Lithuania Honors Rescuers of Jews

By JTA June 20, 2014

Lithuania’s Parliament passed an amendment recognizing Holocaust-era rescuers of Jews as freedom fighters.

The amendment, which entitles the families of rescuers to special state pensions, passed Tuesday by a majority of 72 lawmakers present, the news site 15min.lt reported.

The Jewish Community of Lithuania praised the vote. “Finally, the Lithuanian government has expressed its positive attitude toward fellow Jews,” a statement said.

“It has taken them many years to consent to a request to show greater attention and support for the people who rescued Jews during the Holocaust thorough their humane and heroic act, which they performed while looking death in the eye in disregard to their own safety,” the Baltic News Service quoted a community spokesperson as saying.

The change to Lithuania’s Law on the Legal Status of the Participants of the Resistance to the 1940–1990 Occupations could make several dozen people eligible for state pensions reserved for freedom fighters. In addition, a one-time grant will be paid retroactively to families of Lithuanians who died while saving Jews, according to 15min.lt.

The total cost of the pensions and grants are estimated at $730,000. The amendment will take effect next month.

Lithuania’s government has faced harsh criticism from Jewish groups, including the Simon Wiesenthal Center, for a number of laws and monuments that draw parallels between Communist-era crimes and Nazi war crimes in Lithuania, where Nazi troops and local collaborators murdered 95 percent of the country’s 250,000 Jews.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO