According to Haaretz the issue is rather different from what you state. Arad was an expert witness in several cases against Lithuanian war criminals and at other times publicly asked that the country address the role of Lithuanians in the murder of Jews during the Holocaust. This has apparently angered right-wing groups in Lithuania.
Krook, I would be interested to know what transpired in Kaniûkai ('Koniuchy'), the village where a Soviet partisan unit according to former partisans attacked the 'German garrison' on January 29, 1944, in which Arad participated.
If you think there is anything to the accusation, your information better be very good. Until now all information has been spread by an antisemitic Lithuanian newspaper, Lietuvos Aidas.
The paper's campaign against Arad and several other (former) Lithaunian Jews began on 27 January, the official day of liberation of Auschwitz. In other articles, Lietuvos Aidas maintains that Eichmann, Heydrich, Himmler and Bormann were Jewish and that the Jews essentially organized their own Holocaust. They claim that Stalin was Jew, too. In fact it seems they claim that all evil in the world is Jewish. Hardly a credible source, I would say.
There appears to be some basis for the accusation, it seems, in memories of participants on various sides of the conflict. The partisans were not popular among the local population and their foraging expeditions ('bombioshkas') among the unwilling peasants often turned into punitive expeditions. These punitive expeditions, in turn, seem to have been encouraged by the Soviets as part of the sovietisation campaign in the newly-conquered territories.
We have been here before, when we discussed the excessive behaviour of Polish Jews during and after the war. I think we can all understand the emotional appeal made by various parties.
Gentlemen, let's try and dissect this case without recourse to crudity and anti-Polish or antisemitic short-cuts. Those do not belong in the Monastery.
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