Lithuania’s Genocide Centre defends disputed passages as interpretation while its own book supplies the evidence against them

Lithuania’s state Genocide and Resistance Research Centre published a Holocaust history that describes Lithuanian participation in Nazi murder operations as a “supporting cast and thus essentially marginal.” Elsewhere in the same book, its compiler describes Lithuanian policemen and armed local men guarding Jewish families, Lithuanian officers commanding shootings and Lithuanian soldiers firing into the victims. In some massacres, he writes, German officials were not directly involved.

I asked the Centre to explain the contradiction. On November 3, 2026, it refused to change the disputed passages. Arūnas Bubnys, the acting director general who signed the Centre’s reply, 55R-1130, also compiled the original collection, jointly updated the 2020 English edition and wrote the chapters I cited against it. My request asked whether recusal, reassignment or another safeguard had been considered or applied given his overlapping roles. His reply gives no answer.

Everything is fuzzy, except the dead Jews.

One book and two accounts

On printed page 39 of the 2020 volume, Darius Furmonavičius challenges accounts of the June 25, 1941 pogrom in Kaunas. He quotes Adolfas Damušis denying executions and fires there at that time. He also says no Lithuanian primary or secondary sources mention the June 25 events and cites two interviews suggesting that the events did not happen that night or near that time.

Turn to pages 166–167. In his chapter on the Kaunas ghetto, Bubnys reproduces Stahlecker’s report of the June 25–26 pogrom. He describes armed partisan groups robbing and murdering Jews in Vilijampolė from June 25, including women, children and the elderly. He names streets, victims and witnesses. Some murders took place in daylight before crowds.

The Centre says it assessed the book and found no editorial error requiring correction. Yet the same book contains Bubnys’s account of events that Furmonavičius says Lithuanian sources do not mention. The reply does not explain how the two accounts fit together.

There is an independent comparison too. Lithuania’s International Commission approved conclusions on April 20, 2005 attributing the June 25–26 Vilijampolė pogroms predominantly to Lithuanian irregulars, encouraged by the German security police. The disagreement can be tested against identified evidence.

Who was marginal at the murder pit

On page 40, Furmonavičius argues that any Lithuanian contribution was subordinate within the SS command structure and therefore “essentially marginal.” His sentence begins by making Lithuanian participation conditional.

That reasoning confuses rank with responsibility. A subordinate can guard the victims, command the firing squad or fire the weapon. German direction does not make those actions marginal.

Bubnys’s own chapters show why. On pages 294–295, he describes about forty soldiers of the TDA’s Third Company arriving at Petrašiūnai under Lieutenants Anatolijus Dagys and Bronius Pauliukonis. Local armed men guarded Jewish men, women and children beside two ditches. The soldiers fired on the commands of Dagys and Sergeant Major Zigmas Arlauskas. Bubnys states that the German Gestapo did not participate in that massacre. Elsewhere, he describes towns where Jews were murdered without German officials’ direct involvement.

Furmonavičius also disputes the identification of irregulars as Lithuanian partisans, using the phrase “fraudulent identification” after discussing the Seventh Fort shootings of July 4 and 6, 1941. On page 368, Bubnys names Lithuanian officers directing the July 6 shooting and identifies TDA soldiers firing into victims’ backs. He records German Gestapo participation as well.

Those accounts require a precise explanation of who did what. A general reference to German command cannot supply it.

The Commission’s 2005 conclusions distinguish German direction from Lithuanian implementation and describe the TDA battalions’ role as significant. They also record the Provisional Government’s segregation and expropriation measures, its avoidance of endorsing organized public slaughter, and its failure publicly to disassociate itself from the murder of Lithuania’s Jews. That record requires an answer to page 38’s categorical exemption of the government from Holocaust collaboration. Its sole supporting footnote cites an interview disputing an alleged annihilation decree; that does not answer the separate evidence about segregation and expropriation.

