Faced with charges that it is pardoning Nazi war criminals, Lithuania has proposed cooperating with Israel to ensure that such criminals not be pardoned.
Lithuanian President Vytautas Landsbergis reportedly sent a letter to Dov Shilansky, the speaker of Israel’s Knesset.
At an earlier meeting in June, the two men had discussed the issue of Nazi war criminals, according to Abraham Bayer, director of international concerns for the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council.
Bayer said NJCRAC is “consulting with the U.S. Justice Department, the Israeli Justice Department and the (Israeli) Prime Minister’s Office on Soviet Jewry” on the matter.
The Lithuanian president also wrote a conciliatory letter to Rep. Anthony Beilinson (D-Calif.), responding to his concern over reports that Vilnius is pardoning Nazi collaborators.
Landsbergis told Beilinson his government intended to “exonerate only those individuals whose only transgression was to defend the freedom and the lives of their countrymen.”
“Lithuania is willing to cooperate with those institutions interested in examining cases of individuals concerning whom there is credible evidence of participation” in war crimes, he said.
Other congressional members who have initiated correspondence with Landsbergis on the matter include Mel Levine (D-Calif.), Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and Benjamin Cardin (D-Md.).
Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) asked U.S. Secretary of State James Baker to raise the issue when he meets Lithuanian leaders Saturday in Vilnius.
Meanwhile, the Lithuanian Supreme Council assured the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council that “files of any individual collaborators mistakenly exonerated would be reopened and investigated.”
‘THERE ARE LISTS’
The Lithuanian government admitted in a statement that mistakes might have been made. It said both the Lithuanian and Israeli parliaments could investigate cases of purported Nazi war criminals and “make it possible to avoid mistakes concerning rehabilitation.”
The government said that “not one person who can be proven guilty of actions of genocide of Jews or the massacre of unarmed civilians can be rehabilitated.”
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, said Wednesday that the center was pleased to hear of a proposed working relationship between the Vilnius government and Israel, but noted that neither specializes in war-crimes tracking.
He called for an advisory panel of experts with “experience in dealing with the documents pertaining to war crimes on Lithuanian territory.
“There are existing and finite lists of criminals, as well as an existing and finite list of those exonerated, we understand. All that we have to do is just compare those lists,” he said.
News reports claimed that Vilnius will cooperate with the U.S. Justice Department, and that there have been moves by Justice to send Lithuania a list of some 2,000 convicted war criminals to prevent their rehabilitation. But a Justice Department source said Wednesday: “We have not dealt with the Lithuanians.”
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