Chair of ruling Lithuanian party: Compensations to Jews to set nation apart

Leader of the ruling Farmers and Greens Union Ramūnas Karbauskis believes that paying compensations to Jews and their inheritants for property lost during World War II would set the nation apart, reports BNS.

According to Karbauskis, ethnic Lithuanians once turned to find themselves in a similar situation, when they were deported to Siberia by the Soviet authorities and lost their property. “This would cause discord in society. We would have had a negative effect if we select a single ethnic group, a single group of Lithuanian citizens against other groups without solving problems of the rest population, who are in a similar situation. So, if we speak of World War II, the situation affected people of various nationalities: people of different national origin were shot down,” Karbauskis told LNK TV channel.

To remind, US officials and the Lithuanian Jewish community are calling the Lithuanian government to return property to the Jews who survived the Holocaust and their descendants. Six years ago, Lithuania pledged to pay compensations for property of Lithuanian Jews’ religious communities worth EUR 37mn up to 2023. During the Nazi occupation, the fascists and their local supporters killed about 195,000 Lithuanian Jews. Only 5-10% of Lithuanian Jews survived World War II.