VILNIUS - Although no direct evidence has yet materialized, a Vilnius-based international historic justice commission said that some Lithuanian basketball players may be guilty of killing Jews in the summer of 1941.
At the request of President Arturas Paulauskas, the International Commission for Evaluation of Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes investigated the information. The president asked for a conclusion on the Lithuanian team Perkunas' possible involvement in the 1941 Jewish massacre that took place after a basketball match and involved German soldiers.
In reply to the president, the commission said it did not find any documented evidence of Perkunas' complicity in the Kaunas massacre.
U.S. and German specialists are now completing research on the 1941 mass killings. The conclusions formulated after the probe are to be discussed this fall.
The Genocide and Resistance Research Center of Lithuania has been investigating controversial data on the players' possible participation since the summer of 2002.
The popular U.S. sports channel ESPN broadcast a report by observer Jeremy Schaap that received international attention earlier this month.
The report, which reviewed the history of Lithuanian basketball, said that a match between Lithuanian and German teams was held in Kaunas on July 6, 1941. The Lithuanian team won the match and as a "prize" players were allegedly given the right to shoot 10 Jews each at Kaunas Fort VII.
The report infuriated the Lithuanian Ambassador to the United States Vygaudas Usackas, who sent a letter to ESPN expressing astonishment that such accusations could be made without evidence. Usackas said the report cast a shadow over the entire game of basketball in Lithuania.
Efraim Zuroff, head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, has cast suspicion on two Lithuanians residing in the United States - twin brothers Vytautas and Algirdas Norkus - for participating in the massacre.
The 83-year-old twins now live in Waterbury, Connecticut. They played for Perkunas in 1941, but both denied the allegations this month.
Historians have found no data proving that a Kaunas basketball match between Lithuanians and Germans was held in the of summer 1941, or that the Lithuanian players received such a bloody "prize."
