The Blogs: Lithuania: The Criminalization of Truth | Grant Arthur Gochin

For nearly four decades, a silent war has been waged in the archives of history.

On one side stands the Government of Lithuania, deploying its Genocide Equalization Doctrine and its taxpayer-funded Genocide and Resistance Research Centre (LGGRTC) to launder the reputations of mass murderers.

On the other side stand citizens—myself included—who refuse to allow the memory of the murdered to be erased.

As a citizen of Lithuania, I write this not as an adversary, but as a patriot who demands that my country be the best version of itself. My loyalty is not to a government’s convenient myths, but to the actual soil of my ancestors and the integrity of our national soul. This article stands alongside the legal indictment documented in https://grantgochin.substack.com/p/history-on-trial-lithuanias-unanswered and the ideological exposure in https://grantgochin.substack.com/p/the-dilution-of-death-how-genocide. Together, they record how a modern European state chose to criminalize the messenger in order to protect the murderer.

The Betrayals

I am the litigant in this history.

I am the target of the state’s abuse.

My family were among its victims.

The betrayal I document is multi-generational.

The First Betrayal (1922–23)

The state betrayed my great-grandparents during the 1922–23 famine in Ukraine — not because the catastrophe occurred there, and not because Lithuania initiated their deportation in 1915, which was carried out by the Russian authorities, but because the Lithuanian state deliberately prevented their return to Lithuania when return meant survival. My great-grandparents were trapped in a zone of engineered starvation and were barred from coming home, where they might have lived. This was not passive negligence; it was the deliberate decision to consign them to remain in lethal conditions with the foreseeable and fatal result that many members of my family perished. I hold the Lithuanian state responsible not for creating the famine, but for using it as a mechanism of destruction by denying my family the chance to live — conduct that meets the standard in international law of deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction.

The Second Betrayal (1941–45)

The state betrayed my grandfather and all of Lithuania’s Jews — 96.4% of whom were murdered, the highest murder rate in Europe — through the active participation of Lithuanian citizens, Lithuanian authorities, militias, and civil structures in genocide. This was not mere compliance with German occupation. In numerous locations, Lithuanian violence preceded German arrival, and Kazys Škirpa’s own program — documented in my published work in Times of Israel — advanced the exterminatory project directly to Hitler and Nazi leadership. The Lithuanian Provisional Government’s policies reflected a pre-existing project of exclusion, dispossession, and destruction.

The result was the most complete annihilation of a Jewish community in Europe.

The Third Betrayal (1990–Present)

The third betrayal is not episodic; it is the governing record of post-independence Lithuania. From the moment of restored sovereignty, successive Lithuanian governments have engaged in a concerted, coordinated campaign of historical falsification and exclusion. They denied my grandfather’s existence and role, insulted his memory, and by extension insulted the dignity of all Lithuanian Jews. They constructed and enforced a “No-Jew” citizenship regime. They institutionalized Holocaust fraud through state agencies, court decisions, educational policy, and international diplomacy.

This was not the conduct of rogue officials or temporary administrations. It was a whole-of-government policy, sustained across ministries, courts, archives, and foreign representations. Its purpose was consistent: to erase Jewish presence, invert culpability, and launder perpetrators into national symbols. By criminalizing documentation, suppressing evidence, and punishing those who refused to comply, the post-independence Lithuanian state made the truth itself the target.

This is the third betrayal: not only of my family and of Lithuanian Jewry, but of history, of democratic principle, and of Lithuania’s own future.

Key Findings of Fact

Lithuanian courts systematically blocked the admission of documentary evidence in Holocaust-related cases (forensic avoidance).
The LGGRTC functions as a state body that launders the reputations of documented perpetrators.
Over three decades, not one central falsehood has been formally corrected.
Lithuanian authorities repeatedly misrepresented findings to U.S. officials and to the U.S. Congress.
This conduct undermines alliance trust, intelligence reliability, and rule-of-law credibility.

A Legacy of Strategic Dishonesty

Lithuania’s behavior follows a consistent pattern: it does not act from moral autonomy.

It moves only when compelled by external pressure, and even then only enough to reduce the cost of exposure. Every concession is tactical, not ethical.

Lithuania often claims the Soviets did not teach the truth. That may be so.

But Lithuania has now enjoyed independence for decades and has chosen to teach falsehood.

That places the modern Lithuanian state at least on par with Soviet propaganda—and in one respect worse: the Soviets imposed narratives by coercion; Lithuania sustains them by deliberate institutional design.

Lithuania did not merely inherit this falsehood. It codified it in law, imposed it through its courts, financed it through state institutions, and exported it internationally as official historical doctrine.

