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Five Lithuanian Institutions Now Have Papilė’s Names

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yesterday

The evidence was published. Now the municipality, encyclopedia, heritage authorities, archive and local library have been formally asked to correct, clarify or produce the record.

On September 20, I published Papilė’s Stone Says ‘Helpers.’ The State’s Historian Named Them. It began with my grandfather Samuel Gochin, born in Papilė in 1902, and followed the destruction of the Jewish community through the records that survived: police custody, the July 1941 shooting, the transfer of women and children into the Žagarė system, the murder of my relatives, the 1967 exhumation and trial record, and the language Lithuania still uses at the site today.

The article ended on a contradiction Lithuania’s own sources created. The memorial uses the word “helpers.” Alfredas Rukšėnas’s archival reconstruction names Bronius Paliulionis, Vincas Viskantas, Kazys Malinauskas, Kazys Milevičius and local police or auxiliary-police participants. The public heritage record calls code 21109 merely “Žudynių ir užkasimo vieta” — “murder and burial site.” The names exist. The public record often does not use them.

Publication was not the end of that record. It changed its status. Evidence in an article can be ignored as opinion. Evidence formally delivered to the institutions that control the monument, encyclopedia, heritage register, archive and local historical dictionary becomes notice. I have therefore filed five QES-signed requests. All five are public.

Five institutions now have the documents

The first request went to Akmenė District Municipality and Papilė Eldership. It asks them to preserve the current webpages and memorial wording,........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)