JERUSALEM - The Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial on Wednesday
handed a harsh letter of protest to visiting Lithuanian
Foreign Minister Petras Vaitiekunas, denouncing an investigation
of a renowned Holocaust historian and World War II resistance
fighter.
Last year, Lithuania opened
a criminal investigation against Yitzhak Arad, a former
director of Yad Vashem, who survived the Holocaust in
Lithuania and fought with local resistance fighters against
the Nazis.
Lithuanian authorities officially
asked Israel to allow it to investigate the 81-year-old
Arad on suspicion that he took part in the murder of
Lithuanian civilians during the Holocaust. The case is
based on Arad's memoir, in which he describes his experiences
as a partisan in Nazi-occupied Lithuania
In the letter, Yad Vashem chairman Avner Shalev charged that Lithuania was conducting
historical revisionism and distortion that aimed to compare
the partisan activity with the crimes of the Nazis and
their collaborators.
"Destructive historical revisionism seems to be taking place in Lithuania regarding
this case, by calling into question legitimate, previously
lauded wartime combat in an obvious attempt to propagate
unfounded beliefs and distort historical truths, he wrote
in the letter," handed to Vaitiekunas on Wednesday.
It is clear that initiating
criminal proceedings into Dr. Arad's involvement in Lithuanian
partisan activity during World War II is tantamount to
a call for an investigation into all partisan activity,
he wrote. Any attempt to equate those actions with illegal
activities, thereby defining them as criminal, is a dangerous
perversion of the events that occurred in Lithuanian
during the War.
No comment from Lithuanian
officials was immediately available.
The Holocaust in Lithuania
was unique in that it is believed that most of the Jews
there were murdered by local citizens. The Order Police
began killing Jews as soon as the Soviets left in 1941,
and even before German troops arrived. Out of a prewar
population of 220,000, only a few thousand Jews survived
the war in Lithuania - representing the largest percentage
of Jews murdered in one country during the Holocaust.
About 6 million Jews were
killed by the Nazis and their collaborators in Europe
during World War II.
haaretz.com
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