At the UN, Gitanas Nausėda made falsification of history a question of trust, human rights and democracy. Lithuania has spent years applying that standard outward. Its own state memory institution supplies the domestic test.

On September 21, 2026, the Lithuanian Genocide and Resistance Research Centre formally abandoned part of its own published victim classification — and scheduled the correction for 2027. In response No. 55R-920, answering my August 31 requests, registered by the Centre as 7R-1064 and 7R-1065, it concluded that Kazys Braželis and Jonas Bakanavičius should not be treated as repressed persons and said their biographies will be removed from the next corrected digital edition of Volume VI of Lietuvos gyventojų genocidas. It also separated Bonifacas Jonas Kukuška’s earlier Soviet repression from his later punishment arising from alleged Holocaust-era conduct and said his biography will be removed from the digital Volume II now being prepared. The next day, President Gitanas Nausėda told the United Nations General Assembly that falsification of history erodes trust and damages democracy.

Based on the record I have documented over decades, I do not regard the Lithuanian Genocide and Resistance Research Centre (LGGRTC) as a presumptively reliable historical authority. In my assessment, its publications have repeatedly functioned as instruments of national historical advocacy and, in material instances, as vehicles for distorted or fictionalized history.

Accordingly, I assign no independent evidentiary weight to a historical claim merely because it has been published by the Lithuanian Genocide and Resistance Research Centre. Any material proposition originating with the LGGRTC must be independently verified against primary documentation or credible external historical scholarship before it is relied upon.

Until such verification is obtained, the LGGRTC’s assertion is treated as unverified and presumptively unreliable, with particular scrutiny for omission, selective quotation, exculpatory reframing, or factual distortion.

According to the contemporaneous LRT/BNS report of Nausėda’s September 22 address, he said that falsification of history, together with disinformation and foreign information manipulation and interference, erodes trust, restricts civic space, targets journalists and human-rights defenders, and thereby harms human rights, democracy and security. The report renders an English-language address in Lithuanian; until the official delivered English text appears, I rely on BNS’s reported substance rather than present its Lithuanian wording as Nausėda’s verbatim English.

Nothing in the report suggests Nausėda was speaking about LGGRTC. He did not need to be. Lithuania had already supplied a domestic test of the principle he was announcing internationally.

The rule Lithuania applies abroad

Four days before Nausėda’s UN speech, Foreign Minister Kęstutis Budrys told U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Sarah B. Rogers in Washington that Lithuania had lived for five decades without freedom of speech and had experienced censorship, propaganda and “the systematic falsification of history.” He connected that experience to the value of free information and democratic debate.

In his 2022 UN General Assembly address, Nausėda described Russia as an imperial power searching for reasons to justify annexation, “rewriting history,” and spreading disinformation and propaganda. In the same address he condemned the banishment of independent media and non-governmental organizations in Russia and systematic attacks on civil society and human-rights defenders in Belarus.

Russia does falsify history. Lithuania is right to condemn it. The evidentiary problem begins when the same rule reaches Lithuania’s own institutions.

The Centre does not get a Lithuanian exemption

My judgment of the Centre does not rest on one quarrel over one national hero.

In a 2016 article in the Centre’s own journal, Alfredas Rukšėnas, now its chief historian, wrote that his research essentially did not confirm a Jonas Noreika connection with the Holocaust. Yet he also wrote that Noreika’s work as Šiauliai county chief was connected with two constituent parts of the Holocaust process: expropriation of Jewish property and concentration of Jews. In earlier research on Kretinga, Rukšėnas had counted roughly 731 local residents as indirect contributors to the persecution and killing of Jews and others. The Centre’s historian supplied a broad institutional test and then narrowed its practical reach when the subject was Noreika.

Report No. 9R-598 on Kazys Škirpa supplied another example. It wrote, “Lietuvių istorikai neigia žydų tyrinėtojų teiginius” — “Lithuanian historians deny the claims of Jewish researchers” (my translation). A state historical institution thus sorted historical authority by the ethnicity of researchers while addressing antisemitism and the destruction of Lithuanian Jewry. On August 23, 2024, the Lithuanian Jewish Community, speaking for 32 Lithuanian and foreign Jewish organizations, categorically rejected Report No. 9R-598.

