VILNIUS (AFP)---Lithuania wants to grill leading Israeli Holocaust historian Yitzhak Arad over his alleged role in war crimes against civilians and prisoners during World War II, a prosecutor said Tuesday.

"We have despatched a request to Israeli prosecutors for legal help,"
prosecutor Rimvydas Valentukevicius told AFP.

"We want to send Mr Arad a notice on our suspicions and to interrogate him in the framework of a preliminary probe on his possible participation in crimes against humanity in Lithuania during the Second World War," he said.

The 81-year-old Arad, who served as the director of Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Authority for 21 years, rejected the allegations in an interview to Poland’s Rzeczpospolita newspaper.

Jew_assassin

A probe launched in May 2006 showed that Arad, who was a member of the Soviet NKVD secret service, may have been involved in the killing of Lithuanian resistance figures at the end of World War II. Lithaunian-born Arad, who was active in the underground movement before joining the Soviet partisans to fight the Germans, has rebuffed suggestions that he was guilty of the cold-blooded murder of civilians.

"I have never killed a civilian," he said. "It could have happened during battle but I have never killed a civilian or a prisoner of war in cold blood."

Arad said the allegations could be part of a vendetta campaign as he had painstakingly listed atrocities committed by Lithuanian collaborators.

But Lithuanian prosecutor Valentukevicius said suspicions against Arad are based on his own memoirs and documents provided by the Lithuanian Genocide and Resistance Research Center.

"We have many documents, which allow us to think that Arad participated in criminal activities," Valentukevicius said.

Lithuania was home to some 220,000 Jews before tha war and was known as the "Jerusalem of the North."


 

 


Yitzhak Arad
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Yitzhak Arad is a Lithuanian-born Israeli historian and retired IDF brigadier general. A veteran of the Nazi-era Jewish resistance movement in ghetto and partisan combat, he has researched, lectured, and published extensively on the Holocaust.

Dr. Yitzhak Arad was born Itzhak Rudnicki in Święciany (now Svencionys) on November 11, 1926. In his youth, he belonged to the Zionist youth movement Ha-No'ar ha-Tsiyyoni.

During the war, he was active in the ghetto underground movement from 1942 to 1944. In February 1943, he joined the Soviet partisans in the Vilnius Battalion of the Markov Brigade, a primarily non-Jewish unit in which he had to contend with antisemitism. Apart from a foray infiltrating the Vilna Ghetto in April 1943 to meet with underground leader Abba Kovner, he stayed with the partisans until the end of the war, fighting the Germans and their collaborators in the Narocz Forest of Belarus.

In December 1945, Arad immigrated illegally to Mandatory Palestine.

In Arad's military career in the IDF, he reached the rank of brigadier general and was appointed to the post of Chief Education Officer. He retired in 1972.

In his academic career as a lecturer on Jewish history at Tel Aviv University, he has researched World War II and the Holocaust, and has published extensively as author and editor, primarily in Hebrew. His current research deals with the Holocaust in the USSR.

Dr. Yitzhak Arad served as the director (Chairman of the Directorate) of Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Authority, for 21 years (1972-1993). He remains associated with Yad Vashem in an advisor's capacity.

Dr. Yitzhak Arad today continues his research and writing activities, with recent and upcoming publications. His works have been translated into several languages.

Lithuania wants to grill top Israeli historian over war crimes

AFP Updated: 12/Sep/2007 07:43
 

VILNIUS. Sept 11 (Interfax) - Lithuania has requested that the
Israeli authorities facilitate the questioning of prominent historian
and Holocaust researcher Yitzhak Arad regarding his partisan past during
World War II and his supposed subsequent service for the Soviet NKVD
security police.

"The pretrial investigation documents of this criminal case include
enough data to assume that the suspect Yitzhak Arad might have committed
criminal deeds in Lithuania," the Lithuanian Prosecutor General's Office
said in a press release.

According to the Lithuanian prosecution authorities, Arad joined a
Soviet partisan squad while Lithuania was occupied by Nazi Germany and
then served with the NKVD. He is suspected of involvement in executions
of Lithuanian civilians and members of the anti-Soviet resistance
movement, the statement says.

