Lithuania names its rescuers. It anonymizes its murderers.

Thirteen years ago this week, a man died in Sutton, Massachusetts. Vladas Zajanckauskas was ninety-seven. A federal court had stripped his citizenship in 2005. An immigration judge had ordered him removed to Lithuania in 2007. He was never removed, because Lithuania would not take him back.

Hold that fact. It is this post in miniature.

In May I published “What Lithuania Means When It Says ‘Vanished,’ ‘Lost,’ or ‘Perished.’” That article was about verbs. This one is about a noun, and about the adjective Lithuania attaches to it only when the attachment flatters.

Lithuanian diplomats have a formula for the Holocaust. Jews were murdered by Nazis, Soviets, and collaborators. It sounds complete. Read it again. Germany supplies the Nazis. The Soviet Union supplies the Soviets. The collaborators arrive from nowhere, holding no citizenship, wearing no uniform, serving in no police battalion, occupying no municipal office, carrying no name.

Now watch what the same ministry does with the rescuers.

Nationality as an honor

At a Lithuanian consular program in Calabasas in September 2025, an exhibition honored the Righteous Among the Nations. The Foreign Ministry announced that Lithuania ranked second in the world per capita and that 924 men and women from Lithuania had been recognized by Yad Vashem. There were Lithuanian dances and a performance of “Lietuva brangi.” The rescuers were not simply remembered. They were placed inside a celebration of the nation.

This was not isolated. In 2020 the Consulate General, the Foreign Ministry, and Holocaust Museum LA dedicated a tree and plaque to rescuers from Lithuania. In May 2026 Foreign Minister Kęstutis Budrys described the courage of the Righteous as a “moral foundation” Lithuania must protect and transmit.

A month later, visiting Yad Vashem, he walked the Avenue of the Righteous, “where 928 Lithuanians who rescued Jews are commemorated”. The same ministry statement referred to Jews murdered by “the Nazis and their collaborators.”

One document. The rescuers receive a nationality. The murderers receive a category.

The counts differ between those two events, 924 and 928, because Yad Vashem continues to recognize new cases. That is unremarkable in itself. The asymmetry is not. One column rises every year. The other has never moved off zero, because Lithuania has never identified a single perpetrator as a........

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