-Nazi demonstrators and another 22% approved of the march, it appears that there is much work to be done in educating the Lithuanian public about the dangers posed by Nazism. But perhaps that is not surprising in a country in which not a single one of the numerous unprosecuted Lithuanian Nazi war criminals has ever been punished for his crimes.”

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Jerusalem-The Simon Wiesenthal Center today expressed its concern in the wake of an anti-Semitic comment made by Lithuanian former NBA star Sarunas Marciulionis in the course of an argument with a local Jew during the recent events marking the 85th anniversary of Lithuanian basketball. Marciulionis, who claims that he was insulted by Shabtai Kalmanovich , a member of the Kaunas Jewish community, reacted by saying that “There is no place for a Jew here [at the events marking the anniversary].” Although Marciulionis later claimed that he did not understand what was objectionable about his comment, he did subsequently apologize to the Jewish community.

In a statement issued today in Jerusalem, the Center’s chief Nazi-hunter, Israel director Dr. Efraim Zuroff,
warned that public figures, and especially sports heroes, had to be particularly careful when expressing their displeasure. “Regardless of the nature of the dispute between them, there was absolutely no reason for Marciulionis to refer to the fact that Kalmanovich is Jewish and it is clear that he used the term in a pejorative manner. In Lithuania, where basketball is the most popular sport, and outstanding hoopsters are local heroes, such comments provide legitimacy for local anti-Semitism, which in the past played a role in the mass murder of Lithuanian Jewry and continues today, on a much smaller scale, to pose a problem in contemporary Lithuania. We therefore are pleased that Marciulionis apologized and urge him to show greater sensitivity to the problem of local anti-Semitism in the future,” said Zuroff.

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The Simon Wiesenthal Center severely criticized the decision issued today by a Lithuanian court not to punish former Security Police operative Algimantas Dailide after it convicted him of actively participating in the persecution of innocent civilians – Jews and Poles – during the Holocaust.

In a statement issued today in Jerusalem by its chief Nazi-hunter, Israel director Dr. Efraim Zuroff, the Center labeled the decision not to implement the verdict of 5 years imprisonment as one “which clearly shows that Lithuania is the safest haven in the world for a local Nazi war criminal and makes a mockery of the efforts to hold Nazi war criminals accountable.”

According to Zuroff:

“Once again Lithuania has proven that it is totally incapable of punishing its own Nazi war criminals. The Dailide case will now be added to those of Dailide's superiors in the Saugumas (Lithuanian Security Police) of the Vilnius district, Aleksandras Lileikis and Kazys Gimzauskas, who despite active participation in Nazi war crimes never sat a single minute in jail for their crimes, as unequivocal proof that Lithuania is totally incapable of honestly dealing with the complicity of its own nationals in the mass murder of Lithuanian Jewry. The reasons adduced for clemency in this case – his wife's health and his advanced age – ring utterly hollow in the case of a person who had no sympathy for his unfortunate victims.”

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The Simon Wiesenthal Center totally and unequivocally rejected the dismissal yesterday by the prosecutor's office of the Kaunas District of evidence it had submitted to the Lithuanian Special Prosecutor for genocide cases regarding the participation of members of the Lithuanian national basketball team in the murder of Jews in the Seventh Fort in Kaunas in early July 1941.In a statement issued in Jerusalem by its chief Nazi-hunter, Israel director Dr. Efraim Zuroff, the Center insisted that the material presented clearly implicated the Lithuanian players and that yesterday's decision to clear all of them of any suspicion of involvement in crimes that they had clearly committed was “an unfortunate and hasty decision which reeks of misplaced political correctness.” The Center also noted that the statement issued by the prosecutor's office of the Kaunas district which referred to the testimony of Holocaust survivors and Holocaust victims as “literature” and “gossip,” is not only an affront to the memory of those murdered, but also in effect delegitimizes the accounts presented by the Holocaust's victims, which are undoubtedly among the most important sources of information on this terrible tragedy.

According to Zuroff, ”It is extremely unfortunate that once again Lithuanian prosecutors have failed to acknowledge important evidence from the Holocaust and have rushed to exonerate individuals who deserve to be condemned rather than cleared of any suspicion. In the light of the unpardonable and totally fallacious comments regarding the evidence of Holocaust survivors made by the Kaunas prosecutors, one can only wonder whether it is at all possible for a Lithuanian Nazi war criminal to be convicted of his or her crimes in Lithuania.”

The Simon Wiesenthal Center revealed today that it had received official confirmation from the Lithuanian Prosecutor-General’s Office that three new murder investigations have been initiated by the Lithuanian authorities based on information submitted to the Center in the framework of “Operation: Last Chance,” a joint project of the Center and the Targum Shlishi Foundation of Miami, Florida, which offers financial rewards for information leading to the prosecution and punishment of Nazi war criminals. In a statement issued in Jerusalem by Israel director Dr. Efraim Zuroff, who coordinates the project, the Center welcomed the opening of the investigations but warned that unless the cases were given priority treatment, it was doubtful whether any of the guilty would actually be tried and punished for their crimes. more

The Simon Wiesenthal Center’s chief Nazi-hunter Dr. Efraim Zuroff today submitted the names of twelve Lithuanians suspected of murdering Jews during the Holocaust to Lithuanian Special Prosecutor Rimvydas Valentukevicius and called upon the Lithuanian authorities to expedite their investigation of World War II cases. more...

The Simon Wiesenthal Center announced today that it had received the names of one hundred eighty four suspects accused of participation in Holocaust crimes in Lithuania or as members of Lithuanian Security Police units outside the country during the initial year of its “Operation: Last Chance” project launched together with the Targum Shlishi Foundation of Miami in July 2002 in Vilnius. more...

The Simon Wiesenthal Center announced today in Vilnius that it had already received the names of 174 Lithuanians suspected of participation in the rimes of the Holocaust in the framework of its "Operation: Last Chance” launched in the Baltics exactly nine months ago.

The program, which is being sponsored by the Center and the Targum Shlishi Foundation of Miami, Florida, offered a financial reward of $10,000 for information, which would lead to the conviction, and punishment of Holocaust perpetrators in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia featured large ads with graphic historical photos of the persecution and murder of Jews in these areas. more...

The Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Targum Shlishi Foundation have launched the second stage of their “Operation: Last Chance” campaign which offers financial rewards for information leading to the prosecution and punishment of Nazi war criminals in the Baltics, by initiating an innovative ad campaign which utilizes authentic Holocaust-era photos of Nazi atrocities to urge informants to supply the Center with incriminating information against local Holocaust perpetrators. The ads, which have already appeared in Lithuania and are slated to run in Latvia and Estonia during the coming two weeks, note the tragic fates of the Baltic Jewish communities and the role-played by local collaborators in their liquidation. more...