Believe Lithuania?
This article constitutes a bill of indictment. The defendant is the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania — (LGGRTC) — a state institution whose historical conclusions now carry the force of criminal law. The charge is serial institutional fraud. The evidence is the Centre’s own record.
The question is not whether the LGGRTC has made errors. Errors are correctable. The question is whether an institution that has issued demonstrably false historical conclusions on case after case — and has never voluntarily corrected a single one — retains any presumption of credibility when it issues its next conclusion. The answer is no. And that answer has direct consequences for the criminal prosecution of Artur Fridman.
Each fraud follows an identical pattern: the LGGRTC issues a conclusion protecting a Lithuanian national figure from Holocaust accountability. The conclusion is contradicted by documentary evidence. The Centre does not correct it.
Here is the rap sheet.
Count One: Jonas Noreika — Declared Innocent, Then Declared a Rescuer
In 2015, the LGGRTC concluded that Jonas Noreika was not involved in the mass murder of Jews. Noreika signed orders establishing the Šiauliai ghetto and expropriating Jewish property. Approximately 14,500 Jews were murdered under his authority. In December 2019, the Centre went further and claimed Noreika had organized “a Jew rescue network” — based on a report compiled by a geologist serving as the Centre’s data protection officer. No rescued Jews were identified. Lithuania’s own Presidential Commission rejected the finding. Silvia Foti, Noreika’s own granddaughter, published Storm in the Land of Rain documenting how her grandfather organized the murder of Jews. The LGGRTC maintained its position. The LGGRTC asserts Noreika knew nothing, saw nothing, heard nothing — and simultaneously claims he was secretly rescuing Jews. From what? Himself?
Count Two: Jonas Noreika — Constitutional Absurdity
The Lithuanian government declared that Noreika is constitutionally entitled to the presumption of complete innocence because he was never convicted during his lifetime. By that standard, neither Hitler nor Stalin can be called criminals. The LGGRTC also argued that Noreika did not understand the purpose of the ghettos he ordered established. Lithuania does not apply this standard uniformly: the writer Cvirka, also never convicted, was declared a Soviet collaborator. The presumption protects only Lithuanian perpetrators of crimes against Jews. It does not protect collaborators with the Soviet Union.
Count Three: Brazaitis — “Exonerated by the United States”
Lithuanian state institutions repeatedly asserted that the United States had “completely exonerated” Juozas Ambrazevicius-Brazaitis, acting prime minister of Lithuania’s Provisional Government in 1941. The claim referred to a U.S. immigration investigation that ended when Brazaitis died. An administrative file closure is not exoneration. Congressman Brad Sherman exposed this fabrication in letters to Lithuania’s prime minister and ambassador. A sitting member of the United States Congress told Lithuania it was lying. Lithuania has not corrected the claim.
Count Four: Škirpa — “Not a Collaborator”
In a June 2024 report, the LGGRTC concluded that Kazys Škirpa was not a Nazi collaborator. Škirpa founded the Lithuanian Activist Front, whose published........
