Lithuania’s Culture Ministry Says Holocaust History Cannot Be Erased
Lithuania’s Culture Ministry Says Holocaust History Cannot Be Erased. It Erases the Killers.
“We cannot erase it and have no right to keep silent,” Vice-Minister Lina Baublienė said at Pivonija. Her ministry’s own institutions already publish the Lithuanian names omitted from its commemoration.
On September 9, Lithuania’s Ministry of Culture published its account of the September 6 Holocaust commemoration at Pivonija Forest near Ukmergė. Culture Vice-Minister Lina Baublienė said Ukmergė is the city where she grew up and claimed the murder of its Jews as part of her own history: “this painful part of the city’s history is also my history. We cannot erase it and have no right to keep silent.”[1]
Baublienė called for the murdered Jews to be returned to public memory through their names and life stories. Ukmergė Jewish Community chairman Artūras Taicas presented an online archive of passport copies intended to restore names, faces and biographies. Israel’s ambassador, a British deputy ambassador and a US diplomat attended.
The Ministry named the dignitaries and Jewish leaders, and described the victims as individual people. Its report then moved to an exhibition about the Righteous Among the Nations. Rescuers were given verbs. The people murdered at Pivonija were not given killers.
Her ministry already has the names
The Holocaust Atlas of Lithuania has a Pivonija entry. Under “Perpetrators” it lists Ukmergė municipal and regional police chief M. Paškevičius, city prison chief P. Kuzmickas, Gestapo bureaucrats V. Deveikis, Šopys and Valeika, Rollkommando Hamann, and white-armband groups from Žemaitkiemis, Vidiškiai and Kavarskas led by K. Čiukšys.[2]
The Atlas was created by the institution formerly called the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum, now the Vilna Gaon Museum of Jewish History. The museum describes itself as a state-funded institution under the Ministry of Culture. Baublienė’s ministry therefore does not have to ask outsiders for the perpetrators’ names. Its own museum system publishes them.[3]
The Genocide Centre’s Ukmergė-area research on the Jews of Musninkai, who were taken into the Ukmergė killing system and shot at Pivonija with Jews from the rest of the district, is more explicit about how the killing worked. It says German Gestapo men selected about 30 white-armband men to shoot while others encircled and guarded the killing site. At the pits, Jews were shot “by German Gestapo men and local auxiliary policemen.” German Gestapo men directed the execution. The same page gives Jäger’s September 5, 1941 total for Pivonija: 4,709 Jews, including 1,737 children.[4]
A 1953 obelisk at the site is blunter than the Ministry’s 2026 news release. The Atlas reproduces its inscription: the victims were struck by the bullets of “Hitler’s henchmen and their local collaborators.” The Soviet-era inscription anonymized the collaborators. Seventy-three years later, Lithuania’s own museum can name them. The Culture Ministry’s report went backward.[5]
The names Lithuania preserves
On September 10, the Lithuanian Jewish Community reported that the Pivonija memorial had been damaged. Police received the report on September 8 and said the damage had been observed on September 6, the day of the commemoration. The Ministry’s September 9 account did not mention it. The Community added that a monument to Juozas Krikštaponis still stands nearby; its Lithuanian text mistakenly calls him Jonas.[6]
Krikštaponis is not an unknown name in the state’s own scholarship. A 2022 study by Mindaugas Pocius published in the Genocide Centre’s journal concluded from Lithuanian archival documents that Krikštaponis commanded the Second Company on October 10, 1941, when prisoners of the Rudzensk Jewish ghetto were killed, and on October 15–16, when prisoners of Stalag No. 352 were shot.[7]
The Centre’s statement on the Ukmergė memorial case later said: “pakanka istorinių duomenų pagrįsti Juozo Krištaponio kolaboravimą” — enough historical data to substantiate Juozas Krikštaponis’s collaboration — “kaip yra nustatyta Draudimo propaguoti įstatyme.” The statute is the Republic of Lithuania Law on the Prohibition of Propagation of Totalitarian or Authoritarian Regimes and Their Ideologies, which entered into force on May 1, 2023. The same Centre statement then said historians had not established reliable evidence of his personal participation or non-participation in crimes against humanity and quoted Centre director Arūnas Bubnys calling the documentary testimony contradictory.[8]
The Centre published Pocius’s dated findings in 2022. In its 2025-updated statement it called the documentary evidence contradictory. It can date 4,709 murders at Pivonija to September 5, 1941 and identify the participating formations, yet retreats from its own journal’s finding about the commander of a company on specified killing dates.
