There is no perceptible antisemitic threat to Lithuanian Jewry, one of the oldest Jewish communities in Europe. Relations between the Jewish minority and the authorities generally remain very good. The issue of the collaboration of some Lithuanians with the Nazis in the slaughter of the large pre-war Jewish community (as manifested in the trial of Aleksandras Lileikis) is, however, a highly sensitive issue. Following considerable international pressure, the Lithuanian authorities are taking belated action against these Lithuanian accomplices of the Nazis.
Demographic data
Total population: 3.8 million
Jewish population: 5,600 (mainly in Vilnius)
Other minorities: minority ethnic groups - including Russians, Poles, Belarusians, Ukrainians, Tatars and Karaites - comprise roughly 20 per cent of the country's citizens
Political data
Political system: parliamentary democracy
Government: following the autumn 1996 parliamentary elections, the first coalition government in Lithuania's history was formed between the Tevynes Sajunga (TS, Conservative Party) and the Lithuanian Christian Democratic Party (LKDP), under Prime Minister Gediminas Vagnorius (TS)
Head of state: President Valdas Adamkus, elected January 1998
Economic data
Per capita GDP January-June 1998: US$1,240 (4,960 litas)
Inflation January-June 1998: 2.6 per cent
Unemployment January-June 1998: 6.2 per cent
The Jewish community of Lithuania is one of the oldest in Europe. Jews have lived here since the fourteenth century and have contributed a great deal to the development of religious thinking and secular, particularly Yiddish, culture. Elijahu, the Gaon of Vilnius, one of the world's greatest religious scholars, lived and worked in Vilnius which, by the seventeenth century, was renowned as a centre of Jewish learning. The 200th anniversary of his death was commemorated in September 1979 (see Legacy of the Second World War, Antisemitic incidents, Publications and media and Countering antisemitism).
On the eve of the Second World War, approximately 250,000 Jews lived in Lithuania. Only 12 per cent of them survived the Holocaust. The Lithuanian Jewish community was one of the hardest hit by Nazism.
Following the post-war period of Soviet rule the situation for Jews improved when Lithuania regained independence in 1990. The genocide of the Jewish people was officially denounced, various Jewish public and state organizations were re-established and government funding was allocated for Jewish cemeteries and sites where Jews were mass murdered.
In June 1997 in Kaunas there was a posthumous exhibition of art by Juozas Juodis, deputy commander of the Lithuanian army and head of the 12th Lithuanian security police battalion which carried out war-time mass killings of Jews in Lithuania and Belarus. Juodis also published the battalion newspaper, 'Volunteer of the East', which contained articles that were hostile to Jews and Poles and praised the 'ethnic cleansing' carried out by the Nazis, and which created a flag for his unit (a swastika, a Lithuanian symbol and a skull). A group of Kaunas intellectuals organized a picket line in front of the exhibition but a representative of the city government told them to disperse, condemning the organizers of the demonstration and praising Juodis's legacy.
In March 1998 the Lithuanian Catholic Church announced its intention of assessing its role in the Holocaust. The secretary-general of the church's Conference of Bishops said it would convene a conference to explore the church's war-time past and to seek closer ties between Lithuania's Catholics and Jews.
On 7 September 1998 Professor Julius Smulkstys, the presidential liaison on Lithuanian-Jewish relations, reported that President Adamkus had established an international commission to examine war crimes committed during the Nazi and Soviet occupations of Lithuania. He said the commission's main function was 'to investigate the Second World War period and the immediate aftermath in order to come up with answers to various questions concerning Jewish and Lithuanian genocide'. The commission will be headed by a member of parliament, Emanuelis Zingeris (see also Parties, organizations, movements).
War crimes
In March 1997 ninety-two members of the Israeli Knesset signed a letter calling on the then Lithuanian president Algirdas Brazauskas to arrest suspected Nazi war criminal Aleksandras Lileikis, eighty-nine, who was in charge of the war-time Volnius security police and allegedly involved in the murder of thousands of Jews in the Vilna ghetto. On 26 May 1997 President Brazauskas wrote to the Knesset chairman reiterating his view that the perpetrators of war crimes must not go unpunished, and referred to specific steps taken by the prosecutor-general's office in that respect. He pointed to the legal and logistical difficulties involved in Lileikis's case.
