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 ▸
A spokesman for Lithuania’s president-elect has denied reports that Valdas Adamkus fought on the side of the Nazis during World War II. The allegation was made last week in a radio interview with Vladimir Lukin, chairman of the international affairs committee in the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament. Lukin, Russia’s former ambassador to… More ▸
A top Lithuanian official has hinted that he may investigate Jews suspected of genocide. The prosecutor general of the Baltic nation pledged last week that his office would create a new department to probe cases of genocide and crimes against humanity committed during World War II. But he alarmed local Jewish leaders when he said… More ▸
A Lithuanian suspected of committing war crimes during the Nazi occupation has died without ever being brought to trial. Antanas Mineikis, 80, died Monday at an old-age home. He had recently suffered a stroke, according to news reports. His death came as Lithuania launched an investigation into another suspected war criminal, Kazys Gimzauskas. But Jewish… More ▸
Lithuania has launched an investigation of a suspected Nazi war criminal living in the Baltic nation. The decision to investigate Kazys Gimzauskas was given a cautious welcome by Jewish leaders, who said similar moves in the past against suspected war criminals had failed to lead to convictions. Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s… More ▸
Lithuania’s Parliament has delayed action on an amendment that would facilitate the prosecution of alleged World War II criminals. The move has the biggest impact on the unfinished case of Aleksandras Lileikis, 90, who is accused of having handed Jews over to death squads in Vilnius during World War II when he was head of… More ▸
Few Jewish groups have been more involved in the renewal of Jewish communal life in the former Soviet Union than the Lubavitch movement. But when the Chasidic organization recently opened a new Jewish center in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, some observers found historical irony in the event. This was because Vilnius, formerly known as… More ▸
Lithuania has observed its annual commemoration of Holocaust victims by honoring Christians who risked their lives to save Jews during World War II. Lithuanian President Algirdas Brazauskas last week decorated 27 Lithuanians with the Life Rescuer Cross, which was established in 1992, soon after Lithuania gained its independence from the Soviet Union. The commemoration came… More ▸
The Lithuanian Supreme Court has annulled a 1991 pardon granted to an alleged war criminal. Petras Kriksciunas was accused by the Soviet authorities of killing Jews in Vilnius, Lithuania, during World War II. Some 50,000 Lithuanians who were convicted as war criminals by Soviet courts were exonerated by the Baltic nation after it gained independence… More ▸
A new synagogue has been dedicated in the Lithuanian city of Klaipeda. The synagogue includes a small soup kitchen to offer meals to needy Jews twice a week, and a Torah scroll the community received from a British synagogue. The Lithuanian seaport, formerly known as Memel, had a Jewish community before the war of 10,000… More ▸