The Chain of Persecution

I am not the first citizen targeted for refusing to participate in this distortion.

Yitzhak Arad, former chairman of Yad Vashem, was branded a war criminal for escaping the ghetto to fight the Nazis.

Fania Brantsovsky, eighty-six years old, was hunted by armed police at her workplace in 2008.

Rachel Margolis was driven into exile and died unable to return home—while Lithuania continued to honor the men who murdered her family.

I am the last remaining target in that chain.

The Forensic Trap: Judicial Activism

My work unfolded across two fronts.

First, five lawsuits dismantled Lithuania’s “No-Jew” citizenship system, a campaign I documented in my book Malice, Murder and Manipulation

Second, I launched litigation challenging Holocaust denial and revisionism:

https://grantgochin.com/summary-of-legal-actions-5-10-15-6-22-20/

The Lithuanian state ensured these cases were never heard in open court.

It used procedural manipulation and Article 170(2) of its Criminal Code to suppress forensic evidence.

This was not judicial disagreement; it was forensic avoidance.

Lithuanian courts systematically refused to admit or weigh the documentary record.

A legal system that survives only by refusing to examine documents has already conceded the case on the merits.

For more than three decades I have pursued this record through litigation, archives, diplomacy, and scholarship. I have produced documents, witnesses, contemporaneous orders, and forensic evidence. Not one central falsehood has been corrected. Not one institutional finding withdrawn. Not one perpetrator honored by the state stripped of status. The refusal to correct is not error; it is policy.

The Systemic Negation of Memory

The negation of Jewish memory, the inversion of victimhood, and the heroization of murderers is not error; it is architecture.

Lithuania has engaged in reputational laundering—the systematic conversion of documented perpetrators into national heroes.

The IHRA Double Standard

Lithuania publicly claims adherence to IHRA standards while privately violating the core definition by engaging in Holocaust distortion.

It invokes the IHRA framework as diplomatic cover while financing monuments honoring perpetrators of genocide.

This is calculated branding, not moral commitment.

IHRA’s Complicity

Lithuania’s conduct would be impossible without institutional cover. The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance is fully aware of Lithuania’s historical falsification strategy, its honorization of perpetrators, and its use of IHRA membership as diplomatic camouflage. Yet IHRA has permitted Lithuania to remain a member in good standing.

This is no longer mere negligence.

It is facilitation.

IHRA’s mission is to combat Holocaust distortion. When it tolerates a state that institutionalizes distortion, it betrays its own mandate. Lithuania’s continued membership delegitimizes IHRA’s standards and corrodes global Holocaust education.

IHRA must either enforce its principles or abandon them.

The only responsible course is the immediate suspension and expulsion of Lithuania until it undertakes verified, irreversible historical correction.

When Truth Is Labeled an Enemy

In public fora, Lithuanian officials have portrayed documented historical research as hostile influence, even labeling me a “Russian agent.”

This signals institutional failure: a counterintelligence inversion, where the system is trained to detect “disloyalty,” not deception.

Such a culture corrodes analysis, produces false positives, and teaches officials that narrative compliance matters more than accuracy.

Why I Did This: A Covenant of Love

This effort has never been about litigation, reputation, or recognition.

I sought no office, no payment, no title, and no advantage. I pursued this work because the dead have no voice, and the future has no memory without us.

It began as an obligation to my grandfather and to all of my murdered relatives. They were erased once by violence and again by denial. I was the last one standing with the documents, the names, the records, and the means to restore their truth and dignity. For me, this was not a choice; it was a moral obligation. Once that burden was placed upon me, setting it down was not an option.

Over decades of pressure, legal harassment, and public vilification, I never sought retaliation. I sought only archives, records, and the integrity of truth. I did not choose this burden; it arrived with the evidence, the graves, and the knowledge that silence would complete the crime.

This effort is an expression of love—a covenantal response to catastrophe. I began this work because I love my people, because memory is the only inheritance that cannot be taken from us, and because abandoning the truth of our dead abandons the protection of our future.

Historical truth is memory security.

Memory security is also a strategic asset. A state that launders the reputations of mass murderers creates a permanent moral vulnerability, exploitable through disinformation and coercion to undermine social cohesion and alliance credibility.

My concern is not only for Jewish memory, but for the moral inheritance of Lithuanian children, who deserve a nation unburdened by falsehood and capable of honest pride. I write this so that future generations—Lithuanian and Jewish alike—may inherit a world where history is not a weapon, but a teacher.

I would rather carry this burden in obscurity than allow their memory to remain in silence.

