Lithuania’s MFA Mourns Jews, Omits the Shooters
At Paneriai, the Foreign Ministry named Nazi occupation authorities while omitting the Lithuanian shooters Lithuania’s own memorial identifies. It did so after being formally asked to preserve both parts of the record.
On September 23, Vice-Minister Vidmantas Verbickas represented Lithuania’s Foreign Ministry at Paneriai, and the Ministry published a text of remembrance. The page says Lithuanian Jews were murdered “nacių okupacijos metais” — during the years of Nazi occupation, in my translation — and recalls the Vilna Ghetto as liquidated by the “nacių okupacinės valdžios” — the Nazi occupation authorities. The page, not Verbickas, supplies these formulations. It names no Lithuanian participant in the murders.
That omission is not a dispute about German responsibility. German Security Police and SD authority at Paneriai is documented. The problem is that Lithuania’s own official record preserves another part of the same history: Lithuanian men helped carry out the shootings. When the Foreign Ministry names the occupier but removes the local shooters from the sentence, Lithuanian participation disappears at the point where responsibility is assigned.
The men at the pits are not unknown
Lithuania’s own Paneriai Memorial history states that those arrested were taken to Paneriai and shot there by members of the German Security Police and SD Ypatingasis būrys. It identifies Juozas Šidlauskas as commander from July 1941, Lieutenant Balys Norvaiša as his successor, Balys Lukošius as deputy, and SS NCO Martin Weiss as the unit’s longest-serving German chief. After the November reorganization, the memorial states: “Daugumą narių sudarė lietuviai” — most members were Lithuanians.
The same state memorial records what happened when the Vilna Ghetto was liquidated: several hundred elderly and sick Jews were shot at Paneriai. It records German command and Lithuanian participation in the same account. Naming the Ypatingasis būrys shifts nothing away from Nazi Germany. It simply restores the men who fired to the history of the people who were shot.
The surviving witness record is even harder to sanitize. In my September 15 examination of the Foreign Ministry’s earlier Paneriai language, I cited Kazimierz Sakowicz’s September 24, 1943 entry in Ponary Diary (Yale edition, pp. 118–119). Sakowicz recorded Lithuanians using rifle butts to hasten the stripping of victims to their underwear, after which they were driven into the pit and shot from above; a German with a revolver also fired. When a second bus arrived, many Jewish children and several men got out. He wrote, in the Yale translation: “The children undressed, and the Lithuanians used sticks to calm those who were crying.” The men then undressed amid Lithuanian shouts and blows before, Sakowicz wrote, they were driven to the pit and shot. German authority and Lithuanian participation occupy the same diary entry.
The Ministry had been asked to stop doing this
Five days before the commemoration, I formally asked the Ministry to ensure that its 2026 Paneriai communications identify both Nazi German directing responsibility and documented Lithuanian participation. The request was submitted on September 18 and registered as No. 2-15926 on September 21.
The Ministry had until mid-October to answer my request. It did not need a month to decide whether Lithuanian perpetrators belonged on its September 23 page. The publication appeared while the request was pending and used the same attributional structure I had challenged: the Nazi occupation authorities are named; Lithuanian perpetrators are not.
The Foreign Ministry already has the words
This vocabulary is not foreign to the institution. In 2016, the Ministry wrote that Nazis in Lithuania acted “dažnai padedami lietuvių kolaborantų” — often aided by Lithuanian collaborators, in my translation. In 2021 it referred to Nazis and their local collaborators. And in a 2013 interview republished by the Ministry, Foreign Minister Linas Linkevičius said he was ashamed to say it, but Lithuanian collaborators had participated in murdering Jews. The September 23 page did not lack a usable vocabulary.
At Paneriai, other institutions said what the MFA omitted
The Culture Ministry’s commemoration announcement for September 23 is hardly a model of specificity. It says Nazi occupation structures “ir jų vietiniai talkininkai” — and their local collaborators — took part in the killings. I have already documented that ministry’s omission of named killers at Pivonija. Yet on September 23 the Foreign Ministry fell below even that floor: its page omitted collaborators altogether.
