c. 1997 Religion News Service

JERUSALEM _ A Lithuanian Jewish scholar who died two centuries ago is at the center of a current controversy over how to commemorate his life amid renewed questions about Lithuania’s role in the Holocaust and charges it has failed to prosecute its Nazi war criminals.

The scholar is Rabbi Elijah ben Solomon Zalman, better known as the Vilna Gaon, or”Genius of Vilna,”who died in 1797. The pre-eminent European Jewish scholar of his time, the Vilna Gaon is revered as a foundational thinker in modern Jewish life.

But the Israel representative of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, which attempts to bring Nazis to justice, has denounced an academic conference marking the 200th anniversary of the Vilna Gaon’s death scheduled for Vilna, Lithuania, next week. The center has urged Jewish groups to boycott the conference, which is scheduled to open Tuesday (Sept. 9) and run through Sept. 12.

Hanging in the background of the controversy is the debate over the degree to which Lithuanians collaborated with the Nazi murderers of Lithuanian Jews. Before World War II, Lithuania was home to about 250,000 Jews, and Vilna, known as the”Jerusalem of Lithuania,”was a vibrant Jewish cultural center.

Most of Lithuania’s Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. Today, only about 6,000 to 8,000 Jews live in Lithuania, many of them relatively recent immigrants from other parts of the former Soviet Union.

Efraim Zuroff, director of the Wiesenthal Center’s Israel office, said Lithuania has reneged on promises to prosecute its citizens who collaborated with the Nazis, including those Lithuanians who have already received official pardons for their actions.

Zuroff said not a single alleged Lithuanian Nazi war criminal has been put on trial, despite a 1995 vow by Lithuanian President Algirdas Brazauskas to do so.”It isn’t as if there’s a lack of Nazi war criminals in Lithuania,”Zuroff said.

Zuroff said the leading Nazi war criminal still alive in Lithuania is Aleksandras Lileikis, who, as head of the Vilna security police during the Holocaust, was responsible for the transfer of thousands of Jews to mass-murder sites.

Lileikis, who moved to the United States following the war, was stripped of his U.S. citizenship in 1996 and shortly thereafter returned to Lithuania to avoid deportation proceedings and possible extradition to Israel. At age 90, he now lives in Vilna.

Lileikis is”one of the biggest killers of the Vilna Gaon’s grandchildren,”said Dov Levin, a Hebrew University of Jerusalem expert on the history of Jews in the Baltic states, including Lithuania.

To mount this conference with a”clear conscience,”said Levin, who supports Zuroff’s call for a boycott, Lithuania must bring its war criminals to justice.

Lithuanian officials have reacted with outrage to Zuroff’s protest.

Culture Minister Saulius Saltenis called the demand for a boycott a”malevolent attempt to spoil the good relations that have been developed between Jews and Lithuanians,”according to a press report in Lithuania.

Rimantas Smetona, a Nationalist Party member of the Lithuanian parliament, went even further by calling on his country’s general prosecutor to bring criminal charges against Zuroff for slandering the Lithuanian state.

Meanwhile, Jewish support for Zuroff’s stance is far from unanimous.

The leadership of the Lithuanian Jewish community, which is sponsoring the conference, has denounced the boycott idea. The Israeli government is sending representatives to the conference, as are some major U.S.-based Jewish organizations, such as B’nai B’rith International and the American Jewish Committee.

Alan Schneider, the B’nai B’rith representative in Israel, agreed the Lithuanians have been lax in prosecuting their Nazi war criminals and hasty in pardoning them.”We have been very adamant with the Lithuanians about our displeasure and have raised the issue with the country’s president and leaders,”he said.”But we do not think boycotting the conference is the answer. This conference is important for Lithuania’s Jews, as an opportunity for them to rejoin, and be visible to, world Jewry.” But Levin _ who serves on the steering committee of Israel’s Association of Lithuanian Jews, which opposes the conference _ insisted that the gathering”is not serving Jewish interests but rather the Lithuanian government’s interests.” He and Zuroff said Lithuania hopes to use the conference to improve its ties to world Jewry in order to help it gain entry to the European Union and NATO.”In Eastern Europe, they still think the Jews control the world,”Zuroff noted wryly.

Both the Lithuanian embassy in Israel and the Israeli Foreign Ministry did not respond to requests for comment.

MJP END MARGOLIS