The Record Lithuania Cannot Escape

Archival evidence shows the Holocaust in Lithuania was not only imposed by Nazis but also enabled and administered by local institutions and actors.

The Inheritance

I inherited a secret. In Lithuania, my grandfather, Jonas Noreika, is honored as a national hero. In the historical record, he was complicit in the murder of Jews. I did not learn this from Lithuania’s enemies, but from Lithuania’s own archives—its books, its documents, and official accounts. Once seen, it cannot be unseen.

What I discovered about my grandfather is what I discovered about my country. The more closely I read primary sources, the clearer the pattern became: the destruction of Lithuanian Jewry did not occur in spite of the nation. In essential ways, it occurred through it.

The Ghetto Narrative

Lithuania prefers a story in which ghettos were imposed solely by Nazi Germany, with Lithuanians as passive witnesses. That version collapses under scrutiny.

In the Kaunas Ghetto diary of Avraham Tory, a German officer tells Jewish leaders plainly that Lithuanians themselves demanded separation: they no longer wished to live alongside Jews and insisted on a ghetto. The choice offered was stark—continued chaos and violence, or forced relocation. Within weeks, Kaunas was cleared of Jews.

The ghetto may have been a German instrument, but its justification was Lithuanian. It translated a local demand into policy.

Orders and Preparation

The institutional record is explicit. On July 10, 1941, Kaunas officials—Mayor Palčiauskas and military commander Jurgis Bobelis—ordered the creation of a ghetto in Slobodka. Historians identify both men as participants in the mass murder of Jews. Preparations for deportation had begun even earlier.

This was not improvisation under German pressure. It was coordinated action involving Lithuanian authorities.

Violence in the Streets

The official decrees reflected what was already happening on the ground. On June 22, 1941, as Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Lithuanian mobs celebrated openly. Jews were dragged from homes, beaten, robbed, and murdered. Women were assaulted. Bystanders laughed.

These acts were not spontaneous eruptions alone. They echoed slogans already circulating: “Lithuania for the Lithuanians.” Anti-Jewish hostility had been building for years—through exclusion from public life, economic pressure, and social violence. By the early 1940s, the groundwork had been laid.

The Machinery of Destruction

Under German occupation, Lithuanian police forces were reorganized into a nationwide system. By 1942, tens of thousands served in various units, operating under structured command.

Their role was not peripheral. German reports from Vilnius note that Lithuanian battalions were regularly deployed for “special actions”—a euphemism for mass shootings. These actions occurred almost daily.

Participants were not merely coerced functionaries. Many were motivated by extreme nationalism and antisemitism. The system had hierarchy, coordination, and intent.

Before the Shooting: Slavery

Before mass execution came exploitation. Ghettos and labor camps functioned as systems of forced labor. Jewish men and women were assigned to work for both German and Lithuanian enterprises. Administrations collected payment for this labor—in money and goods.

This was a slave economy. Guards enforced it. Officials managed it. Records documented it. The system relied on Lithuanian administration as well as German authority.

My Grandfather’s Role

My grandfather, Jonas Noreika, was part of this system. As head of the Šiauliai district beginning in August 1941, he signed orders that:

• Confiscated Jewish property
• Forced Jews into ghettos
• Directed Jewish labor into forced-labor systems

His administration profited from that labor. These are not abstract associations; they are documented acts. A man who organizes the seizure of people, controls their labor, and benefits from it participates in a system of human exploitation. The term is precise: slave trader.

A Case Study: Raseiniai

The events in Raseiniai illustrate how this system operated locally. Jews were gathered, confined, and guarded—often by Lithuanian personnel. Under the pretense of relocation, hundreds were executed. Women and children followed in successive waves.

Orders flowed through identifiable chains of command: district chiefs, local police, and German authorities. Testimonies confirm the structure—arrest, confinement, transport, execution.

Survivors described being marched under armed guard, including women and children. Violence extended even to the youngest.

The Chain of Command

At the top, Lithuanian police leadership coordinated these actions. Orders directed the arrest and confinement of Jews, specifying procedures and reporting requirements. Local units carried them out and reported back.

This was not chaos. It was administration.

Even some participants understood the moral gravity. One Lithuanian policeman warned that these actions would become a permanent stain on the nation’s history. He did not claim innocence—only fear of judgment.

Šeduva and Memory

The town of Šeduva reveals another dimension: how perpetrators were remembered after the war.

Lithuania’s official narratives celebrate figures like Izidorius Pucevičius as anti-Soviet heroes, omitting their roles in anti-Jewish actions. Archival testimony, however, places such individuals in the chain of persecution—guarding Jews, forcing them from homes, and overseeing their confinement.

This raises a fundamental question: is responsibility limited to those who pulled triggers, or does it extend to those who organized, ordered, and facilitated the process?

The Nature of Responsibility

Mass murder is not a single act but a sequence:

• Identification
• Arrest
• Confinement
• Transport
• Execution
• Disposal
• Redistribution of property

Each step depends on human decisions. The system cannot function without administrators, guards, and planners.

A person who signs orders that send hundreds to their deaths wields power beyond that of any single shooter. Modern systems of mass violence depend on such roles.

The National Narrative

Lithuania has often framed its wartime history as one of victimhood, emphasizing Soviet oppression while minimizing participation in the Holocaust. This narrative reduces responsibility to a few “bad actors,” preserving the image of national innocence.

But the historical record tells a different story. Lithuanian institutions—police, local governments, administrative offices—appear repeatedly within the machinery that led from Jewish life to Jewish death.

This is not a story of isolated crimes. It is a story of participation at multiple levels.

Myth and Memory

After the war, competing narratives emerged. Jewish survivors spoke openly about local collaboration. In response, Lithuanian exile writers argued that only a small minority was guilty and that the nation itself was a victim.

From this tension grew a familiar structure: selective memory, moral inversion, and the elevation of certain figures without full acknowledgment of their actions.

The facts were not hidden. They were resisted.

The Weight of the Record

Some of these facts remain difficult to face. They carry my family name. But they are not mine alone. They belong to the historical record Lithuania itself produced.

The sequence is clear: violence began even before formal decrees. German authority shaped the system, but Lithuanian actions helped drive it. The demand for separation, the enforcement of ghettos, the administration of labor, and the participation in killing—these formed a continuous chain.

Conclusion

The question is no longer whether individuals were guilty. The question is whether a nation can confront the full extent of its past.

Lithuania’s archives speak with consistency. They document not only suffering but participation. To acknowledge this is not to condemn a nation absolutely, but to reject the comfort of partial truth.

History does not disappear because it is denied. It remains—in records, in testimony, and in the moral weight carried forward.

Wishing you truth and peace in the storms of your life,

Silvia Foti