The World Jewish Congress has called on the Lithuanian government to urgently address the negative climate in the country vis-à-vis members of its Jewish community and to speedily enact legislation allowing for the restitution of properties seized under the Nazi occupation. At a meeting in New York attended by several leaders of Jewish organizations, WJC secretary-general Michael Schneider told Lithuanian prime minister Gediminas Kirkilas: “The World Jewish Restitution Organization began its negotiations with your government six years ago. Until today, no piece of legislation has even been sent to the Lithuanian parliament for deliberation.”

Schneider said other central and eastern European countries had successfully enacted laws allowing for the restitution of seized properties, or compensation. “There has been some encouraging progress in local negotiations with Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Romania, Macedonia and Bulgaria. Lithuania stands alone among these European countries.” Every effort had to be made to achieve adoption of the required legislation, the Jewish leaders urged Kirkilas.

The meeting, hosted by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) in New York, also focused on Yitzhak Arad, who during World War II fought as a Lithuanian Jewish partisan against the Nazis and is now being investigated by the Lithuanian prosecutor-general for alleged war crimes. The Jewish leaders reminded the prime minister’s delegation that the charges against Arad were baseless, they and urged the Lithuanian government to desist from such harassment of Holocaust-era heroes such as Arad and others.

Prime Minister Kirkilas was urged to improve Lithuania’s poor record regarding its Jewish heritage, the preservation of Jewish cemeteries and the fight against anti-Semitism, “especially at a time when Lithuania is being honored by the European Union to serve as the European cultural capital in 2009.”