Lithuania, Poland, and Congress (Part 2)

In Part 1, I showed that Lithuania has articulated a governing doctrine of public honor: when disqualifying facts emerge about a commemorated figure, the responsible authority is obliged to act. Lithuania applied that doctrine to a Polish cardinal with legal threats and a one-month deadline. It has refused to apply the same doctrine to its own Holocaust-linked national canon. That double standard condemned the prosecution of Artur Fridman before the trial even began.

This article addresses a harder problem. Lithuania’s dishonesty in this field does not stop at its own borders. It reaches directly into the integrity of its relationship with the United States.

The case is Juozas Ambrazevičius-Brazaitis.

This is where hypocrisy hardens into something worse.

Congressman Brad Sherman wrote to Lithuania’s prime minister in September 2019. He did not merely disagree with Lithuania’s treatment of Brazaitis. He accused a Lithuanian state institution of a misstatement of facts and misuse of US Congressional documents. Sherman asked the government either to provide specific and credible references proving Brazaitis had been exonerated or to publicly retract the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre’s claims. He explained that the Center had falsely asserted that the United States Congress and the INS had “completely exonerated” Brazaitis. He further explained that the American investigation ended because Brazaitis died and that the available record did not support Lithuania’s laundering narrative.

Sherman’s letter laid out the factual record in detail. The US Department of Justice had investigated Brazaitis for his responsibility, as Minister of Education and acting Prime Minister under the 1941 Provisional Government, for the issuance and enforcement of repressive edicts against the Jewish minority. Brazaitis was unable to testify because he had suffered his fourth heart attack and was hospitalized. He died on October 24, 1974. The review committee concluded that further investigation appeared unwarranted. The Immigration and Naturalization Service removed his name from its active list. That is administrative closure after death — not exoneration.

Sherman also noted that the 1974 investigation was cursory — conducted only under pressure from Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman, who herself accused the INS of a “half-hearted, dilatory investigation” run by “three........

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