25 September 2008
The Prosecutor General of Lithuania has announced that it has been decided to close the investigation against Dr. Yitzhak Arad. The authorities had been investigating suspicions of Dr. Arad's involvement in the killing of Lithuanian civilians during the Holocaust as a partisan. The case was opened about a year and a half ago following demands by elements from the extreme right in Lithuania . The prosecution relied on Dr. Arad's memoirs, describing his time as a partisan during the Holocaust.
Yad Vashem welcomes this long overdue decision to close the case against Dr Yitzhak Arad, even as Yad Vashem has reservations as to the reasons detailed by the prosecutor for closing the case,[that there “was insufficient data to bring the case to court”], and expects that the entire case will be closed and the investigations against other Jewish partisans will be summarily dropped. The criminal investigation into Jewish partisan activities during the Holocaust is a troubling symptom of revisionism that has no place in a country that strives to be a member of the democratic community of nations. As Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev emphasized in his letter (August 10, 2008) to the Prime Minister of Lithuania:
"Only by dealing openly and forthrightly with the full and complex truth about the past will your nation succeed in building for itself a secure and stable future.”
