In July 2018 I filed a criminal complaint under Article 170² § 1 of the Lithuanian Criminal Code against the state Genocide and Resistance Research Centre (LGGRTC) and its director, Teresė Birutė Burauskaitė. Lithuania refused to open an investigation. In 2024 the same statute became the spine of a 220-page indictment against Artur Fridman, a Jewish citizen of Lithuania, for a Facebook post.

Seven years before Lithuania selected Fridman, I asked Lithuania to apply its Holocaust-denial statute to its Holocaust-denial institution. The named subjects were the Lietuvos gyventojų genocido ir rezistencijos tyrimo centras (LGGRTC), a state budget institution mandated to research genocide, and its general director. I alleged that the Centre’s official 2015 finding falsely disconnected Jonas Noreika from the murder of the Jews of Šiauliai county. The criminal complaint asked Lithuania to apply the statute it now uses against a Jew.

An example of who Lithuania’s honored men murdered

Noreika was not a marginal figure, and his intent did not appear only after the killing began. Long before the murders, he published the 1933 antisemitic pamphlet “Hold Your Head High, Lithuanian!”; I have written about its later military republication in Minister of Defense Arvydas Anušauskas. The murders were preceded by ideology, not followed by an accidental paper trail. As Šiauliai District Chief he signed the 22 August 1941 order to ghettoize the Jews of the county at Žagarė. On 2 October 1941, 2,236 Jewish men, women, and children were shot in the Žagarė town park. LGGRTC had reissued its exoneration of Noreika under signature, published it on its state-funded website, and transmitted it to the Government Chancellor, the mayor of Vilnius, and the director of the Wroblewski Library, on whose wall the Noreika plaque hung.

Lithuania refused to open an investigation.

The complaint now sits as the second of five Article 170² § 1 prosecutor complaints inside my inventory of forty-nine documented submissions to Lithuanian state bodies since 2015: eight lawsuits and international filings; eleven submissions to the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre; five Article 170² § 1 prosecutor complaints; eleven institutional submissions; two to the Journalist Ethics Inspector; twelve letters. Every one was received. Every refusal is on file.

In 2024 the same Article 170² § 1 became the spine of a 220-page indictment against Fridman for a Facebook post made at a Vilnius cemetery on 9 May 2024. Case 02-2-00512-24, charged also under Article 313 § 2.

The same statute. The same prosecutor’s office.

The documentary spine

The complaint did not rest on sentiment. It rested on documents from the Lithuanian Central State Archives and the Lithuanian Special Archives, gathered through independent research commissioned in 2018.

First: the Tryškiai eviction order of 9 August 1941. Noreika ordered Jewish citizens evicted within three days. It was his second week as Šiauliai District Chief, thirteen days before the 22 August order forming the Žagarė ghetto.

Second: the Joniškis dental technician exemption of 26 August 1941. Noreika granted one Jewish dental technician permission to remain in Joniškis for up to two months. That exemption contradicts Lithuania’s claim that he acted without freedom. It shows discretion over a Jewish life.

Third: the brewery transfer request of 7 August 1941, seeking transfer of the Jewish-owned Gubernija brewery in Kuršėnai, the Juodeikių brewery, and other Jewish-owned beverage works. Dispossession arrived on Noreika’s desk in his first week.

Fourth: the........

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