On 24 June 1997 it was reported that the Lithuanian prosecutor-general had decided to charge Lileikis with genocide. In the following month the case was postponed on account of Lileikis's failing health.
On 5 March 1998, a day after it began, the trial of Lileikas was adjourned by a Vilnius court until 18 May to allow time to find additional witnesses, including a Jewish girl whom Lileikas is said to have saved. Lithuanian Jewish officials believed the authorities were delaying the trial while waiting for Lileikas to die.
On 18 May 1998 the trial was adjourned for a further month after a Holocaust survivor living in the United States claimed Lileikis had saved her life. The date of 1 September 1998 was set for the reconvening of the trial but proceedings were adjourned once again when the defendant failed to appear in court owing to supposedly poor health. On 10 September 1998 the trial was adjourned indefinitely after the court ordered an independent medical examination of the defendant. On 12 October 1998 it was reported that a panel of Lithuanian doctors had found Lileikis fit to stand trial.
On 21 November 1997, it was reported that the prosecutor-general's office had charged Kazys Gimzauskas with the persecution of Jews during his service with the Lithuanian security police. In 1996 Gimzauskas was stripped of US citizenship because of his having provided misleading information about his past. He left the USA before the authorities could deport him and and settled in Lithuania. Gimzauskas, eighty-nine years old, was second-in-command to Lileikis. Both are alleged to have signed documents authorizing the handing over of Jews to be murdered. On 27 February 1998 the prosecutor-general's office said it intended to pursue the charges against Kazys Gimzauskas.
In August 1997 Rimantas Smetona, a member of parliament and chairman of the Lithuanian National Unity Party, asked the prosecutor-general to institute proceedings against Efraim Zuroff, the Israeli respresentative of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. In a statement, Zuroff maintained, among other things, that the participation of prominent Israeli officials and members of the US Jewish community in the then forthcoming Lithuanian celebrations marking the 200th anniversary of the Vilna Gaon's death (see also Antisemitic legacy, Antisemitic incidents, Publications and media and Countering antisemitism) would weaken efforts to compel Lithuania to admit properly to its 'murderous' past. According to Smetona, there were attempts to present the actions of individuals, residents of Lithuania, as crimes committed by the Lithuanian state and the entire population at a time when the country was under occupation.
The following month, speaking at a session of the Lithuanian parliament devoted to the Gaon's commemoration, Oded Ben-Hur, Israel's ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to Lithuania, criticized the Lithuanian authorities for not vigorously prosecuting Nazi war criminals. He said it was in Lithuania's own interest to prove to itself and to the world what was the exact number of collaborators and war criminals. Rimantas Smetona said after the ambassador's address that he felt as though he had had rubbish tipped over him: he was insulted by the allegation that Lithuania had participated in the Holocaust. A second parliamentarian, Vytautas Dudenas, said the ambassador's speech had manifested 'a certain audacity and tactlessness'. A third, Kazys Bobelis, said the ambassador had 'insulted the Lithuanian nation'.
On 3 September 1997 it was reported that Prime Minister Vagnorius had asked the heads of the supreme court and the prosecutor-general's office to speed up the process of reversing the rehabilitation of individuals suspected of genocide. On the same day, the Lithuanian cabinet approved a motion to amend the criminal code thus facilitating the holding of trials involving allegations of genocide.
In the second half of September 1997, the supreme court revoked the 1991 rehabilitation of Petras Kriksciunas, who allegedly participated in the killings of unarmed persons in Vilnius during the Nazi occupation. This was the first instance of an abrogated rehabilitation since 1995, when amendments to the rehabilitation law were adopted. Sixteen other such cases remain before the supreme court.
On 28 July 1998 it was reported that the Lithuanian authorities had stripped the pardons granted twenty-two citizens convicted during the Soviet era of crimes against the state. The move came after Israel presented evidence that the Lithuanians in question might have collaborated with the Nazis in the slaughter of Lithuanian Jewry. Some 50,000 people convicted of crimes against the Soviet state were officially rehabilitated in 1990: Israel later submitted to the Lithuanian authorities a list of 100 people whom it feared had acted with the Nazis in the murder of Jews.
In Vilnius isolated attacks on foreigners - including French, Japanese and Kazak diplomats who in several cases have required extensive medical treatment - have recently occurred. The authorities have taken steps to curtail such attacks through an increased police presence.
In January 1997 Lithuania ratified the 1951 Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees.
