Lithuania drops war crimes case

Sep 25, 2008
In cooperation with BNS

After leaving Lithuania, Arad worked as the director of the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Israel (Photo by David Shankbone).

VILNIUS – The Lithuanian Prosecutor General’s Office has officially dropped the investigation into war crimes allegedly committed by Yitzhak Arad, a Soviet partisan with Jewish heritage.

“In connection with the lack of collected evidence to prove initial allegations, the Prosecutor General's Office discontinued, in a pretrial investigation… on crimes committed during the years of WWII by the 'Vilnius' soviet partisan unit, the section regarding Yitzhak Arad,” read a press release from the Prosecutor General's Office.

Arad was suspected of partaking in criminal activities, crimes against humanity and Lithuanian inhabitants – including killing civilians, prisoners of war, and Lithuanian partisans – during the years of WWII in Nazi-occupied Lithuaniaand during his service in the Soviet secret service in the post-war period.

The Lithuanian Jewish Community has said that the decision to drop the case was a welcome one, but that it should have been made earlier.

“I see the dismissal of the investigation in a positive light, however, I find it was belated. They first roused world-wide indignation, were met with massive protests - the investigation could have been cut short earlier,” Chairman of the Lithuanian Jewish Community Simonas Alperavicius told the Baltic News Service on Thursday.

“It is good that there was strength and political will to close the case - he is a truly prominent personality on the international arena. There was no evidence - it is like a counterbalance to the Holocaust and efforts to show that Jews are bad,” Alperavicius said.

After Germanyinvaded Lithuaniain 1941, Arad joined a Soviet partisan platoon and later served in the Soviet repressive NKVD. After the war, he went to Israeland joined the army there.

In 1972, he retired being an education corps commander. As a civilian, Aradbecame a scholar and a lecturer of Jewish history, specializing in the Holocaust.

Almost 90 percent of Lithuania's pre-war Jewish community of about 200,000 people perished during the Nazi rule.

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