Jonas Noreika

Jonas Noreika (October 8, 1910 – February 26, 1947) was a Lithuanian anti-Soviet partisan and Nazi collaborator.

In July 1941, he led the Lithuanian Activist Front in the Telšiai district.^[1] Noreika later served as the Šiauliai district's governor when the Germans occupied Lithuania, where he signed orders putting the district's Jews in a ghetto and confiscating their property.^[2]

Noreika was one of the 46 Lithuanian authority figures locked up in the Stutthof concentration camp between March 1943 and January 25, 1945 for resisting Nazi mobilization. He was arrested by the Soviets in March 1946 and executed on February 26, 1947.^[3]

Noreika was born in Šukioniai in western Lithuania in 1910.^[4] He did law at Vytautas Magnus University, and then became a soldier. He wrote for the military press, served on a military tribunal, and was later promoted to captain.^[5]

In 1933, Noreika published an antisemitic booklet titled Hold Your Head High, Lithuanian!!!, which called for a boycott of Lithuanian Jews on nationalistic grounds.^[6] In 1939, in the military magazine Kardas, he wrote an essay, "The Fruitfulness of Authoritarian Politics", praising Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.^[7]

Soviet forces occupied Lithuania in June 1940. Noreika was released into the reserves that October. He is credited as the leading organizer in Samogitia of the anti-Soviet Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF).^[1]

On July 20, Noreika led a "Manifestation of Freedom and Friendship with Germany," where a crowd of thousands approved a resolution he had written in support of Lithuania's independence, the German Army, the Reich and Adolf Hitler and the Lithuanian Activist Front.^[1]

Samogitian local leaders chose Noreika to lead the Iron Wolf-associated Žemaičių žemė ("Land of Samogitia") delegation, which negotiated unity between Lithuania's Provisional Government, the Lithuanian Activist Front and the Lithuanian Nationalist Party.^[8]

In July 1941, Noreika's men held the 1,800 Jews of Plungė in a synagogue for two weeks. For days, Lithuanian nationalists under him took groups of 50 Jews at a time and killed them near the village of Milašaičiai. On July 12, the nationalists started fires to blame it on the Jews. Noreika then ordered Plungė's Jews to be massacred. They forced the remaining Jews to somewhere near Kaušėnai to be killed on 12–13 July.^[9]

Noreika was appointed governor of the Šiauliai district on August 3, 1941.^[10] On August 22 and September 10, 1941, he ordered all Jews of the district to be sent to ghettos.^[2][11] Many Jews were shot on the spot instead.^[12] He was also sent by the Nazis on a propaganda trip to Germany from January 31 to February 16, 1943 as part of a group of 14 Lithuanian officials.^[8][13] 95% Lithuanian Jews were killed in the Holocaust.^[3]

Noreika was arrested and dismissed from his position of governor on February 23, 1943, for failing to fulfil orders to raise a Waffen-SS division from the local population.^[1] On 17 March, the Nazis again arrested Noreika along with 45 other Lithuanian political, intellectual and religious figures, sending them to the Stutthof concentration camp on 26–27 March.^[1]

In 1944, when the Germans retreated, Noreika was evacuated with other prisoners. The Soviets moved Noreika with other former concentration camp inmates to barracks in Stolp (Słupsk, Poland). There, in early May 1945, he was mobilized into the Soviet Army.^[14]

In November 1945, Noreika returned to Vilnius, where he found work as a legal advisor to the Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences.^[15]

Along with Ona Lukauskaitė-Poškienė and Stasys Gorodeckis, Noreika founded the National Council of Lithuania to coordinate anti-Soviet partisan movement across the country. Noreika assumed the rank of general and the nom de guerre Generolas Vėtra ("General Storm"). Soviet authorities arrested Noreika and his colleagues on March 16, 1946. He was sentenced to death on November 27, 1946, executed on February 26, 1947, and buried in a mass grave by Tuskulėnai Manor.^[16]

In 1997, the Lithuanian state awarded Noreika with the Order of the Cross of Vytis, first degree.^[5] Memorial plaques were also placed in front of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences and the Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights.^[17]

Noreika has been criticized by numerous groups and scholars for his active role in the Holocaust in Lithuania. In 2019, the state-run Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania (LGGRTC) denied these claims,^[18][19] and argued that Noreika had saved the lives of Jews in Šiauliai.^{[20] [21]}

A sub-commission of the International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania found the LGGRTC's findings offensive, opposing the commemoration of Noreika.^[2]

In 2018, Grant Gochin, a South African Jew of Litvak^[a] ancestry, filed a lawsuit against the LGGRTC for the charge of Holocaust denial,^[16] in support of which Noreika's granddaughter Silvia Foti filed an affidavit.^[21] Lithuanian courts dismissed the lawsuits however.^[23]

On January 27, 2021, the New York Times published an opinion piece by journalist Silvia Foti, Noreika's granddaughter, in which she wrote:^[24]

I learned that the man I had believed was a savior who did all he could to rescue Jews during World War II had, in reality, ordered all Jews in his region of Lithuania to be rounded up and sent to a ghetto where they were beaten, starved, tortured, raped and then murdered.

In March 2023, over 100 students and teachers from the Rambam Mesivta High School in Lawrence, New York, protested outside New York City's Lithuanian Consulate. When Rambam's dean Rabbi Zev Meir Friedman contacted the Lithuanian Consulate, consulate officials denied that Noreika had ever killed anyone. Rabbi Friedman noted:^[3]

• Leon Rupnik
• Guerrilla war in the Baltic states