A Klaipeda District Court verdict which found that signs with swastikas were not Nazi German symbols but parts of the Lithuanian historical heritage insults Holocaust victims, Simon Wiesenthal Center Jerusalem director Efraim Zuroff says.

On Tudesday the court dismissed the case for administrative law violations against four youths who brought signs portraying swastikas to a February 16 [Lithuanian Independence Day] procession.

Zuroff said this verdict "really will encourage Lithuanian fascists to expand their activity in the country."

"Permission to use the swastika sends a clear signal to local residents who suffered from the Nazis that they are not wanted in their native country. Lithuanian judges have again shown their clear bias by defending the perpetrators of Holocaust crimes rather than the victims. We call on the Lithuanian courts to reverse this insulting verdict," the Simon Wiesenthal press release quoted Efraim Zuroff, called a Nazi hunter, as saying.

[photo of marchers with swastikas signs in Klaipeda, © DELFI phot: J.Markevičius]

According to the newspaper Lietuvos Rytas, young men with shields [signs] with swastikas stuck on them tried to join a holiday procession of Klaipeda residents. Not all of the holiday participants liked this procession. The police were called. Officers issued citations and turned material over to the court.

At the first court hearing in April, the young men brought physical
evidence with them, the shields [signs] with the swastikas. They argued that these were protected historical heritage.

"These aren't Nazi symbols, they're valuable symbols of the cultural heritage of the Balts, symbols of our ancestors, which were later commandeered from our ancestors and arrogantly counterfeited by another nation. They don't symbolize fascism, they symbolize the order of the universe," Milvydas Juskauskas, arriving from Vilnius to support tje like-minded defendants, told the court.

The Vilnius resident submitted [Lithuanian] Cultural Ministry records on ancient rings, fasteners and bracelets found at Kernave [ancient capital of pagan Lithuania] and interwar era national monuments in Lithuania and Latvia with representations of swastikas.

Police were not interested in these records.

Police confiscated the shields [signs] with swastikas again when the youths publicly displayed them outside the court following the verdict, and issued citations to two of them for disturbing the public order.