Efraim Zuroff, the so-called last Nazi hunter, visited Lithuania with CNN reporters. Our country didn't receive any praise. Lithuania is more horrible than anywhere else.

"The largest problem we encounter (...) is the threat of Holocaust

distortion and denial. And there's no place better for looking at thisproblem than the nice Baltic republic of Lithuania," Zuroff said ironically to one of largest US information channels.

The Nazi hunter characterized Lithuania as a country which has bears a lot of guilt for the Holocaust. Lithuania allegedly hasn't shown almost any desire to recognize that guilt. The head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center that pursues Nazi criminals accused Lithuania of attempts to rewrite history in a way more favorable to the country. Furthermore, he said, Lithuania undeservedly compares the crimes against humanity of the Hitler and Stalin regimes.

"When it became clear that not a single Lithuanian will be punished in independent Lithuania for Holocaust crimes, they went to work trying to rewrite the history textbooks and to create parallels between Communism and Nazism. It's time to begin a serious battle," Zuroff said while driving.

And this isn't the only epithet [applied] to our country. Zuroff recalls the operation begun in 2002, "Last Chance," during which the Wiesenthal Center tried to find still-unnamed Nazi criminals. "In Lithuania we find more suspects than in any other country in the world," the Nazi hunter has said many times, criticizing Lithuania in the international arena.

Shooting for independence?

While telling of Lithuanian war crimes, he did not hide his belief that the destruction of the Jews was part of Lithuanian policy.

"They (Lithuanians -editor) thought: 'The Nazis hate the Jews, and we also have problems with Jews, so if we help the Nazis, they will help us regain independence.' Percentage-wise more Jews were killed in Lithuania than anywhere else in Europe. Ninety-six point four percent of Jews who lived in Nazi-occupied Lithuania were killed, 212,000 out of 220,000," Zuroff continues.

He said one of the reasons so many Jews were killed in Lithuania was aid local inhabitants rendered the Germans.

Several Jews who survived the Holocaust are also interviewed in the CNN program. They tell how a Lithuanian could attack any Jew for no reason and remain unpunished.

A Witness Suspected of Genocide Against Lithuanians

"Thousands of Lithuanians joined the German killing machine. On their own initiative [i.e. they volunteered], this was not a mandatory mobilization. They joined up and carried out mass murder," Yitzhak Arad, who survived the Holocaust in Lithuania, told CNN.

By the way, Arad doesn't just belong to the international commission investigating Nazi crimes in Lithuania, he's also a suspect. Three years ago the State Security Department and the Prosecutor General's office presented him with suspicions [accusations] he had participated in the geneocide against the Lithuanian nation during the Soviet occupation. The charges were presented to him through the Israeli Justice Ministry, where he lives. Arad compared the accusations to revenge, alleging Lithuania is trying to put a stop to investigations of Nazi crimes.

At the end of the CNN program Zuroff returns to the screen talking about the "Special Unit," which is what he calls Lithuanian units which allegedly carried out massacres. "Their specialty was, of course, mass murder," the head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center says.