After exposing my grandfather’s role in the Holocaust, I watched a nation double down on denial—and turn against those who speak out.

I spent years doing everything I was told a person of conscience should do.

I met with the directors of the Lithuanian Genocide Center Birutė Burauskaitė and Arūnas Bubnys to show them the truth about my grandfather Jonas Noreika. They did not care. I tried to meet with Lithuanian officials. I wrote, I pleaded, I documented, I published, I exposed my own family’s lies and my country’s lies, and still Lithuania did not care.

That hurts me to the very core of my Catholic soul.

Because this is not abstract for me. This is my family. My own family was used by the Lithuanian government to falsify my grandfather’s record and protect Lithuanians from the bitter truth of their role in the Holocaust. My family’s pain, confusion, silence, and divided loyalties were folded into a state project of Holocaust distortion. That is one of the most painful realizations of my life. It was bad enough to discover that my grandfather participated in crimes against Jews. It was worse to discover that the government of Lithuania was still using his descendants, his memory, and his honors as instruments of deception.

Writing Against a National Myth

That is why I wrote my book, The Nazi’s Granddaughter. I did not write it to attack Lithuania. I wrote it because I could no longer live inside a lie. I had been asked on my mother’s deathbed to preserve my grandfather’s memory. Instead, the truth forced me to confront what that memory had been used to hide. The book became a record not only of my........

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