Vilnius City Council member Mark Adam Harold is part of a municipal event at the Vilnius Old Town Hall for Tuesday, November 29, 2016, to seek public comment on a proposal to rename the street named after Lithuanian Holocaust collaborator and chief of the Lithuanian Activist Front based in Berlin in 1941, Kazys Škirpa.
Harold’s facebook page contains the instructions: “If you would like the opportunity to speak during the public forum at Rotušė, Didzioji g. 31, on November 29th at 18:00, please tick this box. The first twenty applicants will be given one minute each from the podium.”
A separate post by a South African Litvak living in the United States contains more detail:
“220,000 Lithuanian Jews were murdered at the instigation of Škirpa and his cronies. The country of Lithuania is littered with honors for Škirpa, and for other murderers of Jews. Multi-year efforts to have a main Street in Lithuania’s capital city of Vilnius, currently named named to honor the Škirpa, is now culminating in public hearings by the Vilnius City Council.
“The Vilnius City Council was unable to decide for themselves if honoring Jew murderers is appropriate.
“Here is a link to a comment form where you can provide your opinion to the Vilnius City Council. It is in English, you just need to answer and hit submit. Please try to be somewhat respectful:
The event is advertised as a discussion with Vytautas Landsbergis, Sergey Kanovich, Darius Udrys, Lithuanian historians and others. Public comment will be sought afterwards. Conspicuously absent from the speakers’ roster: any representative of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, the International Commission on Assessing the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes in Lithuania or even Vilnius mayor Remgijus Šimašius, who hasn’t kept his earlier commitments in writing to name a site in Vilnius by October 20 for erecting a statue to commemorate the heroes of World War II in Lithuania, those who rescued Jews. The Lithuanian Jewish Community is to issue a statement to be read out loud at the event.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community invites members of the public and representatives of interested institutions to submit their comments per the form linked above and to attend the event.
More event information here.
Škirpa with Hitler celebrating the latter’s 50th birthday
April 21, 1939