The
president of Lithuania has promised that his country's
investigation into the wartime activities of three elderly
Jewish World War II partisans will be dropped, according
to an official of the Simon Wiesenthal Center -- but
can he keep the promise?
NEW YORK (JTA) -- The president of Lithuania has promised
that his country's investigation into the wartime activities
of several elderly Jewish World War II partisans will
be dropped, according to an official of the Simon Wiesenthal
Center -- but can he keep the promise?
The promise by Valdas Adamkus
is the latest twist in an oddly inverted war crimes inquiry
of the chairman emeritus of Yad Vashem and two other
former partisans who are being forced to testify about
their partisan activities with an eye toward possible
indictment.
It comes after several Jewish
organizations and members of the U.S. Congress demanded
that the Lithuanian government stop the judicial action
against the Holocaust-era partisans and be more proactive
in the fight against anti-Semitism, which has become
a growing concern in recent months.
The 2-year-old inquiry stems
from the publication of memoirs recalling partisan activities
in wartime Lithuania.
Adamkus reportedly has spoken
to the prosecutor in the inquiry of Yitzhak Arad, Yad
Vashem's chairman emeritus, and the two other partisans.
Partisan allies, however, are not convinced that the
entire inquiry will be dropped. They point to a pattern
of moral equivalency between Jewish partisan operations
and Nazi war crimes, both of which, according to some
interpretations of Lithuanian law, amount to genocide.
Partisans' advocates are unsure
about the status of the case.
According to the Vilnius Yiddish
Institute, where one of the former partisans works, Adamkus
said he was asking the prosecutor to shift from requiring
the three partisans to bear witness against each other
in court testimony and instead ask them to volunteer
their memory as experts in an inquiry into a massacre
by Soviet partisans in the village of Kaniukai.
Thirty-eight villagers were
killed, including children and a pregnant woman.
Senior Prosecutor Rimvydas
Valentukevicius found excerpts of Arad’s 1979 memoir
that place him in Kaniukai when the villagers were massacred.
Though he has not been formally charged, Arad is considered
a suspect in a war crimes inquiry.
Advocates of the partisans
remain dubious as to how Adamkus can uphold such a promise
in that his office does not have the authority to override
the prosecutor.
Lithuania’s consul general
in New York, Jonas Paslauskas, acknowledged that no decision
has been made and that Adamkus had taken up the case
because of the negative publicity it has generated.
Paslauskas said there “may
be no need for such big noise,” but added that the level
of emotion in Lithuania over the deaths of the 38 villagers
was difficult for his government to overlook. He promised
that his government would do whatever it could to resolve
the case, but could not promise the inquiry would be
dropped because no one could overstep the authority of
the prosecutor.
The prosecutor’s office could
not be reached for comment.
The investigation of Rachel
Margolis, a survivor of the Vilna Ghetto, was initiated
after she published a memoir in 2006 that included an
account of World War II partisan activities by herself
and others.
Prompted by the memoir, Professor
Irena Tumaviciute, a retired lecturer of German at Vilnius
University, published a newspaper article that equated
violent partisan resistance to Nazism and demanded that
the Lithuanian government investigate the Kaniukai ambush.
In the memoir Margolis wrote
that a friend, Fania Brantsovsky, participated in the
shooting. A historian at the Vilnius Yiddish Institute,
where the 86-year-old Brantsovsky works as a librarian,
said that Brantsovsky was in a makeshift hospital on
the nearby partisan base during the shooting and did
not participate.
Shimon Samuels, the director
for international relations at the Simon Wiesenthal Center
who recently met with Adamkus, said the Lithuanian leader
assured him that the survivors would not be forced to
testify. Samuels had expressed concern that the high-profile
investigation of the partisans and Holocaust survivors
was placing the general Jewish population at risk of
hate crimes.
His words seemed prescient,
as two Jewish community centers were vandalized with
swastikas and other anti-Semitic epitaphs in an attack
earlier this month. The attacks occurred in the capital,
Vilnius, and in the nearby town of Panevezys.
The incidents come against
the backdrop of increasing concern about anti-Semitism
in Lithuania. Months before this month's incidents, a
neo-Nazi rally with about 200 demonstrators, mostly youths,
was held in Vilnius in March. Lithuanian police at the
rally were caught on tape appearing to be enjoying themselves.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, also
of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, believes that the Lithuanian
police have the ability and the resources to quell anti-Semitic
crime. He faults the political establishment.
“Their words are important,”
Cooper said, but “the proof is in the pudding.”
Cooper said political leaders
must tell law enforcement to "go and do your job.”
The case of the partisans
has drawn the attention of U.S. lawmakers.
Reps. Paul Hodes (D-N.H.),
Robert Wexler (D-Fla.) and Howard Berman (D-Calif) wrote
to Prime Minister Gediminas Kirkilas questioning the
Lithuanian government’s disproportionate attention to
Jewish partisans.
The congressmen wrote that
they were vexed by the “sudden energetic pursuit” of
the partisans in question, while no Nazi collaborators
have served a sentence in prison since the country became
an independent state in 1991.
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