Furmonavičius’s chapter says the Commission’s conclusions are still awaited. Another chapter, on page 52 of this 2020 book, already cites them. The publisher has preserved the promise of a future answer beside the answer itself.

The publisher keeps both versions

My September 20 request, registered as 7R-1167, sought an editorial decision on four passages and the existing records behind their selection and approval. It identified the conflicting accounts in the book, the Commission’s conclusions and Bubnys’s overlapping roles as compiler, updater and decision-maker.[1]

The Centre addresses the four passages and keeps all four. It treats the dispute as academic debate and characterizes my disagreement as personal opinion. It does not reconcile the specific passages I supplied, several written by the official signing the refusal.

I also asked who selected, reviewed and approved the chapter, and whether Bubnys had reviewed the disputed passages himself. The reply invokes limits on information access and disproportionate burden. It attaches nothing and identifies no editorial review or recusal record answering those questions.

An anthology can contain disagreement. Its publisher can explain that disagreement or annotate a disputed claim. Readers deserve to know why an institution keeps a categorical assertion when its own volume supplies evidence against it.

The prosecutor refers the question to the publisher

A similar editorial question arises in Lithuania’s national encyclopedia, VLE. I documented the Semeliškės discrepancy in September. Its general town entry gives the date of the massacre, the 962 victims and the German occupation authorities’ order. Its specialist ghetto entry also identifies the policemen who marched Jews to the murder site and the shooting force. Those implementing actors disappear from the general town entry.

My September 17 complaint concerned six general entries. The subsequent appeal acknowledged that criminal liability requires more than an omission: intent and the other statutory requirements must be established. It asked for an individual examination of the entries and limited clarification of the editorial evidence.[2]

On October 29, prosecutor Edvinas Navickas rejected the appeal. He found the required criminal elements unestablished, emphasized the concise nature of encyclopedia entries and treated criminal punishment as a last resort. Incompleteness or inaccuracy alone, he explained, does not establish the offense.

He also ordered the complaint forwarded to the National Library, whose publishing centre produces VLE. The Library must now answer the editorial comparisons. Brevity does not explain why the ordering authority appears while the implementing actors, identified elsewhere in the same encyclopedia, are omitted.

Precise dates without identified sources

The Lithuanian Embassy in Canada’s official Ramanauskas-Vanagas biography gives a precise sequence: he left the Druskininkai self-defense unit on July 15, 1941, after German disarmament; the Jewish ghetto was established on July 16. As of November 4, 2026, the page remains online and cites no source for either date.

My September 25 request asked for the records behind that chronology and its relationship to the July 7 endpoint published in the Centre’s biography (reproduced on Partizanai.org) and the National Library’s encyclopedia. It also sought existing records about the state’s 2018 communications. It expressly excluded a demand for a new judgment about guilt or innocence.[3]

The request covered eight categories and repeatedly asked for all relevant records. The Ministry invoked its breadth. But the first category asked for the sources behind a particular date. The Ministry supplied none, did not say the records were absent and gave that item no separate answer.

Its October 30 consolidated decision, (24.1E)3-6928, refused six requests in their submitted scope, citing workload, protected information and limits on creating new compilations. The embassy’s chronology remains public. Its evidentiary basis remains unidentified in that response.[4]

The evidence inside the indictment

Artur Fridman is innocent, and his prosecution is illegitimate. That remains my judgment. His October 30, 2025 indictment charges him with approving, denying and grossly trivializing Soviet crimes under Article 170² §1, and with false assertions about Ramanauskas-Vanagas capable of undermining respect for his memory under Article 313 §2.

One disputed assertion concerns collaboration with Soviet security. The indictment itself recites a Centre letter recording recruitment by the NKGB in 1944 under the codename Ragelis and again in January 1945 as Dzūkija. It describes a report crediting Dzūkija with operationally relevant information. It also records contrary material and the Centre’s conclusion that Ramanauskas agreed under pressure but did not carry out cooperation.