Baublienė’s sentence lands in a city that keeps Krikštaponis in stone. She says Ukmergė’s painful Jewish history is also her history and that it may not be erased. The mass grave has named victims. State sources have named local perpetrators.
The grammar was already documented
I have written about this method before. “What Lithuania Means When It Says ‘Vanished,’ ‘Lost,’ or ‘Perished’” examined the verbs that leave a destroyed Jewish community without an actor. “Nazis, Soviets, and Collaborators”, published August 9, examined the noun that identifies Germany while leaving Lithuanian perpetrators anonymous.[9]
The Pivonija release supplies a new official standard against that erasure: do not erase; do not keep silent. Lithuania treats names as indispensable when restoring Jewish victims to memory. The same precision disappears when the names belong to Lithuanian police officials, white-armband leaders or members of the killing apparatus already identified in state sources.
September 23 is the next test
As of September 10, the Culture Ministry’s published program for Lithuania’s national Holocaust remembrance events schedules the September 23, 2026 Paneriai ceremony for 12:30 p.m. The Ministry will co-organize it with the Department of National Minorities under the Government and the Lithuanian Jewish Community.[10]
Paneriai belongs to the same museum system. The museum’s Paneriai history page identifies the Vilnius Special Squad, says most of its members were Lithuanians, names early organizers Petras Jakubka and Mečys Butkus, commander Juozas Šidlauskas and successor Balys Norvaiša, and says SS technical sergeant Martin Weiss was the actual commander.[11]
The commemorative language has repeatedly been less exact than the museum’s history. In 2024, Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė said Jews “were murdered here” because of their origins and faith, with no perpetrator in the sentence. In August 2025, Foreign Minister Kęstutis Budrys stood at Paneriai with Israeli President Isaac Herzog and the ministry attributed the Holocaust to “the Nazis and their collaborators.” In September 2025, the Foreign Ministry said the “Nazi occupation authorities” liquidated the Vilna Ghetto and that “Lithuania lost around 190,000 Jews.” Israel’s embassy in Lithuania says “Over 200,000 Lithuanian Jews were murdered”.[12]
Eugene J. Levin documented the same retreat in “Lithuania Published 84 Names. Its Foreign Ministry Still Says ‘Collaborators.’” Lithuania’s own institutions had already published the Vilnius Special Squad’s purpose and 84 individual biographies before the Foreign Ministry chose the generic noun.[13]
The museum’s page identifies Lithuanian members and commanders. The Culture Ministry’s museum system holds the names. My earlier articles named the euphemisms. Baublienė has now said that this history may not be erased or silenced. Repetition after that notice is a documented institutional pattern.
Lithuania is a member of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. IHRA’s working definition of Holocaust denial and distortion includes intentional efforts to excuse or minimize principal elements of the Holocaust, including collaborators and allies of Nazi Germany, and attempts to blur responsibility. Its Recommendations for Policy and Decision Makers identify state-sponsored manipulation of Holocaust history as a form of distortion requiring challenge.[14]
On September 23 the Ministry will speak at Paneriai beside a memorial whose own museum has already published the Lithuanian names. Baublienė’s standard now governs the sentence it chooses.
If the ceremony again names the dead while dissolving identifiable Lithuanian perpetrators into passive verbs, “Nazis,” or anonymous “collaborators,” the contradiction will be between Lithuania’s own published history and Lithuania’s own commemoration. Naming the victims while editing their named Lithuanian killers out of the crime is not commemoration. It is Holocaust distortion performed over the graves.
