In April 2019, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance warned Lithuania about its own state historical institution.

The statement was not a Plenary consensus decision. But neither was it marginal. Its signature block opened with Ambassador Georges Santer, then Chair of IHRA; Professor Yehuda Bauer, its Honorary Chair; and Dr. Wichert ten Have, its adviser. They were followed by the sitting and former chairs of IHRA’s expert working groups and committees.

They named the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania. They named Jonas Noreika. They wrote that documentary sources indicated his key role in the ghettoization and expropriation of Jews in the Šiauliai district. They criticized the Centre for suggesting that he had rescued Jews without evidence of his direct participation in any rescue. And they connected the issue to IHRA’s own Working Definition of Holocaust Denial and Distortion.

Seven years have passed.

Lithuania remains an IHRA Member Country. The warning remains on IHRA’s website. Lithuania’s Member Country page remains elsewhere on the same site. There is no public record explaining whether the warning was answered, whether the Centre corrected anything, or whether IHRA considers the matter resolved.

That is the decision IHRA must now make.

It should decide publicly whether Lithuania has addressed the substance of the 2019 warning. If it has not, IHRA should refer the matter to its expert bodies, ask Lithuania for a written response, and publish that response beside the documentary record.

This month gives the question urgency.

On August 26, a Lithuanian court is scheduled to hear the case of Artur Fridman, a Lithuanian Jewish citizen facing a 220-page indictment over a Facebook post written at his grandfather’s grave. His grandfather........

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