On 5 August 1997 Prime Minister Gediminas Vagnorius instructed the state security department to investigate press reports about the circulation of racist and antisemitic leaflets as well as the existence of racist and antisemitic organizations in Lithuania.
On 11 August 1997 the Lithuanian parliamentary speaker, Vytautas Landsbergis, told a news conference that 'apparently these [far-right] forces are inspired and planned by the secret services of a foreign country, or perhaps more than one . . . They are intended to create an image of Lithuania as being full of Nazi, xenophobic and antisemitic organizations. These are phony organizations with phony literature.' On 25 August 1997 Landsbergis's first deputy, Andrius Kubilius, wrote to the state security department that the spreading of ethnic, racial, religious or social hatred was incompatible with the constitution and that 'an attempt is being made to stir up xenophobia, ethnic discord and feuds'.
However, in response to Prime Minister Vagnorius's request, the state security department told Latvian television reporters that there were several unregistered 'suspicious' organizations in the country, singling out in particular the Lietuvos Nacional-Socialistines Vienybes Sajunga (LNSUS, Lithuanian Alliance of National Socialist Unity).
LNSUS, founded in November 1993, is active in Siauliai and publishes the newsletter Nacijos Balsas (Voice of the Nation). This paramilitary, ultra-nationalist organization is believed to have about forty members and is headed by Mindaugas Murza, a twenty-three-year-old former serviceman of the Lithuanian voluntary defence service. Its secretary is Romualdas Rakucevicius. Both men have previous convictions, one for possessing ammunition, the other for inflicting bodily harm. The prosecutor-general's office and the state security department both say they are investigating the activities of LNSUS.
In addition, state security department officials say they have had information on other (unnamed) organizations with similar leanings which are active in Vilnius, Kaunas and elsewhere. Some of these organizations are registered with local councils.
On 7 August 1997 it was reported that the state security department had instructed LNSUS to terminate its anti-constitutional activities. On the same day Murza told a Lithuanian daily newspaper that his organization had 160 members and that Nacijos Balsas was a one-page bulletin, the first issue of which had appeared in February 1997 (the opening issues were published with a print-run of 600-800 copies, while the print-run of the most recent issue was 200-400 copies). Murza said: 'We are not going to discontinue anything. We will respond depending on the way we are treated. If force is used, we will go underground.'
In the same month LNSUS wrote an open letter to a Jewish member of parliament, Emanuelis Zingeris (see also Countering antisemitism), who, concerned by the Aleksandras Lileikis case (see Legacy of the Second World War), sought to amend the Lithuanian criminal code concerning the prosecution of suspected Nazi war criminals. The letter asked: 'Why is it that you never breathe a word about your fellow Jews who committed crimes and acts of genocide against the Lithuanian nation?' It argued that the majority of the pre-war Lithuanian Communist Party members were Jews, named Jewish KGB officers who were allegedly involved in the deportation and torture of Lithuanians and pointed out the cruelty of Jews against the Palestinians.
On 4 May 1998 Vytautas Landsbergis said he believed LNSUS had been 'ordered' to encourage discord in the country. He feared that, due to its activities, Lithuania might acquire the reputation of being a country in which Nazism was experiencing a rebirth. Several days earlier the Polish newspaper Trybuna had declared that it would be 'at least ill-considered' not to take into account an 800-strong organization 'determined to defend the homeland against foreigners', and stressed that LNSUS is hostile to ethnic minorities, i.e. Poles, Russians and Jews.
In August 1998 the justice ministry refused for the third time to register LNSUS, on the grounds that its flag depicts a white swastika on a red backgound, that the organization publishes Nacijos Balsas, known for its intolerance of national minorities, that it promotes Nazi ideals and that it has refused to provide a list of its members as required by the constitution.
On 10 September 1998 the director-general of the state security department, Mecys Laurinkus, cautioned Murza in connection with 'unacceptable' actions he had committed which 'incited ethnic discord'. The caution followed an attempt by members of Murza's group to stage a protest against the charges brought against Aleksandras Lileikis (see Legacy of the Second World War). The protesters disobeyed police orders not to display posters, some of which denounced 'Zionism' and the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
On 25 July 1997 a memorial stone was erected on the site of a massacre of Jews in Vilnius's Subacius Street. Two days later the stone was defaced.