On February 11, 2020, answering my demand that the Centre withdraw its latest defense of Noreika, then-Director General Teresė Birutė Burauskaitė wrote that German proceedings had cleared Hans Gewecke and Ewald Bub, called Bub “wholly exonerated,” and extended that characterization to the men she described as the actual builders and commanders of the Šiauliai ghetto and concentration camp. As I have documented, the German record shows proceedings against Bub were discontinued. Discontinuation is not acquittal.

State prestige does not cure defects of source, classification, attribution or method.

The evidence was already in the source

Response No. 55R-920 is more damaging than a vague correction notice because it identifies the source from which the Centre built the entries. The Centre says criminal file LYA f. K-1, ap. 58, b. 46980/3 is the principal source for understanding the repression of Braželis and Bakanavičius. That same file records the Bajorai case.

The Centre reproduced its published entries for both men, then summarized that file. It stated that Braželis had been accused of beating Jews, shooting two Jews near Rokiškis, participating in the mass shooting at Bajorai and personally firing, and transporting Jews to Antanašė, where they were later murdered. It stated that Bakanavičius had been accused of arresting people, bringing two Jewish families to the Rokiškis ghetto, marching Jews from the ghetto to the shooting site at Bajorai and personally shooting them. The response carefully attributes those propositions to the criminal case and records what the defendants admitted or denied.

For both men, the Centre’s letter records that the court held guilt proven by witness testimony and by a bonus-payment sheet recording payment “for the performance of a special duty” (my translation). The Centre calls what followed “clarifying the data” (my translation). The data it clarified were entries that had presented the men as repressed persons while omitting the conduct recorded in the very file the Centre identifies as its principal source. After that clarification, the Centre says Braželis and Bakanavičius are not to be regarded as repressed persons. Their biographies are not described as immediately withdrawn; response No. 55R-920 says they will be removed when the new corrected digital Volume VI is prepared in 2027.

Kukuška exposes the same problem in a different form. The Centre’s 2002 biography described Bonifacas Jonas Kukuška as a participant in the 1941 uprising and a partisan commander known as “Klajūnas.” Response No. 55R-920 records that the criminal file accused him of escorting Jews to the shooting site at Bajorai on August 15–16, 1941, standing guard there and shooting them. The Centre says his 1946 arrest, conviction and imprisonment, and his 1953–56 exile, should be treated as repression, but his 1961 arrest, 1962 conviction and 1962–69 imprisonment should not. Because the Centre says it currently follows a rule of not publishing biographies of persons who committed crimes against humanity — a rule its own 2002 volume did not apply to him — it says Kukuška’s biography will be removed from the digital Volume II now being prepared.

The evidence was in the source. The entries omitted it.

Two reversals in 26 days

The September 21 decision followed another recent correction.

On August 26, the Centre altered one of its Juozas Ambrazevičius-Brazaitis pages after documentary challenge, deleting one “rehabilitation” sentence from page 3058 while a Justice Department “rehabilitation” statement remained on the same page and page 2969 remained unchanged. Twenty-six days later, response No. 55R-920 reversed the classification of Braželis and Bakanavičius and announced the removal of Kukuška’s biography under the Centre’s crimes-against-humanity rule.

Two reversals in 26 days do not prove that every LGGRTC publication is false. They establish something narrower and more serious: material historical propositions carrying the Centre’s authority can survive in its public record until outside documentary challenge forces reconsideration.

A serious correction system would identify the original proposition, the evidence supporting it, the contrary evidence, the date of notice, the official who approved the change, and the derivative records carrying the earlier claim. It would address the online PDF, database entries, print copies, library holdings and later publications where applicable.

Response No. 55R-920 speaks only of future digital editions. The printed Volume VI published in 2022 and Volume II published in 2002, both cited in the Centre’s own letter, are not addressed. The Centre has decided that the classifications should not stand; the announced remedy is deferred removal from future digital editions.

If falsified history damages public trust, Lithuania cannot define the injury by the nationality of the falsifier.

The strongest defense fails

Lithuania has an obvious answer. Russia is an authoritarian aggressor conducting an information war. LGGRTC is a research institution in a democratic EU and NATO state. The institutions are not equivalent.

That distinction does not answer whether a historical proposition is supported by evidence.

A false proposition does not become true in a democracy. A discontinued German proceeding does not become an acquittal because a Lithuanian director general says so. A state historian’s standard does not cease to exist when it becomes inconvenient to a celebrated Lithuanian figure. Ethnicity is not a scholarly method for sorting historians into categories of authority.

