menu_open Columnists
We use cookies to provide some features and experiences in QOSHE

More information  .  Close

The Murder Was Administered – Part 2

57 0
previous day

The Innocence Was Manufactured – The evidence produced culpability. The courts produced exemption.

Part I set out the documentary record: the Lithuanian Security Police arrested, interrogated, confined, robbed, and transferred Lithuanian Jews to the men who shot them, and American federal courts reconstructed the institution from Lithuania’s own archives. That institution’s history is now written by the LGGRTC, whose acting director, Arūnas Bubnys, called the force’s role in exterminating Jews “auxiliary and minor” in 1997 and “an integral part of the repressive mechanism” in 2003, and who remains in post because the Seimas rejected his proposed successor on June 11, 2026.

The defense collapses inside the record

The Saugumas served under German direction. Subordination does not erase the subordinate. A Lithuanian office did not become German because it obeyed a German superior. Its officers remained Lithuanian. They read Lithuanian names, searched Lithuanian homes, questioned Lithuanian witnesses, and arrested Lithuanian Jews.

Germany supplied the exterminatory command. Lithuanian institutions supplied reach. Lithuania had the highest Jewish murder rate in Europe.

The target of this accusation is not Lithuanians as a people. Some Lithuanians hid Jews and died for it. Gita and Fruma survived as long as they did because Adolfas Domeikas and Juozapatas Domeikas chose rescue. The target is the state apparatus, the officials who operated it, and the postwar institutions that decided whom to punish, whom to excuse, and whom to honor.

Purpose-built procedure, no punishment

Independent Lithuania opened its archives to American investigators. Lithuanian officials authenticated the records. That cooperation carried the evidence and must be stated. It also sharpens the result. American courts entered judgments. Lithuanian courts imposed no punishment.

American courts stripped four Vilnius Saugumas officers of citizenship. Lileikis in Boston in 1996. His deputy Kazys Gimžauskas in Washington the same year. Adolph Milius in Tampa in 1998, for arrests of Jewish civilians carried out with Dailidė. Dailidė himself in Ohio. All four went to Lithuania. Milius died there in 1999. None was punished.

The United States revoked Lileikis’s citizenship on May 24, 1996. He returned to Lithuania the next month. In February 1998, Lithuanian authorities forwarded genocide charges to the Vilnius court,........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)