Jews being marched from their ghetto in the centre of Vilnius (today’s Old Town) to the Paneriai (Ponary) forest outside the city for execution, 1942/1943. Paneriai is an area of wooded hills on the outskirts of Vilnius, where in 1941-1944 60,000 to 70,000 Jews from Vilnius were executed.  - Drawing by Fajwel Segal.

Jewish victims of execution before the mass burial at Paneriai, Vilnius, 1943.

Two Lithuanian ministers have had to endure partly strong criticism from Jewish quarters in recent weeks. It all started when the Minister of Justice, Remigijus Šimašius, on his internet blog the 2^nd of December (see http://simasius.blogas.lt/) tried to defend and explain the Lithuanians' attitudes to Jews before and during World War II. The blog led to strong reactions from, among others, World Jewish Congress (see http://sdjewishworld.wordpress.com/2009/12/04/world-jewish-congress-criticizes-lithuanian-officials-revisionist-view-of-the -Holocaust /). World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder called the Lithuanian official's statements "disingenuous" and a distortion of the historical facts. Lauder declared: "Such rewriting of history is totally misleading and unacceptable. Instead of recognizing that many ethnic Lithuanians actively collaborated with the Nazi occupiers to round up Jewish citizens Minister Šimašius chooses to placate the revisionist in his country. It beggars belief that someone should today still argue that anti-Semitism played no role in the extermination of Lithuanian Jewry when the collaboration of so many Lithuanians with the Nazi occupiers is well-documented.” 

Then, just before Christmas, Lithuania's Foreign Minister, Vygaudas Ušackas, took part in a conference in Jerusalem with the theme "The Legacy of World War II and the Holocaust." The Minister's participation and the conference itself was afterwards discussed in an op-ed article in the Jerusalem Post, written by Efraim Zuroff, the Chief Nazi-hunter of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre and the director of its Israel Office. He said about the conference that it "focused solely on the recent efforts in numerous post-communist countries two rewrite the history of the Holocaust and attempt to obtain official recognition that the crimes of Communism are just as bad or worse than those of the Nazis." In his blog, Mr. Zuroff also attacked the organizers' “decision to give Ušackas a very respectable platform to once again, in typical fashion, distort the history of the Holocaust and escape the harsh criticism that Lithuanian actions deserve."

You will find Mr. Zuroff’s op-ed article in Jerusalem Post at: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1261364476536

For those of you who would like to read more to get a broader perspective on the issue, we recommend the website http://www.holocaustinthebaltics.com/. The site is edited by Professor Dovid Katz (www.dovidkatz.net) of the Vilnius Yiddish Institute, Vilnius University. He came to this topic after nearly two decades of expeditions in Eastern Europe to explore the Yiddish dialectology, folklore and oral history of survivors in the region.

The book “Jews, Lithuanians and the Holocaust”, written by Alfonsas Eidintas, a well-established diplomat and scholar-historian, is also truly worthwhile reading.

Vygaudas Ušackas

Remigijus Šimašius

Ronald S. Lauder

Efraim Zuroff

Dovid Katz

The chief of Lithuania’s secret service resigns

The CIA built one of its secret European prisons inside this exclusive riding academy outside Vilnius, Lithuania, a current Lithuanian government official and a former U.S. intelligence official told ABC News last November.

By Craig Whitlock

Washington Post Foreign Service 

BERLIN -- The chief of Lithuania's secret service resigned last November, the apparent casualty of an official investigation into whether the Baltic country allowed the CIA to operate a secret prison for terrorism suspects.

Povilas Malakauskas, director of the State Security Department, did not give a reason for quitting. But Arvydas Anusauskas, the head of a parliamentary committee that is investigating reports of a CIA prison in Lithuania, said the resignation was "partially connected" to the probe.

Anusauskas said that the spy chief had been "ambiguous" when the parliamentary committee began investigating the CIA prison allegations last summer. "If the responses we had requested had been presented to us on time and more thoroughly, there probably would have been no need to hold an investigation," Anusauskas told reporters Monday.

The departure came three days after former Lithuanian president Rolandas Paksas testified that the spy agency had approached him in 2003 for permission to bring foreign terrorism suspects into the country. Paksas said he denied the request but accused the spy agency of unaccountable behavior and blamed it for his political downfall.

"It is difficult for me to say if the prison existed," Paksas told the Baltic News Service. He added, however: "I know that the desire existed to get people suspected of terrorism brought to Lithuania."

Lithuanian leader 'impeached' for refusing CIA

Lithuania's former president says he was impeached because of his refusal to let the CIA set up secret prisons in the country. 

Rolandas Paksas made the remark during a parliamentary hearing into claims that at least eight al-Qaeda terror suspects were held by the US Central Intelligence Agency at a facility just outside the Lithuanian capital Vilnius between 2004 and 2005. 

"When I was a president, I knew that there were people who wanted to bring terror suspects to Lithuania. I think that my principal disagreement to do this led to the subsequent anti-presidential campaign and impeachment,” said Paksas. 

Paksas explained that in spring 2003, the then-head of Lithuania's State Security Department, Megys Laurinkus, asked him if it were possible to allow the CIA to transfer some terror suspects to the country unofficially. 

According to the former president, Laurinkus hinted that a positive answer would please foreign partners. Paksas said, however, that he had refused to take that option. 

Laurinkus has confirmed that he held such a conversation with Paksas. 

“I informed Mr. Paksas about the present situation and about the possibility of such a request which could be received by Lithuania,” he said. 

However, the former security head said that he did not want to link the conversation with Paksas' impeachment and his following resignation in 2004. 

Around six months after Paksas refused the proposal, he was accused of illegally granting a Russian entrepreneur, named Yury Borisov, in exchange for sponsorship of his presidential campaign. 

In April 2004, the former president was impeached by the parliament. 

Reports of a secret CIA prison in Lithuania first emerged in an ABC report last August. 

Lithuanian officials initially denied the claims, but the country's president later called for a full probe.