I have reported that documentary foothold before. Whether these records establish collaboration is contested. But the recruitment records, the reporting attribution and the evidence supporting the Centre’s conclusion must all be examined. Calling the challenged statement false does not resolve that examination.

The indictment also recites a forensic linguist’s finding that Fridman’s post approves Soviet actions against the partisans but does not deny or belittle historical events. The specialist identifies disparagement of the partisans and Ramanauskas too. The prosecution nevertheless charges denial and gross trivialization alongside approval, citing an expert of the Journalist Ethics Inspector’s office who read the post that way.[5]

The linguist expressly leaves open whether approval of those actions amounts to approval of crimes. A linguistic assessment does not decide criminal liability. It does, however, make the demand for proof unavoidable. The same Vilnius local prosecutor’s office that required established criminal elements in the encyclopedia case must establish each element here.

These institutions have different powers, and the cases concern different words and evidence. The comparison remains necessary. The Centre invokes interpretive freedom while leaving its own book’s contradictions unexplained. The Ministry publishes an exact chronology without identifying its sources in response to my request. Fridman faces criminal charges over a post whose alleged meaning is contested within the prosecution’s own evidence.

The Centre must explain its editorial decisions. The National Library must address the complaint referred to it. The Foreign Ministry must identify the sources for its published dates. And the prosecution must prove each charged element through evidence open to challenge.

Publish the sources behind the state’s history. Its letterhead has had enough time to impersonate proof.

[1] Grant Arthur Gochin, request for an editorial explanation, correction decision and existing editorial/source records concerning The Holocaust in Lithuania 1941–1944, September 20, 2026; registered September 21 as 7R-1167, especially paragraphs 13–26 and 35–37. Paragraph 15 wrongly describes the two page 39 interviewees as unnamed and undated; the book’s footnote 86 names Danielius Gintas and Bronius Čiudiškis and dates the interviews to Nottingham, December 15, 2001. Signed September 20 request.

[2] Grant Arthur Gochin, appeal of the October 5 police refusal IBPS-V-2627947-26, October 6, 2026, registered AP-32871, material M-2-02-00838-26, sections 1–4. The September 17 public link is an English courtesy translation; the signed Lithuanian complaint controls. Signed October 6 appeal and annexes.

[3] Grant Arthur Gochin, Request for Records concerning Adolfas Ramanauskas-Vanagas, 1941 Chronology and 2018 State Communications, September 25, 2026, ARV-URM-01 (ARV-04), items 1–8 and scope clause; registered by the Ministry on September 28 as 2-16312. Signed bilingual request, four pages. Signed September 25 Ministry request.

[4] Ministry of Foreign Affairs, October 30, 2026, No. (24.1E)3-6928. Registration metadata on page 8 identifies Chancellor Aistė Stakėnienė as signatory. The linked six-page extract omits that metadata page.

[5] Indictment, October 30, 2025, Criminal Case No. 02-2-00512-24, page 5 (recital of the April 30, 2025 specialist report No. 11-3308(24)); pages 8–9 (recital of the September 2, 2025 Centre letter 13R-645 and cited archival records). The linguistics sentence in Lithuanian is “Įraše nėra neigiami ar menkinami kokie nors istoriniai įvykiai.” The recital also records approval of Soviet actions against the partisans and leaves its legal classification to others. On approval the specialist states: “Teismo lingvistas nevertina, ar pritarimas Sovietų Sąjungos institucijų vykdytiems veiksmams, nukreiptiems prieš Lietuvos partizanus laikytinas pritarimu tarptautiniams nusikaltimams, SSRS ar nacistinės Vokietijos nusikaltimams.” Page 5 also recites the September 10, 2024 conclusion No. EAN-32 of an expert of the Journalist Ethics Inspector’s office, which states that the ideas expressed may be understood as public approval of Soviet crimes in Lithuania and as their denial or gross trivialization.