Amb. Antanaviciene: “We are deeply saddened by the loss of Dr. Yitzhak Arad, a man who’s legacy will forever stay with us. At this difficult time of loss we extend our deepest condolences to the family of this brave Fighter. May his memory be a blessing.”
While ignoring the grammatical error, Efraim Zuroff, the director of the Jerusalem office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, was somewhat surprised at the content which he characterized as hypocrisy rather than closure.
Zuroff told The Jerusalem Post that in 2006 the Lithuanians accused Arad of a war crime for his alleged role in the Koniuuchy massacre of January, 1944, in which at least 38 civilians, mostly women and children were killed by anti-Nazi Soviet partisans, and called on people who could testify to such to come forward.
While Arad did indeed fight with the Soviet partisans, he categorically denied having ever killed a civilian or prisoner of war in cold blood. At the same time, he expressed his pride in having fought the Nazis and their Lithuanian collaborators, whose role, he was coincidentally investigating at the time that the Lithuanian State Prosecutor was investigating him for purported war crimes.
Arad himself believed the investigation was an act of vengeance in response to his having testified in the US against a Lithuanian Nazi collaborator.
Another reason may have been in relation to the final mission in which Arad participated as a partisan – a mopping up operation in the large Lithuanian village of Girdon.
The Soviet partisans fought the Lithuanian partisans, and by evening according to Arad’s account in his autobiography The Partisan, published in 1979, the Lithuanian dead numbered 250.
The Lithuanian investigation against Arad was finally dropped in 2008.
Nonetheless, it is difficult to convince Zuroff that the Lithuanians of today do not share the anti-Jewish sentiments of the Lithuanians of yesteryear.
Arad, who was born in a part of Poland that is now Lithuania, is claimed as a hero and native son by both countries.
From 1942-1944, he was part of the clandestine ghetto resistance movements, and concurrently fought with the Soviet partisans whose ranks he joined in February, 1943, and with whom he remained till the end of the war, despite the antisemitism which he encountered from time to time.
With a Zionist youth movement background, it was a given that after the war, he would set his sights on the Land of Israel, where he arrived as an illegal immigrant in December, 1945. Arad wasted no time, joined the Palmah, and in the War of Independence fought with the Harel Brigade under the command of Yitzhak Rabin. Arad continued to serve in the Israel Defense Forces after the war, becoming Chief Education Officer and rose to the rank of brigadier-general.
As an academic, Arad became an expert Holocaust historian. After leaving the army, he joined the Yad Vashem team of researchers, serving as chairman of the directorate and chairman of the Council. He was an integral part of Yad Vashem for 21 years, and continued with Holocaust research following his retirement.