„He incited to kill Jews; that's what it seemed to me,“ Kukliansky told the Vilnius Regional Court on Wednesday during questioning.
She testified in the case of Žemaitaitis, in which he is accused of inciting hatred against Jews and publicly endorsing, denying or grossly disparaging international crimes.
„He is only inciting certain groups of people without any knowledge of history; that's the only way I can understand it,“ the leader of the Lithuanian Jewish community, a lawyer by profession, told the court.
According to Kukliansky, anti-Semitism as a concept is defined in specific international documents, Lithuania is a signatory, and incitement is an indispensable element of genocide.
„I was not acquainted with Mr Žemaitaitis; his statements offend me as a person, (...) he incited the Jews to kill, that's how it appeared to me. As a witness and citizen, I must tell you what I saw and heard. I understood literally that an unnamed Jew climbed a ladder and fell. That it was a child's calculator is questionable; I am not aware of a person jumping over a rope and using a child's calculator; it was said in a completely different context, and the three communities understood it as an insult and turned to law enforcement,“ said Ms Kukliansky.
According to her, Žemaitaitis' words humiliated Lithuanian Jews and created a sense of violation. According to the witness, Lithuanian Jews are a specific minority group that suffered during World War II.
„We, the Lithuanian people, must never forget the Jews and the Russians, who were very active in the education of our nation! It was only by being strong within ourselves that we were able to withstand the deportations of 14 June 1941 and the following deportations. And now the descendants of those scoundrels and petty criminals, the NKVD and the KGB, are ruling over us,“ Žemaitaitis wrote in the public space, noting that 14 June should be commemorated as the Day of the Holocaust of the Lithuanian people.
Kukliansky said that the politician's remarks showed that he was ignorant of history.
„The sources forgot to write how many Jews were deported to Siberia, not based on nationality, but based on property; I have seen the documents – they were deported for owning a shop. Lithuanians and Jews were deported if they had certain views, and those whose income was more than 50 thousand litas a year were deported,“ the Chairwoman of the Lithuanian Jewish community told the court.
The charges against the 43-year-old politician, who has a law degree, are based on his own Facebook posts – as a member of the Seimas in the last parliamentary term, Žemaitaitis used anti-Semitic language in commenting on the news that Israeli forces had demolished a Palestinian school, and possibly despised Jewish people.
„It turns out that besides Putin, another animal has appeared in the world – ISRAEL. One with tanks destroying schools, the other with tractors! (...) After such events, one cannot help wondering why such sayings are born: 'A Jew climbed a ladder and fell by accident. Take a stick, children, and kill the Jew,“ Žemaitaitis wrote on Facebook.
„Žemaitaitis, being a state politician, i.e. a member of the Seimas, with his recordings, sought to provoke hostility and hatred towards persons of Jewish nationality,“ prosecutor Justas Laucius said.
According to the prosecutor, in his speech at the plenary session of the Seimas, Žemaitaitis publicly disseminated the idea of normalisation of anti-Semitism against the persons of Jewish nationality, despising and promoting hatred against a group of people and their members on the grounds of their nationality.
As previously announced by the Prosecutor's Office, the then Member of the Seimas, Žemaitaitis, is also accused of publicly grossly disparaging the genocide of the Jews (the Holocaust) perpetrated by Nazi Germany on the territory of Lithuania in his social network posts published on 13, 14 and 15 June 2023 in an abusive and insulting manner.
Žemaitaitis does not admit guilt.
On Monday, the Vilnius police announced that they had opened a pre-trial investigation into calls by Žemaitaitis to protest outside Vytautas Landsbergis' house in Žvėrynas.
ELTA recalls that the Social Democratic Council on Saturday approved a coalition agreement with the Democratic Union Vardan Lietuvos (In the Name of Lithuania) and the Nemuno aušra (The Dawn of Nemunas) party. The coalition of these three political forces will have a majority in the new Seimas – 86 out of 141 seats.
The participation of the party led by Žemaitaitis, who is notorious for his anti-Semitic statements, in the coalition has also attracted international criticism. Politicians in Germany, Poland, and the USA have expressed their criticism and opinions on the decision.
Kukliansky says that the fact that 200,000 voters cast their ballots for Žemaitaitis political force in the recent parliamentary elections shows the latency of the crime – that many people in Lithuania are hostile to Jews but have no voice – there are no more Jews in small towns.
„There are no Jews in small towns; if we rebuild a synagogue, there is no one who can use it“, said Kukliansky.
She said that her mother was put in the Šiauliai ghetto, and her sister and brother were killed. She said that no one in her family worked for the KGB, as Žemaitaitis claims.
„It has been scientifically established that traumatic experiences are transmitted, and they tried to shield us from telling stories. My daughter and grandchildren are scared: what would we do if this happened? Where would I disappear? For me, his words are real; it is not fiction; it was like that: myths were spread; it was blood in the matzohs, the plague because of the Jews,“ said the witness.
Kukliansky said that her son was abused by a kindergarten teacher when he was a child, who twisted his ear and told him not to go to Israel.
She did not ask the prosecutor's office or the court to grant her victim status in the Žemaitaitis case because, according to her, if she got angry at the politician, he would achieve his goal.
In April, the Constitutional Court ruled that the then Member of the Seimas, Žemaitaitis, had broken his oath of office as a Member of the Seimas by making anti-Semitic statements and had seriously violated the Constitution. Following the Constitutional Court's ruling, Žemaitaitis himself resigned from the Seimas, but in the autumn, he ran for re-election to the Seimas and was re-elected.