Israeli Ambassador Shelly Hugler Livne was explicit in the speech she delivered at Paneriai. She said that Jews were too often led away by their own neighbors, people they had known for years, and then stated: “Vietos gyventojai lietuviai bendradarbiavo su naciais persekiojant ir žudant žydus.” Local Lithuanian residents collaborated with the Nazis in persecuting and murdering Jews, in my translation. She then went further: in my translation, the Holocaust’s greatest tragedy was not only the industrial-scale evil carried out by the Nazis but also the complete silence of bystanders and “the willingness of collaborators to act.” On the same day and at the same place, Israel’s ambassador named both German responsibility and local collaboration. Lithuania’s Foreign Ministry named only the former.
The Justice Ministry supplied the principle. In its September 23 Paneriai release, Justice Minister Rita Tamašunienė said: “Teisingumas prasideda nuo tiesos. Negalime nutylėti istorinių faktų ar iškraipyti Holokausto istorijos.” My translation: “Justice begins with truth. We cannot remain silent about historical facts or distort Holocaust history.” The Foreign Ministry invoked historical truth on the same day while leaving documented Lithuanian participation unstated.
Lithuania once spoke more plainly
Lithuania set a more demanding state benchmark three decades ago. In his March 1, 1995 address to the Knesset, President Algirdas Brazauskas asked how hundreds of thousands of Lithuanian Jews could perish “with the direct participation of so many” fellow citizens. He asked forgiveness for Lithuanians who killed Jews and linked reconciliation with acknowledgment of truth.
Even that apology was criticized as insufficiently specific. Efraim Zuroff told UPI that the apology was not specific enough and that he was still waiting for a Lithuanian president to say thousands of Lithuanians had been involved. The Foreign Ministry’s 2026 page falls below even the apology Zuroff criticized in 1995: the victims are mourned, while Lithuanian perpetrators vanish from the account of who murdered them.
IHRA names the missing element
Lithuania has been an IHRA member since 2002. IHRA’s Working Definition of Holocaust Denial and Distortion defines denial in terms of extermination by “the Nazis and their accomplices.” Its first listed form of distortion includes intentional efforts to minimize the Holocaust or its principal elements, “including collaborators and allies of Nazi Germany.” The Ministry’s page keeps the first and drops the second.
IHRA’s explanation of Holocaust distortion says distortion may excuse, minimize or misrepresent the known historical record and can be intentional or unintentional. Juliane Wetzel, then Chair of IHRA’s Committee on Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial, gave “whitewashing or glorifying collaborators” as an example. On either reading, a page that keeps the Nazis and drops their collaborators fits the description. The notice sequence bears on the stricter, intentional category.
Lithuania’s Supreme Court explains how omission works
In its December 9, 2025 ruling in Criminal Case No. 2K-173-1073/2025, Lithuania’s Supreme Court stated in paragraph 16 that international crimes can be denied or minimized through omissions. The case concerned statements about Soviet crimes against Lithuanian partisans. I dispute the ruling’s genocide classification, as I have written elsewhere.
I do not suggest the Foreign Ministry committed a crime; the Court’s point is about how omission works. The legal situations differ. The principle does not: omission can minimize an international crime. Lithuania’s Supreme Court applies that principle to Soviet crimes against Lithuanian partisans. The Foreign Ministry’s Paneriai page omits Lithuanian perpetrators of the Holocaust.
Remembrance without responsibility
A ceremony at a killing site cannot become historical reckoning merely because officials mourn the dead. Reckoning requires an account of responsibility that is as accurate as the account of suffering.
Justice Minister Tamašunienė said, “We cannot remain silent about historical facts.” The Foreign Ministry invoked “istorinę tiesą” — historical truth — on the same page from which it left out the Lithuanian perpetrators Lithuania’s own state memorial names.
