Juozas Ambrazevicius -
Brazaitis is no hero

Darius Udrys

Opinion: Darius Udrys

If there’s one thing civilized people should all be able to agree upon, one would think that it would be not to make heroes out of Nazi collaborators. Yet here in Lithuania we are about to witness just such a moral travesty.

Somebody apparently decided it would be a good idea to move the remains of Juozas Ambrazevicius-Brazaitis, acting prime minister of Lithuania during the first months of the Nazi occupation, from the United States to Lithuania. Buried previously in Putnam, Connecticut, he has been exhumed and will be reinterred in Kaunas this Sunday with as much fanfare as can be mustered among the clueless and the callous.

Ambrazevicius-Brazaitis is no hero.

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Well said Dr. Udrys

Grant Gochin·
Well said Dr. Udrys.
These actions by the Lithuanian Government and religious institutions will stand as a mark of shame on Lithuania for another generation. The commemoration of the facilitator of mass murder is a heinous offense against all civilized people.
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Thank you, God, that Darius Udrys can speak out at least about this obvious attempt by the Lithuanian government to "double-game" this Nazi collaborator

Geoff Vasil·Thank you, God, that Darius Udrys and the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum can speak out at least about this obvious attempt by the Lithuanian government to "double-game" this Nazi collaborator.

As I understood the issue, the Brazaitis family has been pushing for this since forever. Initially it was supposed to be a private ceremony. How the Lithuanian state got mixed up in this, I don't know.

It's a little hard for me, as what I consider myself to be, a rational person, to believe that Brazaitis-Ambrazevicius was somehow a misguided young man who initially believed Nazi promises (following the handover of Memel?) and became disenchanted later and formed an "anti-Nazi resistance." His unelected "government" was formed by Nazi supporters in Berlin. He "hid" in Germany when things got hot in Lithuania. He signed off on the creation of the TDA, Auxiliary Police and the Kaunas concentration camp/ghetto. After the war, writing under a pseudonym, from the safety of occupied West Germany, he cried about "the loss of a people," but not about the Jews he helped murder. He seems to have created organizations on paper but not to have done anything to stop the Nazis. Like so many war criminals, he seems to have become an "anti-Nazi" sometime in late 1945. Maybe Hitler himself was also an "anti-Nazi?" At least Hitler did more to stop the German war machine, subverting it from within and exposing it to Allied attack. 

It IS a travesty that this dyed-in-the-wool Lithuanian Nazi is being commemorated by the Lithuanian state and the Catholic Church and the City of Kaunas. If the Kubilius government believes it is alright to commemorate Holocaust perpetrators and that ethnic cleansing is acceptable, someone outside Lithuania ought to set them straight. What a shame.