BOB ABERNETHY: On February 26, Lithuania inaugurates a new president, American Valdas Adamkus, who fled Lithuania during World War II and returned in 1991 after the fall of communism. One of the key issues facing Adamkus is strong international criticism that Lithuania hasn't done enough to bring Nazi collaborators to justice. Correspondent Jennifer Griffin reports from Vilnius that the presence of these alleged war criminals continues to haunt Lithuania's remaining Jewish community.SAMUEL KOTON (Holocaust Survivor): Of course we're offended that they're here; they killed our parents. We go to the forest every year and there they lie, our parents, our relatives, our sisters. We go to the cemetery every year to visit the people the Lithuanians shot.
JENNIFER GRIFFIN: Most of the Jewish community of Vilnius was killed during World War II, either by Nazis or by their fellow countrymen. Once, you needed a reservation to get into the synagogue to pray; now the only men who pray there are these Holocaust survivors, members of an aging, dwindling Jewish community, thriving in spirit but not in numbers.For 40 years, they sat in silence, forbidden by the postwar communist rulers from speaking of the Holocaust. The city still resembles prewar Vilnius -- this was known as the Jerusalem of the North, a rich center for rabbinical training, with one of the most vibrant Jewish populations in Europe. Nearly 240,000 Jews lived in Lithuania, until the Nazis invaded the Baltics and began systematically killing Jews with the help of the local population, eliminating in a matter of months a community which had lived here for centuries.
Nearly 70,000 Jews from Vilnius alone were shot in the Paneriai Forest. This is the forest today. It serves as a memorial for the estimated 200,000 Lithuanian Jews who died. This spot was chosen because it was close enough to Vilnius that Jews could be marched here from the city. The victims were forced to dig their own graves here under these trees. When it was clear that the Nazis would lose the war, they forced surviving Jews to dig up the graves and burn the corpses to hide the evidence.Now, Lithuania's Jewish community numbers less than 5,500, but they are breaking their silence. Many accuse the government of choosing silence again by not doing more to prosecute those who collaborated with Nazis.
YAKOV MAGGIT (Jewish Singer): We Jewish people think this case -- it should go to court. If the state wants to handle the situation honestly, then the courts should decide.
RAQKEL KOSTANIAN: And I ran because the German airplane -- he was down hunting me, and he was really -- he was very low. And I remember the face of the Nazi, and I don't know why he didn't kill me.