[1] Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania, “Ukmergėje pagerbtas Holokausto aukų atminimas,” 9 September 2026. https://lrkm.lrv.lt/lt/naujienos/ukmergeje-pagerbtas-holokausto-auku-atminimas-x51h/
[2] Holocaust Atlas of Lithuania, Pivonija Forest entry, including identified perpetrators and the 1953 obelisk inscription. https://www.holocaustatlas.lt/main.php?act=a_atlas%2Fsearch%2F%2Fpage%2F1%2Fitem%2F69%2F&l=EN
[3] Vilna Gaon Museum of Jewish History, institutional information describing the museum as state-funded under Lithuania’s Ministry of Culture. https://www.jmuseum.lt/informacija-lankytojams-dazniausiai-uzduodami-klausimai/
[4] Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania, research on the Jews of Musninkai and the Pivonija killing system. https://www.genocid.lt/centras/lt/3769/a/print_version/
[5] Holocaust Atlas of Lithuania, Pivonija Forest entry, including the 1953 obelisk inscription referring to “Hitler’s henchmen and their local collaborators.” https://www.holocaustatlas.lt/main.php?act=a_atlas%2Fsearch%2F%2Fpage%2F1%2Fitem%2F69%2F&l=EN
[6] Lithuanian Jewish Community, report on damage to the Pivonija memorial and the nearby Krikštaponis monument, 10 September 2026. https://www.lzb.lt/2026/09/10/po-holokausto-auku-minejimo-pivonijos-sile-isniekintas-paminklas/
[7] Mindaugas Pocius, study on Juozas Krikštaponis published in Genocidas ir rezistencija 1(51) (2022). https://www.zurnalai.vu.lt/gr/en/article/view/34886 ; https://doi.org/10.61903/GR.2022.101
[8] Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania, statement on the Ukmergė memorial case. https://www.genocid.lt/centras/lt/4570/a/ ; English description of the 2023 law: https://www.genocid.lt/centras/en/1017/c/
[9] Grant Arthur Gochin, “What Lithuania Means When It Says ‘Vanished,’ ‘Lost,’ or ‘Perished.’” https://grantgochin.substack.com/p/what-lithuania-means-when-it-says ; Grant Arthur Gochin, “Nazis, Soviets, and Collaborators,” The Times of Israel Blogs, 9 August 2026. https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/nazis-soviets-and-collaborators/
[10] Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania, 2026 Lithuanian Jewish Genocide Remembrance Day program; Paneriai ceremony scheduled for 23 September 2026 at 12:30 p.m. https://lrkm.lrv.lt/lt/zydu-genocido-atminimo-dienos-programa/
[11] Paneriai Memorial / Vilna Gaon Museum of Jewish History, history page identifying the Vilnius Special Squad and named organizers and commanders. https://www.paneriumemorialas.lt/en/paminklas-zydu-atminimui-m9/
[12] Government of Lithuania, 23 September 2024 Paneriai commemoration. https://lrv.lt/en/news/prime-minister-honours-victims-of-the-genocide-of-lithuanian-jews-let-this-be-a-day-of-remembrance-and-commitment/ ; Ministry of Foreign Affairs, August 2025 Paneriai commemoration. https://www.urm.lt/en/news/928/lithuanias-foreign-minister-and-israeli-president-honoured-the-holocaust-victims-at-the-paneriai-memorial%3A44590 ; Ministry of Foreign Affairs, September 2025 Vilna Ghetto commemoration. https://www.urm.lt/en/news/928/vice-minister-plepyte-paid-tribute-to-the-victims-of-the-genocide-of-the-lithuanian-jews%3A44896 ; Embassy of Israel in Lithuania, Holocaust information. https://embassies.gov.il/lithuania/en/news/holocaust
[13] Eugene J. Levin, “Lithuania Published 84 Names. Its Foreign Ministry Still Says ‘Collaborators.’” The Times of Israel Blogs. https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/lithuania-published-84-names-its-foreign-ministry-still-says-collaborators/
[14] International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, Working Definition of Holocaust Denial and Distortion. https://holocaustremembrance.com/resources/working-definition-holocaust-denial-distortion ; IHRA, Recommendations for Policy and Decision Makers. https://holocaustremembrance.com/resources/countering-holocaust-distortion-policy-recommendations
