Growing up in a Lithuanian family in Chicago, Silvia Foti learned that her grandfather, Jonas Noreika, was a hero who led an anti-Soviet revolt in his native country in the aftermath of World War II. After the fall of Communism, independent Lithuania honored Noreika, naming streets and even a school after him. Foti was thus surprised when, researching her grandfather’s life, she discovered that he—like many who fought against Stalinism in Ukraine and the Baltics—was also a Nazi collaborator:
I learned that the man I had believed was a savior who did all he could to rescue Jews during World War II had, in reality, ordered all Jews in his region of Lithuania to be rounded up and sent to a ghetto where they were beaten, starved, tortured, raped, and then murdered. More than 95 percent of Lithuania’s Jews died during World War II, many of them killed with the eager collaboration of their neighbors.
Lithuania is like many other countries that spent 50 years under Soviet occupation. During this time, there was a deep freeze on the truth: Lithuanians were only allowed to talk about how many Soviet citizens were killed during World War II. References to Jewish victims were scrubbed away by the [Soviet] occupiers. I would like to think that if Lithuania had been a free and independent nation after World War II, it might have acknowledged its own role in the Holocaust.
Correcting historical memory turned out to be dangerous. When I publicly questioned the official story of my grandfather’s life, I was vilified by the Lithuanian community in Chicago and in Lithuania. I was called an agent of President Vladimir Putin of Russia. Lithuanian leaders still believe their country’s identity depends on holding onto its heroes, even at the cost of the truth.
In 1933, as a young soldier in the Lithuanian Army, he wrote Raise Your Head Lithuanian, Lithuania’s equivalent of Mein Kampf, which incited hate toward Jews as a solution to Lithuania’s problems. In June 1941, he led an uprising against the Soviets, even as he was collaborating with the Nazis. . . . Under his watch, roughly 8,000 Jews were killed.
Read more on New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/27/opinion/jonas-noreika-lithuania-nazi-collaborator.html