What This Lie Does to a Nation

When a government teaches its people that they were a nation of rescuers instead of a nation of murderers, it destroys the moral foundation of society.

Ordinary Lithuanians are denied an honest national identity.

Yet I believe in a new generation of Lithuanians.

They deserve a country built on fact, not fraud.

I want my nation to be the best it can be—a place where truth is the foundation of citizenship.

The Absolute Demand for Fact

There is no reconciliation without truth.

LGGRTC Revocation: The center must revoke its fraudulent exoneration of Jonas Noreika.
Presidential Mandate: The President must revoke all national honors bestowed upon him.
Architecture of Collaboration: The fourteen identified individuals—including political architects Kazys Škirpa and Juozas Ambrazevičius-Brazaitis, and operational executioners Jonas Noreika and Antanas Impulevičius—must be examined by legitimate historians with full archival access.

Lithuania has repeatedly misrepresented these figures to U.S. officials, including in formal responses to the United States Congress, contradicting documentary evidence, internal memoranda, and existing U.S. government records.

This conduct has been reinforced by senior political figures — including Vytautas Landsbergis, whose public interventions defending Lithuania’s falsified narrative are documented in Times of Israel:

This behavior does not merely falsify history; it corrupts an alliance. A partner that knowingly submits false findings of fact to the United States over decades is not acting in good faith.

Independent Forensic Audit: Lithuania must submit the LGGRTC’s forensically sequestered archives to an audit conducted by non-Lithuanian Western scholars.

Immediate Actions for Democratic Partners

Require Lithuania to open LGGRTC archives for independent forensic audit.
Condition bilateral cooperation on formal historical corrections.
Record Lithuania’s conduct in U.S. and EU rule-of-law reviews.
Brief NATO StratCom on the resulting information-security vulnerability.
Require restitution transparency tied to Holocaust-era seizures.

A Security Liability for Allies

If a NATO member maintains an agency dedicated to fabricating “facts,” no intelligence product from that state can be presumed reliable.

When a government equates evidence with subversion, it signals institutional compromise.

At a moment when the security of the entire democratic world is tied to the survival of Ukraine, the persistence of irredentist antisemitism and Holocaust distortion inside Eastern Europe presents a fundamental danger to the moral and political defense of the West. A coalition cannot credibly oppose imperial aggression while tolerating historical fraud, ethnic erasure, and the normalization of genocidal collaborators within its own ranks. Lithuania’s positions do not merely weaken historical truth; they fracture the moral foundation of Western unity and hand Vladimir Putin a ready-made instrument of exploitation. Every uncorrected lie becomes an opportunity for Russian disinformation, every monument to a perpetrator a gift to Russian propaganda.

Allies should treat Lithuania’s weaponization of counterintelligence rhetoric as a credibility warning.

NATO and the EU must be briefed that Lithuanian national history is a state-sponsored fraud.

If Lithuania continues to ignore inquiries from the U.S. Congress and State Department, the United States should review the scope and conditions of its engagement.

The United States has extended military, financial, and diplomatic commitments in reliance on Lithuania’s representations as a rule-of-law democracy. Lithuania’s sustained obstruction of evidence and submission of falsified findings of fact constitute a breach of that reliance.

An ally that falsifies the past cannot be presumed truthful about the present.

A functioning democracy is defined not by elections alone, but by whether courts admit evidence and correct falsehood when confronted with proof.

On this test, Lithuania’s conduct fails.

The Strategic Risk to Israel

Lithuania’s campaign of historical falsification also poses a strategic risk to Israel.

A state that normalizes Holocaust distortion weakens the international consensus that underpins the global fight against antisemitism, denial, and incitement. When European governments institutionalize false memory, they supply hostile actors with narratives that erode Israel’s moral and diplomatic standing and fracture the post-war framework that protects Jewish life worldwide.

Israel’s security depends not only on weapons and alliances, but on the preservation of historical truth.

When that truth is compromised inside NATO and the European Union, Israel inherits a weaker diplomatic environment, a noisier information battlefield, and diminished deterrence against denial-based radicalization.

For this reason, Lithuania’s conduct is not merely a bilateral dispute.

It is a matter of regional information security and Jewish collective security.

Closing Record

History is not owned by states. It is entrusted to the living by the dead.

I end where I began — with love.

I write this for my grandfather, Sam Gochin of Papilė, Lithuania, a man of unyielding conscience and moral clarity. He was a beacon to the world, and everything I have done has been an attempt to honor his life, his integrity, and the millions whose names were erased alongside his people.

If truth survives, so do they.

If we abandon it, we betray not only the dead, but the living.

The truth has already won.