Lithuanian national hero was ‘enthusiastic’ Jew killer, local Jews say
Community urges local authorities to take down plaque honouring anti-Soviet fighter Jonas Noreika
Leaders of Lithuania’s Jewish community asked authorities in Vilnius remove a plaque honouring an anti-Soviet fighter whose granddaughter said killed Jews.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community last week posted on its website a statement calling for the removal of the plaque for Jonas Noreika, that displayed prominently on the external wall of the library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences in central Vilnius.
“We are asking for the plaque to Noreika to be taken down before the Lithuanian Day of Remembrance of Jewish Victims of Genocide on September 23,” the statement read, because, “information has come to our attention demonstrating Noreika was a direct and enthusiastic participant in perpetrating the Holocaust in Lithuania.”
The Simon Wiesenthal Center for years has maintained that Noreika, who died in 1947 while he was held prisoner by Russian authorities, was a war criminal. But he has enjoyed a hero status in Lithuania, where a school has been named for him and where then president Vytautas Landsbergis in 2000 attended his funeral.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community’s statement, however, follows the publication last month of an investigation by Noreika’s Chicago-born granddaughter, Silvia Foti, who is a writer and journalist.
Foti researched her grandfather’s history for a biography that her mother, Noreika’s daughter, asked her to write about the man. She published her conclusions on July 14 on the website Salon, in an article titled: “My grandfather wasn’t a Nazi-fighting war hero — he was a brutal collaborator.”
In it, she traces her discovery that her father, who in 1941 became the head of Siauliai County under the German Nazi occupation, moved into the home of a Jewish family after its members had been killed, presumably at his order.
Simon Dovidavičius, a local historian specializing in the study of the Holocaust, told Foti that her grandfather, as captain, taught his Lithuanian soldiers how to exterminate Jews efficiently: How to sequester them, march them into the woods, force them to dig their own graves and shove them into pits after shooting them. “My grandfather was a master educator,” she wrote.
Within three weeks, 2,000 Jews had been killed in Plungė, half the town’s population, “and where my grandfather led the uprising,” she wrote. “By the end of the trip I came to believe that my grandfather must have sanctioned the murders of 2,000 Jews in Plungė, 5,500 Jews in Šiauliai and 7,000 in Telšiai”
Thank you for helping to make Jewish News the leading source of news and opinion for the UK Jewish community. Today we're asking for your invaluable help to continue putting our community first in everything we do.
For as little as £5 a month you can help sustain the vital work we do in celebrating and standing up for Jewish life in Britain.
Jewish News holds our community together and keeps us connected. Like a synagogue, it’s where people turn to feel part of something bigger. It also proudly shows the rest of Britain the vibrancy and rich culture of modern Jewish life.
You can make a quick and easy one-off or monthly contribution of £5, £10, £20 or any other sum you’re comfortable with.
100% of your donation will help us continue celebrating our community, in all its dynamic diversity...
Engaging
Being a community platform means so much more than producing a newspaper and website. One of our proudest roles is media partnering with our invaluable charities to amplify the outstanding work they do to help us all.
Celebrating
There’s no shortage of oys in the world but Jewish News takes every opportunity to celebrate the joys too, through projects like Night of Heroes, 40 Under 40 and other compelling countdowns that make the community kvell with pride.
Pioneering
In the first collaboration between media outlets from different faiths, Jewish News worked with British Muslim TV and Church Times to produce a list of young activists leading the way on interfaith understanding.
Campaigning
Royal Mail issued a stamp honouring Holocaust hero Sir Nicholas Winton after a Jewish News campaign attracted more than 100,000 backers. Jewish Newsalso produces special editions of the paper highlighting pressing issues including mental health and Holocaust remembrance.
Easy access
In an age when news is readily accessible, Jewish News provides high-quality content free online and offline, removing any financial barriers to connecting people.
Voice of our community to wider society
The Jewish News team regularly appears on TV, radio and on the pages of the national press to comment on stories about the Jewish community. Easy access to the paper on the streets of London also means Jewish News provides an invaluable window into the community for the country at large.
We hope you agree all this is worth preserving.
