Dershowitz on Lithuania

I am appalled by Alan M. Dershowitz’s commentary (Sept. 13) and the media blitz unleashed by Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center on Lithuania’s purported vindication of war criminals.

As this is written, only two out of 47,000 cases have been unearthed by Jewish activists in Lithuania that would tend to support their claims.

The pictures painted by both Dershowitz and Hier on Lithuania during the Nazi occupation also are biased, unfair, grossly distorted and historically inaccurate. Based on population figures at the time, the number of Lithuanians involved in war crimes was infinitesimally small, and certainly no greater, percentage-wise, than any other country in Eastern Europe at the time.

Lithuanians living today are two generations and 50 years removed from the Holocaust. I can understand their bitterness and anger at that black period in Jewish history, but the sins of the father really should not be passed on to the children, even if it were true.

And, finally, I would like to point out that as far as genocide is concerned, Lithuanians have more often been victims than perpetrators.

From 1940 to 1959, the period covering World War II and its aftermath, the Nazi Holocaust and the Soviet genocide led to the extermination of 683,185 Lithuanian citizens. Of this total, 25% were Jewish victims of the Holocaust and 75% were Lithuanian victims of Soviet genocide.

JOE BRAZAN SR.

Chino Hills