Research collections: Congressional and diplomatic correspondence · Using and citing the archive
Litigation research guide: Heritage Department, Noreika, ECHR and UN — filings, decisions, translations and documented outcomes. Updated 3 October 2026.
A documentary record of Holocaust memory, historical evidence, and institutional accountability in Lithuania
Since 1989, I have assembled historical records and documented how Lithuanian state institutions respond when confronted with evidence concerning Holocaust-era responsibility, commemoration, and the public historical record.
I am a party to many of the disputes documented here; my own submissions, complaints, and pleadings are identified as advocacy. The underlying documents are published so that readers can examine the evidence and reach their own conclusions.
Do not take my word for it. Read the documents.
Dedicated documentary collections
- Lithuanian citizenship: applications, litigation and translations — early approaches identified from 1989, the recovered 1996–1997 dossier, later applications, five court proceedings, translations and a research download.
- Historical litigation and institutional correspondence reference index — 152 entries from the supplied May 2026 inventory, public source links.
- Joseph A. Melamed: central document index — publications, records requests, registration evidence and acquisition gaps.
- LGGRTC Director General applications — applications, supporting dossier and institutional correspondence.
For researchers: begin with a collection’s index, follow the individual source links, and check the stated language, version and coverage limits. Research method and identifier guide · Search the document catalogue.
Citizenship, responsibility and my grandfather’s mission
I estimate that about 10,000 Litvak descendants have recovered Lithuanian citizenship, and I claim that this outcome is due in substantial part to my years of litigation, research, public advocacy and efforts to expose and overcome the barriers facing Litvak applicants. I regard that contribution as one of the greatest legacies of my life.
My grandfather, Samuel Gochin, gave me a mission: always to do my best to take care of my fellow Litvaks, to the fullest extent of my ability and responsibility. My citizenship work was one way of fulfilling that obligation. Citizenship can give a family another legal home and preserve a connection that children and future generations can inherit. My work to preserve historical truth comes from the same responsibility.
This is my estimate and my assessment of my contribution, not an independently audited total or a claim that I acted alone. Other applicants, lawyers, Jewish organizations and parliamentarians also contributed. There is no consistent official cumulative Litvak total available to me from which an exact figure or individual causal share can be calculated.
Read my published account: Citizenship as Both Refuge and Inheritance. The documentary files below allow researchers to examine the record behind my account.
From family history to institutional record
Lithuania was home to one of Europe’s most important Jewish civilizations. Vilna (Vilnius), known for centuries as the Jerusalem of Lithuania, was one of its great religious and intellectual centers.
The Holocaust destroyed that civilization in Lithuania. Lithuanian police, auxiliary police battalions, partisan formations, civil officials, local administrations, and individual participants took part in the persecution, dispossession, and murder of Jews, particularly during the mass-killing phase of 1941.
In its 2025 International Holocaust Remembrance Day statement, the Embassy of Israel in Vilnius stated that more than 200,000 Lithuanian Jews were murdered, the highest percentage of any country in Europe. It added: “This tragedy stemmed not only from Nazi crimes but also from complacency and collaboration.”
The surviving record is extensive. Lithuanian archives, contemporary documents, survivor testimony, postwar investigations, foreign archives, scholarly research, judicial records, and Lithuania’s own state institutions preserve evidence concerning persecution, dispossession, and murder.
After independence, my research increasingly turned toward another body of evidence: what happened when documented historical claims were placed before institutions of the restored Lithuanian state.
Since 2015, I have made a sustained series of formal submissions concerning Holocaust history, historical memory, commemoration, and institutional responsibility. Documents and questions have been presented to presidents, ministers, prosecutors, municipalities, courts, parliamentary bodies, archives, museums, and historical institutions.
The disputes have concerned figures including Jonas Noreika, Kazys Škirpa, and Juozas Brazaitis, as well as broader questions involving the Lithuanian Activist Front, the Provisional Government, local administration, property, commemoration, historical research, and the state’s responsibility for the accuracy of the public record.
Institutional responses have varied. Claims have been accepted, rejected, or redirected. Documents have been produced. Proceedings have been opened and closed. Courts have ruled on particular legal questions. Historical propositions have been defended, modified, or corrected. Other disputes remain unresolved. The archive records those developments together with the materials that preceded and followed them.
