MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 13th December, 2022) Lithuania's understanding of parts of the World War II is problematic as some Holocaust executors are currently revered as national heroes in the country, with similar problems existing in Ukraine and Croatia, Ellen Germain, US State Department's special envoy for Holocaust issues, told the ELTA news agency.
Some Lithuanians glorify people who fought against the Soviet Union even when they were also Nazi collaborators and participated in the genocide, according to Germain.
The same problem exists in Ukraine, Croatia and other states, as they also had some local Nazi collaborators and perpetrators of crimes against humanity, the US envoy was cited as saying by the media outlet.
Germain said that mass shootings in Paneriai could not have happened without active participation of Lithuanians, according to the report. The diplomat also cited the examples of Jonas Noreika, who, being the head of Lithuania's Siauliai County, ordered all local Jews to be placed in a ghetto and their property to be taken away, and Juozas Krikstaponis, who killed local Jews and prisoners of war on Belarusian territory. Both of them subsequently joined the so-called Forest Brothers � nationalist-minded armed formations fighting for the restoration of the independence of the Baltic states � and therefore are revered as national heroes in modern Lithuania.
In 1941, Nazis and their accomplices from among the Lithuanian population massacred tens of thousands of people in Paneriai, a settlement situated about 10 kilometres (6.2 miles) away from Vilnius. They drove Jews and Soviet prisoners to the pits, dug before the war for construction purposes, and shot them. This is the largest mass grave of victims of Nazism in Lithuania. According to some estimates, about a hundred thousand people, including 70,000 Jews, were killed at the location. A memorial has been erected at the site of the tragedy.
