15min.lt

Lithuanian Conservative Party leader Gabrielius Landsbergis, grandson of honorable retired party leader Vytautas Landsbergis, has posted open letters to Lithuanian president Gitanas Nausėda and Vilnius mayor Remigijus Šimašius opposing what he calls Šimašius’s unilateral decision to remove a controversial plaque honoring a Lithuanian Holocaust perpetrator in central Vilnius, the website 15min.lt reported Monday.

In his press release/open letter, the younger Landsbergis heaped praise on the president’s call for a “moratorium” on historical debate of Lithuania’s Nazi past, in other words, a call for maintaining the status quo for the last 70 years. “We resolutely agree with your aspiration that ‘historical memory shouldn’t be an issue to be resolved by some city or municipality, but rather should be solved by a resolution adopted at the national level,'” Gabrielius Landsbergis quoted the newly-elected president and former head of a Swedish bank in Lithuania in his open letter. “We also take joy in your statement that ‘the President’s Office is prepared to be moderator in this process, bringing together institutions including expert groups and setting up conditions for holding forums and events.'”

A controversial plaque commemorating Lithuanian Nazi collaborator Jonas Noreika came down from the walls of the central Vilnius Academy of Sciences in the early hours of Saturday, July 27.

The take-down was ordered by Vilnius mayor Remigijus Šimašius, according to Lithuanian media reports. In April Šimašius baffled the public and political observers by waffling on the presence of the granite plaque following an incident where Lithuanian human rights advocate and attorney Stanislovas Tomas seemingly destroyed it with a sledgehammer. The next day mayor Šimašius said the sign would not be replaced, but the day after that promised it would be put back immediately. The smashed plaque was repaired and put back on the outer wall of the Academy of Sciences building.

The alley named after interwar Lithuanian diplomat Kazys Škirpa has a new name: the city council today approved the proposal to rename the street in the Vilnius old town next to Gediminas Hill Tricolor Alley.

The city council also approved a proposal by the Labor Party faction in the council to erect an information board on Tricolor Alley to showcase how Škirpa and compatriots resisted the Soviets.

Škirpa is a controversial historical figure. According to the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania, the organization he commanded raised anti-Semitism to the political level and that could have incited some Lithuanians to commit Holocaust crimes. The Center says despite that Škirpa’s organization sought to solve “the Jewish problem” by deporting Jews out of Lithuania, not through genocide, and that members of that organization were not allowed to know beforehand the Nazis planned the total extermination of all Jews.

On July 11 the Ninth Fort Museum in Kaunas held an evening to remember the Kaunas ghetto. The audience gathered to mark the 75th anniversary of the destruction of the ghetto in Kaunas and were offered a chance to take a guided tour.

After the tour the film Devil’s Arithmetic (made-for-TV movie, 1999, directed by Donna Deitch, filmed in Canada and Lithuania) was screened at the museum. According to imdb.com:

“A 16-year-old American girl with an apathetic view towards her Jewish family history finds herself pulled through time into 1941 to a small Polish village where the Nazis have just began their genocidal propaganda.”

Museum staff and the audience engaged in a discussion following the film.

Information from the Ninth Fort Museum