What the archive records
The archive distinguishes between different kinds of evidence and argument. Primary historical documents, government statements, institutional findings, judicial decisions, allegations, legal submissions, scholarly interpretations, and my own analysis are identified separately rather than presented as interchangeable forms of authority.
Each accession carries a permanent identifier together with, where available, its date, creator, recipient, provenance, original source, language, translation status, related people and institutions, associated proceedings, and publications in which it has been discussed.
The original-language document will be retained wherever possible. English translations will identify their source and status, including whether they are official, certified, professionally prepared, or working translations.
Digital sources require similar discipline. Government webpages can be revised or removed, and links can fail. Material originating online will therefore be preserved, where practicable, with its retrieval or capture date and enough information to establish what was consulted.
A future researcher should be able to reconstruct the evidentiary chain rather than inherit somebody else’s summary of it.
Recognition Without Reckoning
This documentary record also informs my doctoral dissertation at Gratz College, Recognition Without Reckoning: Sovereignty, Continuity, and the Architecture of Historical Evasion.
The research examines a problem that became increasingly visible through years of correspondence and proceedings: general recognition of the Holocaust does not necessarily resolve disputes about particular actors, institutions, property, responsibility, or commemoration.
The record makes it possible to examine how institutions respond to documented claims over time: whether they investigate the evidence, produce contrary evidence, answer the proposition actually submitted, transfer responsibility elsewhere, modify an earlier position, or leave the matter unanswered.
Those responses can be examined case by case and document by document.
An adversarial archive with an open record
This collection reflects research and disputes in which I have often taken a defined position. It should be judged with that fact disclosed rather than concealed behind a claim of neutrality that I do not make.
The standard I am seeking is evidentiary independence: another person should be able to inspect the sources and determine whether my conclusions follow from them.
Lithuanian institutions, historians, individuals named in the archive, and other researchers are invited to provide contrary documents, corrections, and substantive responses. A formal corrections and responses procedure will accompany the archive, and material corrections will be logged rather than silently substituted.
Where an institution disputes my account, its documented position belongs in the record. The same standard applies to my own work.
Preservation
Documentary memory is fragile.
Officials leave office. Government websites are redesigned. Documents disappear from public servers. Institutional descriptions change. Links used in articles cease to function. Records that were once easy to obtain can become difficult to reconstruct years later.
The Lithuania Project will preserve documents together with their provenance and relationships to the larger record. Separate archive policies will govern translations, corrections, personal information and redactions, third-party material, and long-term preservation.
The archive is being built in stages. The first public phase will establish the project narrative, source-document repository, institutional and individual dossiers, case records, and chronology. Additional material will be accessioned as it is catalogued and its provenance confirmed.
Explore the record
Visitors will be able to approach the material through individual documents, dossiers on particular historical figures, institutional files, litigation and other proceedings, a chronological record of submissions and responses, and the underlying historical evidence.
My articles and commentary are available through the Media section of this website and through my Substack. They are arguments drawn from the archive, not substitutes for it.
Do not take my word for it.
Read the documents.
Research method
The public archive is linked to a controlled analytical register rather than maintained as an independent narrative. Research Method & Observation Register explains the LAC-D, LT-PUB and OBS identifier systems and publishes the current 69-observation index.
Historical Sources · Institutional Responses
Additional court and institutional reference records
Each record below provides its date, creator, language, procedural role, source PDF and suggested citation.
- Request to review Noreika’s state honour — 15 June 2018 — LAC-D00278
- Presidential follow-up on Noreika’s state honour — 19 September 2018 — LAC-D00280
- Separate appeal on the Noreika finding — 24 March 2020 — LAC-D00283
- Vilnius Administrative Court preparation order — 17 October 2018 — LAC-D00284
- Supreme Administrative Court scheduling order — 27 April 2020 — LAC-D00285
- IHRA reply on external petitions — 20 August 2026 — LAC-D00338
- PEMC reply on nomination and voting — 4 September 2026 — LAC-D00420
Expanded preservation download
Download the expanded public archive preservation pack (ZIP, approximately 130 MB; 3 October 2026). Selected set: 66 public PDFs, 26 searchable text representations and 28 public research-page content snapshots. This is a selected archive backup, rather than a complete WordPress installation backup. The included source index records PDF source URLs, page counts, file sizes and SHA-256 checksums.