B'nai B'rith International Executive Vice President Daniel S. Mariaschin, along with leaders of other Jewish organizations, met with Lithuanian Prime Minister Gediminas Kirkilas on June 30 to urge the prime minister and his government to pass legislation that will finally resolve the matter of Jewish communal property restitution. Mariaschin has long been active in Holocaust education and restitution issues and played an active role in the negotiation for the return of hundreds of historic Torah scrolls that belonged to the Lithuanian Jewish community to Jewish institutions world wide. More than 90 percent of the Lithuanian Jewish community was killed during the Holocaust.

Negotiations on restitution issues have gone on for more than six years, but Lithuania has still not settled the issue. Mariaschin and the other Jewish leaders expressed deep frustration with the slow time frame. The October Lithuania elections might lead to further delays. Every effort must be made now to adopt the required legislation and to educate the Lithuanian population.

The 90-minute meeting at American Jewish Committee (AJC) headquarters in New York also focused on Yitzhak Arad, a Lithuanian Jewish partisan, revered as a Holocaust-era hero, who has been under investigation for two years by the Lithuanian prosecutor-general for alleged "war crimes." At the meeting, the prime minister's delegation was reminded that the charges against Arad are baseless, and urged the Lithuanian government to end the harassment of Arad.

The meeting with Kirkilas came against the backdrop of the European Union decision to designate Vilnius as the 2009 Cultural Capital of Europe.  "Lithuania has fallen far behind other governments in Central and Eastern Europe in restoring properties seized from Jewish communities by the Nazi and communist regimes," Mariaschin said. "We were able to discuss with the prime minister Lithuania's indifference toward some of the most pressing concerns of the country's surviving Jewish community."

Other participants in the meeting included Rabbi Andrew Baker, AJC's director of International Jewish affairs; David A. Harris, AJC executive director; Michael Schneider, secretary-general of the World Jewish Congress; Mark Levin, executive director of the NCSJ; and Gideon Taylor, executive vice president of the Conference on Material Claims Against Germany.