Lithuanian authorities. It must admit that a number of national heroes took part in the mass murder of Jews organized by the Nazis during World War II. Ellen Jermain, the US Department of State’s Special Representative for the Holocaust, said: TASS With reference to the Lithuanian agency ELTA.
“People who are seen as national heroes are praised for fighting against the Soviets, they are immortalized in monuments, but they are also Nazi collaborators, partners in Nazism crimes and genocides,” he said.
He urged the Lithuanian authorities to call spades a match.
As an example, Jermain cited Juozas Krikstaponis, whose detachment had joined, as well as Jonas Noreika, a member of the “Lithuanian Activist Front” who was the head of the Siauliai region under the Nazis and ordered the resettlement of Jews into the ghetto. Murder of Jews in Belarus.
In Lithuania, Noreika and Krikstaponis are seen as national heroes. Noreika was posthumously awarded the Order of the Cross of Vytis. In his honor, a memorial stone and a memorial plaque were placed on the facade of the Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, as well as a memorial inscription on the wall of the Museum of Genocide Victims in Vilnius. The monument to Juozas Krikstaponis was erected in the city of Ukmergė.
It was previously reported at the Antakalnis cemetery in Vilnius. ruined Six obelisks at the largest monument in Lithuania in honor of Soviet soldiers who died in the Great Patriotic War. The monument at the Antakalnis cemetery was erected in 1951, more than three thousand Red Army soldiers were buried there. In 1984, six steles were placed on it in the form of stylized figures depicting warriors from different branches of the army.