I reject Russian historical falsification for the same reason I reject Lithuanian historical falsification: neither acquires legitimacy by serving a state. My work is a bounded Lithuania project rooted in family history, documentary standing, litigation and doctoral research. The absence of a parallel Russia project is not approval of Russian propaganda.

The state already has notice

This is no longer an argument conducted only in articles.

On September 11, I filed a complaint with the Prosecutor General concerning Rukšėnas, Arūnas Bubnys and LGGRTC Report No. 9R-598; the office later registered it as AP-29927. On September 13, I filed a separate complaint with the same office concerning the Centre’s Brazaitis pages. These are complaints and requests for assessment, not adjudicated findings.

The institutional point is narrower: Lithuanian authorities have received documentary challenges to the Centre’s historical work.

Nausėda supplied the standard

Nausėda does not direct LGGRTC, and the Prime Minister, not the President, heads Lithuania’s Government. The Centre is accountable through Lithuania’s statutory and parliamentary structure. The demand therefore belongs to the state as a whole: the President can call for scrutiny; the Seimas and competent authorities can act within their powers.

Four days before the UN address, Nausėda conferred the Life Saving Cross on 36 rescuers of Jews, and the Presidency named the danger as “Nazi genocide.” The rescuers were named. The Lithuanian police, white-armbands and officials from whom Jews were hidden were not. I set out that record on September 19.

The contrast is now unavoidable. Lithuania knows how to attach democratic consequences to falsified history abroad and moral honor to rescue at home. It has been far less willing to expose, audit and repair the state narratives that sanitize Lithuanian participation in the destruction from which Jews had to be rescued.

The meeting in New York

On September 23, Lithuania’s delegation is expected to meet Jewish leaders in New York. The meeting should not be confused with historical review.

Jewish organizations have current responsibilities: Israel, antisemitism, community security, diplomacy and access to governments. Those are legitimate concerns. They are not a substitute for examining Lithuania’s Holocaust record. I have seen no public indication that the organizations attending this meeting have examined response No. 55R-920, Report No. 9R-598, the Noreika record, the Bub record, or the Centre’s repeated Brazaitis claims.

That distinction matters because Lithuania has used Jewish relationships as evidence about Lithuania. A meeting produces a photograph. A photograph produces a statement about dialogue, friendship and shared memory. The existence of Jewish participants can then be made to do work that the historical record does not.

If that happens here, the photograph will prove only that Lithuanian officials met Jewish leaders.

It will not explain why Braželis and Bakanavičius remained in the Centre’s victim record when the file the Centre itself identifies as its principal source contained the Bajorai case. It will not explain why Kukuška’s biography survived from 2002 until an outside challenge forced the Centre to apply its own crimes-against-humanity rule. It will not repair Report No. 9R-598. It will not turn Bub’s discontinued German proceedings into an acquittal. It will not correct the rest of the Brazaitis record.

Nor should Nausėda’s UN speech be allowed to perform that work. Saying that falsification of history damages democracy is not reconciliation. Applying that standard to Lithuania’s own institutions would be.

The test for the New York meeting is therefore simple. Did the Jewish organizations ask about these records? Did Lithuania answer them? Did anything change?

If not, Lithuania will leave with what it wanted: Jewish interlocutors, a photograph and another representation of good relations. The Jewish organizations will leave having discussed the issues they came to discuss. The historical record will remain exactly where it was.

That is diplomacy. It is not historical accountability.

Start over if the evidence requires it

Disclosure: I applied to lead the Centre in February 2026 and reapplied in July. I was not selected. That gives defenders an argument about motive. It changes none of the documents.

Lithuania should preserve the archives, research files, correction histories and legitimate scholarship, then commission an independent forensic audit of the Centre’s contested Holocaust-era work: primary sources, contrary evidence, citation chains, corrections, notice history and derivative state use.

If that audit shows isolated mistakes corrected by a functioning scholarly process, publish that result. If it confirms a recurring pattern of unsupported classification, selective quotation, exculpatory reframing, ethnic sorting of historical authority, correction only after outside challenge, and failure to repair derivative records, the present institution has exhausted the credibility required of a state historical authority.

If the institution cannot survive the standard Lithuania demands of Russia, close it and start again.