Nazi hunter Dr. Efraim Zuroff director of the Wiesenthal Institute in Jerusalem, harshly criticized the Prime Minister's remarks to Lithuanian leaders during his diplomatic visit there.
In an interview with Arutz 7, Zuroff wondered where the prime minister's determination to fight those who harm the memory of the Holocaust had disappeared. "In a crisis over Polish law, the prime minister said that Israel would not tolerate a Holocaust distortion, and now that he speaks to the leaders of Lithuania he mentions them as Holocaust survivors without mentioning Lithuanians' cooperation with the Nazis. "
"It's a shame because Lithuania is one of the leading countries in holocaust distortion," says Zuroff, " maybe they don't deny it, but they try to distort the role that Lithuanian collaborators played in the murder of Jews." The Lithuanians try to compare the crimes of the Holocaust to the crimes of the communists in order to depict themselves as the victims and not as the murders."
Zuroff referred specifically to Netanyahu's statement that the Lithuanians are Holocaust survivors and claims that this is a distortion of reality: "Today Lithuania is one of the leaders behind the distortion of the Holocaust, so how can they be praised?
If the prime minister comes to Lithuania and does not mention what is happening there, it is actually giving the green light to the Lithuanians to continue lying and to give thanks to the people who murdered Jews during the Holocaust. Schools in the country are named after the murderers of Jews and commanders who participated in persecution. I assume that if the prime minister read the book I wrote about Lithuania, he would speak a little differently. "