Prosecutor General Responds to Lithuanian Jewish Community Call to Release the List of Suspected Holocaust Perps

March 2, 2016 No. 37

Office of Prosecutor General
of the Republic of Lithuania

February 29, 2016 No. 17.2.-2521
re: February 11, 2016, No. 179

To: Faina Kukliansky, attorney, chairwoman,
Lithuanian Jewish Community

Re: possible actions in connection with a list compiled by the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of the Residents of Lithuania of people suspected of committing or otherwise abetting the murder of people of Jewish ethnicity during World War II

Directed by the leadership of the Office of Prosecutor General, the Criminal Prosecution Department has examined your letter of February 11, 2016, to the Prosecutor General of the Republic of Lithuania and the director general of the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of the Residents of Lithuania (henceforth CSGRRL) containing proposals by the Lithuanian Jewish Community on possible actions in connection with the list of people alleged to have committed or otherwise abetted the genocide of people of Jewish ethnicity during World War II compiled by the CSGRRL, and having considered these suggestions, we affirm that the Prosecutor General’s Office, operating within its area of competence and under the criminal code of the Republic of Lithuania, and under the law of the Republic of Lithuania of May 2, 1990, on the restoration of rights of people repressed for opposing the occupational regimes, after receiving from the CSGRRL a detailed list based on complete archival data of people alleged to have taken part in the genocide of the Jewish people, will assess all information received. After assessing it and only if there is a legal foundation for beginning a pretrial investigation of one of the aforementioned people on the list for the aforementioned criminal actions, for which there is no statute of limitations for criminal prosecution, the prosecutor will undertake the appropriate decisions for proceeding with the case.

After investigation of the aforementioned list, based on article 6 of the law on the restoration of the rights of people repressed for opposing the occupational regimes, the Prosecutor General will also make a decision using the powers granted under this law on whether to present to the Supreme Court of Lithuania requests for renewing deliberation in cases of the restoration of civil rights (rehabilitation) regarding those people who were convicted during the Soviet occupational period or otherwise repressed for participating in the mass murder of people of Jewish ethnicity and who were rehabilitated based on the aforementioned law of the Republic of Lithuania of May 2, 190 [sic], asking such people be de-rehabilitated (that earlier decisions by the Prosecutor General for the restoration of their civil rights be annulled).

It should be noted in consideration of objective factors and circumstances that there are limited possibilities for the initiation and opening of criminal investigations of crimes against humanity and war crimes against unarmed Jewish and other civilians in the manner described and during that period, but that de-rehabilitation of people convicted during the Soviet period of these types of crimes and of people otherwise repressed began in the Republic of Lithuania on March 25, 1998, when a new version of the May 2, 1990 law of the Republic of Lithuania on the restoration of rights of people repressed for opposing the occupational regimes came into force, and that this de-rehabilitation process continues to the present time.

We would be grateful to the Lithuanian Jewish Community for any help at all which would be significant in initiating, carrying out and continuing the abovementioned legal processes.

[signed] Rimvydas Valentukevičius,
prosecutor,
Criminal Prosecution Department