On 4 August 1997 the grave of the Vilna Gaon in Vilnius was desecrated (for the September commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the Gaon's death, see Antisemitic legacy, Legacy of the Second World War, Publications and media and Countering antisemitism). The then president, Algirdas Brazauskas, condemned the desecration and ordered an investigation.
On 14 August 1997, at a football match between Zalgiris (Vilnius) and HaPoel (Beer Sheva, Israel), about eighty fans, including skinheads, shouted anti-Jewish slogans and placed a pro-Hizbullah banner on the stadium fence. (This resembled a similar incident on 20 April 1994 at the same stadium during a Lithuania v. Israel match.) Lithuanian army recruits removed the banner and surrounded the hostile group to prevent any violence. Lithuanian soccer president Vytautas Dirmeikis is reported to have said in the presence of numerous individuals during the match: 'That's what you Jews deserve!' He is also said to have offended two Jewish employees by saying: 'It's a shame the Germans didn't wipe you out. Now it's too late for that - I can't pull out a pistol and shoot you.'
On 21 August 1997 in Klaipeda the Israeli ambassador opened the so-called Path of the Righteous of the World's Peoples. Within a month, unidentified vandals had desecrated the memorial inscription.
On 8 September 1997 Vytautas Sustauskas, a city councillor and leader of the Kaunas-based Lithuanian Freedom Union, told a press conference he was organizing a crusade against Jews, demanding that Jews be fired from public service and that those Jews who had participated in genocide against Lithuanians be prosecuted. These statements were condemned by Culture Minister Saulius Saltenis and the Kaunas mayor, Henrikas Tamulis.
It was reported on 22 April 1998 that police had removed a flag with a swastika from a house in the city of Klaipeda. They said it was likely that neo-Nazis had raised the flag to mark the anniversary of Hitler's birth.
The major newspapers of TS, Lietuvos Aidas (Echo of Lithuania) and Valstieciu Laikrastis (Farmers' Newspaper), continue to print anti-Jewish articles. Recently they have been mainly examples of the so-called 'double genocide' thesis, according to which Jews carried out genocide against Lithuanians during the Soviet occupation, and in response Lithuanians participated in genocide of the Jews.
Kardas, the journal of the association of Lithuanian reserve officers, regularly publishes antisemitic material. The weeklies Dienovydis and Atgimimas also frequently publish such material.
Antisemitic leaflets, papers and brochures have occasionally been distributed in broad daylight in public places. On 1 September 1997, the 200th anniversary of the death of the Vilna Gaon (see Antisemitic legacy, Legacy of the Second World War, Antisemitic incidents and Countering antisemitism), an antisemitic leaflet signed 'A. Ausrunas' was distributed in the central post office.
In the autumn of 1997 a glossily produced antisemitic brochure by J. P. Kedys, a Lithuanian resident of Australia, entitled 'The Goals of Zionism', was distributed in Vilnius's Cathedral Square after mass.
On 18 November 1997 parliament amended the code of administrative violations and introduced charges for inciting national, racial and religious hatred. The amendment states, among other things, that the setting up of an organization promoting national, racial or religious hatred, or participation in the activities of such organizations, is punishable by a fine of 3,000-10,000 litas (US$750-2,500).
In September 1997 the 200th anniversary of the death of the Vilna Gaon was commemorated by the authorities and the public (see also Antisemitic legacy, Legacy of the Second World War, Antisemitic incidents and Publications and media), and a number of Jewish cultural events - including a performance marking the fifty-fifth anniversary of the Vilnius ghetto theatre - were visited in large numbers by Lithuanians. In addition, the government saw to the tidying up of Holocaust sites and Jewish cemeteries. An academic gathering related to anniversary entitled 'History and genocide in Lithuania' was held in the coastal resort of Nida. One of the Lithuanian organizers said the gathering was part of 'an unprecedented quest to establish what led to the murder of the Jewish people here'.
In September 1997 Lithuania observed its annual commemoration of Holocaust victims by honouring Christians who risked their lives to save Jews during the Nazi occupation. Then president Brazauskas decorated twenty-seven Lithuanians with the Life Rescuer Cross.
In June 1998 President Adamkus appointed Julius Smulkstys,
his chief adviser and a former professor of political science whose academic
interests include the Holocaust in Lithuania, as presidential liaison on
Lithuanian-Jewish relations (see Legacy of the Second World War).
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Institute for Jewish Policy Research and American Jewish Committee
© JPR 1999