Following WWII, Arad served for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF)
and was promoted to brigadier general. After retirement in 1972, he
became a historian and a Holocaust researcher. He was the director of
Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust Remembrance Authority, for 21 years
from 1972 to 1991.

 

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JERUSALEM, Sept. 7 Lithuanian authorities have asked Israel for permission to question a retired military officer on accusations he killed Lithuanians during World War II.

The authorities asked the Israeli Justice Ministry in a letter for permission to question Yitzhak Arad, a retired brigadier general in the Israeli military and the former head of Yad Vashem, Israel's official memorial to Holocaust victims, based on a magazine article that used quotes from his autobiography and testimony he gave during the trials of Nazi war criminals, Haaretz reported Friday.

The Lithuanians accuse Arad of participating in the killings of Lithuanians while he was a partisan fighter during the war.

Arad recently raised the ire of right-wing Lithuanian groups by raising the issue of Lithuanian citizens' involvement in the killings of local Jews during World War II. He said the Lithuanian investigation is a response to his statements on the matter.

"If it were just a personal matter, I wouldn't have made an issue out of it, but it is anything but personal," Arad said. "What they are trying to do with this probe is form an equation as though there were Lithuanians who killed Jews, but also Jews who killed Lithuanians -- so now were even and can move on."




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Katyn: Stalin’s massacre

06.04.2006

A new study by an American journalist on the Katyn massacre by Soviet forces in 1940 that killed over 20,000 Polish officers, has just been launched in Warsaw. Report by Michal Kubicki 06.04.06 Every April Poles commemorate an anniversary of the Katyn Forest Massacre, one of the most notorious World War Two crimes against humanity. Over 22 thousand Polish officers and intelligentsia fell victim to Stalin’s policy aimed at an annihilation of the cream of the Polish nation. It was twenty years ago that Allen Paul heard about Katyn for the first time. The story of the massacre, of Moscow’s claims that it was perpetrated by the Germans, and of the West’s reluctance to admit the Soviet guilt for many years fascinated him so much that he instantly decided to write a book about it. In 1989 he came to Warsaw on All Saints Day which is Remembrance Day in Poland.

It was an amazing sight. I will never forget it. I went to the military cemetery. It was around midday and a sea of people were walking towards the cemetery, many of them to the Katyn Memorial where they placed candles. For me it was quite revealing because we don’t have anything similar to that in the United States. It showed that the Poles are really in touch with their history, their ancestors, and have a deep commitment to preserving their collective memory and their individual memory.

Allen Paul’s book Katyn, subtitled Stalin’s Massacre and the Seeds of Polish Insurrection has been published in Poland under the title Stalin’s Massacre and the Triumph of the Truth. Its author argues that even though in the early 1990s Moscow finally admitted that the Katyn massacre was perpetrated by Stalin’s NKVD police, the fact that the order to shoot Polish officers was signed by Communist Party leaders continues to be kept secret. More importantly, Russia has refused to admit that the Katyn murder was genocide.

The Polish officers were victims of genocide. That was a terrible crime and it resulted in the death of the Polish nation. There’s so much that can be learnt from this case that has relevance today even though it seems so far off in time. I think it explains a lot about Russian behaviour, Polish-Russian relations and it also suggests why the West should be concerned about this very important relationship.

Allen Paul’s book traces the lives of relatives of several victims of the Katyn massacre. Kazimierz Rasiej, whose father was shot in Katyn, is one of the people interviewed by the author.

”If we do not force Russia to bring to light the whole truth about Katyn, it will remain for ever an open wound and it would be impossible to have normal relations with Russia. With his book Allen Paul has done a great favour to Poland.”

According to Allen Paul, Poland should demand from Russia a new inquiry into the Katyn massacre. In his view, the Polish government should also ask the Polish communities in the United States to exert pressure on the US Congress with a view to resuming the congressional inquiry of the early 1950s.

’I believe that if that were done it would bring a tremendous amount of pressure on Russia. In my view itn would be a way of getting this story more fully explained. It will help the Poles.

Allen Paul, whose book on Katyn has just been published in Poland. Katyn tops the list of issues in Polish-Russian relations which have to be explained in an honest and objective way. Moscow’s refusal to recognize Katyn as a crime of genocide will most probably weigh heavily on mutual relations.