Israel’s chief Ashkenazi rabbi has asked Lithuania to transfer dozens of Torah scrolls to the Jewish state. The scrolls, currently housed in the Baltic nation’s main library, are at the center of a dispute between Lithuania and Jewish groups, both in Lithuania and abroad, over the ownership of a large repository of Judaica material. More… More ▸
The president of Lithuania has promised a top U.S. official that he would try to advance efforts to restore Jewish communal property. President Valdas Adamkus made the promise to Stuart Eizenstat, the U.S. undersecretary of state for economic affairs, who was in the Baltic nation last week to discuss U.S.-Lithuanian economic relations. Local Jewish leaders… More ▸
The president of Lithuania has named his chief adviser to also serve as the government’s liaison to the Jewish community. Simonas Alperavicius, chairman of the Lithuanian Jewish community, expressed cautious optimism in a telephone interview that the appointment of Julius Smulkstys could have a positive effect on Lithuanian-Jewish relations. During the Nazi occupation of Lithuania… More ▸
The United States is one step closer to deporting an 80-year-old man who served in a Lithuanian mobile killing squad during World War II. A federal appeals court in Chicago unanimously affirmed last Friday a 1995 court decision to strip Kazys Ciurinskas of his U.S. citizenship. The U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations charged… More ▸
A Lithuanian judge has postponed the trial of an alleged Nazi war criminal for the second time. The trial of Aleksandras Lileikis, 91, was slated to begin this week in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius. But a judge in the case granted an adjournment of one month to allow investigators to finish examining recently obtained… More ▸
Lithuanian prosecutors have said they would not prosecute a Pennsylvania resident accused of war crimes. They said there are insufficient grounds to prosecute Jonas Stelmokas, a former Lithuanian platoon commander accused of helping the Nazis massacre thousands of Jews. A U.S. federal immigration judge has ordered the deportation of Stelmokas, 82, a retired architect. Stelmokas… More ▸
Lithuania’s president has rejected an appeal by a neo- Nazi group to be officially recognized as a political group. President Valdus Adamkus denied the request because he is “convinced that a democratic society cannot put up with organizations instigating racial and religious discord,” according to a presidential spokesman. The neo-Nazi group, known as the Lithuanian… More ▸
A slew of documents chronicling Eastern European Jewish life — sent to an American Jewish institution from Lithuania for cataloging — is at the center of an international dispute. In a recent Lithuanian newspaper article, archival officials in the Baltic nation charged that the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research does not want to return the… More ▸
A Vilnius judge has adjourned the trial of an alleged Nazi war criminal for 10 weeks — just a day after the trial began. In ruling for the adjournment, however, a judge with the Vilnius Regional Court, Viktoras Kazys, rejected an appeal by the lawyer for Aleksandras Lileikis to drop the charges against his 91-year-old… More ▸
Lithuania is pressing charges against a second man alleged to have participated in the murder of Jews during World War II. Kazys Gimzauskas, 89, is suspected of giving orders to arrest, imprison and execute Jews while he was deputy chief of the Nazi-sponsored Lithuanian secret police, known as the Saugumas, from 1941 to 1944. The… More ▸
