July 15 was the 82nd anniversary of the liquidation of the Shavl ghetto. In July of 1941 two ghettos were set up in the northern Lithuanian city to imprison around 6,000 Jews from there and surrounding locations. Thousands were tortured and murdered there. By Himmler’s order the ghetto was renamed a concentration camp in 1943. From July 15 to 19, 1944, the 3,000 or so survivors were sent to Dachau and Stutthof concentration camps where the majority were murdered and the Shavl ghettos were closed.

Members of the Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community gathered at the stone stele marking the entrance to the ghetto to remember both anniversaries on July 15 with a minute of silence, flowers, stones and candles to remember the victims.

This was followed by a film at the Povilas Višinskis Public Library. Professor Hektoras Vitkus from Klaipėda University spoke about the prevailing circumstance when the Nazis set up the two ghettos in the Lithuanian documentary. He said the city had a population of about 14,000 Jews on June 26, 1941.

The testimony of late Holocaust survivor and author Markas Petuchauskas was then presented. His testimony is well known in Lithuanian Holocaust historiography and the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., and the Vilna Gaon Jewish History Museum in Lithuania both conserve recordings of his testimony.

by Grant Arthur Gochin

In 2000 the Lithuanian parliament or Seimas voted to make the 1941 declaration a legal act of the state, then reversed itself within a week. In 2026 the demand to finish the job is back.

On June 19, 2026, the Lithuanian parliament hosted a conference which reconstructed June of 1941 without the Jews murdered during it. I documented that event in They Rewrote History before Our Eyes. The conference was the visible, scholarly face of a longer project. Its legislative face is older, quieter, and now on the move again.

On September 12, 2000, the Seimas adopted a law recognizing the Provisional Government’s June 23, 1941 declaration, Restoration of Independence, as a legal act of the Republic of Lithuania. The vote was 48 in favor, none against and three abstentions, and the official record lists it among laws adopted rather than draft legislation (Seimas record, September 12, 2000).

The declaration that law would canonize carries a list of signatory ministers. One of them is the minister of communal economy, the architect Vytautas Landsbergis-Žemkalnis–father of Vytautas Landsbergis, who chaired the Seimas in 2000.

by Grant Gochin, June 24, 2026

Lithuania condemns Russian falsification of history. On June 19, its own parliament provided the screen for another falsification.

Holocaust revisionism was not whispered in a corridor of the Lithuanian parliament. It was projected onto the wall of the Hall of the Act of 11 March.

On June 19, 2026, the Seimas hosted an international conference marking the eighty-fifth anniversary of the 1941 Lithuanian uprising. The official announcement promised a discussion based on “sources and historical analysis,” rather than later stereotypes. The program listed the speaker of the Seimas, senior politicians, members of parliament and historians. This was not a private gathering in a rented hotel room. It carried the location, publicity and institutional prestige of the Lithuanian legislature. (Seimas conference program)

One presentation was delivered by Roman Kuzmyn of Lviv Polytechnic National University. Its subject was the supposed similarities and differences between the 1941 uprisings in Lithuania and Western Ukraine.

A small group marked the 85th anniversary of the beginning of the Holocaust in Lithuania at the Ponar Memorial Complex yesterday.

The Holocaust began in late June of 1941. Withing a few months about 95% of all Jews in Lithuania had been murdered.

Writer and director of the Vilna Gaon Museum Sergejus Kanovičius said: “Words can never express our respect for those who were murdered as well as prayer does. Their memory will always live in our hearts.”

Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky said: “Those gathered here today are the people who don’t need salutes from an honor guard or ceremonies planned in the finest detail in order to understand that the massacre of Jews begun 85 years ago was a tragedy for all of Lithuania, not just for our people.”

Israeli ambassador to Lithuania Shelly Hugler Livne said it was horrible people hadn’t learned from the painful lessons of history. She said the ever-growing anti-Semitism around the world happening today was the best proof of that. Hugler Livne said it was said to see the world going down the same road again.