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Lithuania passes law allocating nearly $40 million for Holocaust survivors
(JTA) — Lithuania’s parliament passed a law this week to set aside over 37 million euros ($38 million) as restitution for Holocaust survivors and their heirs.
Ingrida Šimonytė, Lithuania’s prime minister, introduced the bill in the Seimas, Lithuania’s national legislature in Vilnius, on Nov. 15, proposing to nearly double the money the government had already set aside for restitution claims in a country where 90% of its Jews were killed in the Holocaust. Today only 5,000 Jews remain in the country.
The World Jewish Restitution Organization called it “an important step to providing a measure of justice to Lithuanian Holocaust survivors and their families for the horrors they suffered during World War II and its aftermath.”
The bill passed last week with an overwhelming majority, with 72 parliamentarians in favor, six against and two abstaining.
“No one can bring the lost lives back and revive the communities once we had. However, the approach the government shows in terms of restitution for the Lithuanian Jewish community devastated during the Holocaust is proper and is welcomed by our community,” said Fania Kukliansky, president of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, according to the Baltic News Network.
Over a decade ago, the parliament passed legislation to allocate 36 million euros, then worth about $72 million, for a “Good Will Foundation” that funds projects to benefit the country’s Jewish population. The money was considered restitution for communal property seized from Lithuania’s Jewish community under the Nazi occupation.
The present bill would allow survivors and their heirs to apply for restitution for personal property as well, while continuing to fund the Good Will Foundation.
“This is also a moral debt that should be acknowledged and, as far as possible, not 100%, resolved,” Šimonytė said.
Lithuania has a checkered history when it comes to Holocaust remembrance. The Nazi’s Lithuanian collaborators under German occupation were involved in many atrocities, including the massacres at Paneriai, a present-day suburb of Vilnius, where 70,000 Jews were killed between 1941 and 1944. Lithuanian battalions performed guard duty and organized deportations at the Majdanek death camp in Poland and the Warsaw Ghetto.
Jewish leaders objected when, in 2020, Lithuanian lawmakers considered a law that would have declared that neither Lithuania nor its leaders could be blamed for participating in the Holocaust because the country was occupied. Amid the rise in nationalism across Eastern Europe, streets, schools and monuments have been named for Lithuanian collaborators.
Despite the overwhelming vote in the Seimas, not everyone supported the bill.
“Our faction did not support it. We believe that the issue is resolved. Neither the motives nor the real reasons for it are understood,” said former Lithuanian Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis, who is now chairman of the Democratic Union For Lithuania Party and voted against the bill.
“If we’d apply the same approach, then the story of compensation would be endless” he added, pointing to non-Jewish Lithuanians who lost property during both the Nazi and Soviet occupations.
“If every government starts believing it has an exclusive right to pass decisions on restitution, then, to follow the logic, every new government can start thinking that it has a right to compensate also all the Lithuanian nationals who lost their property in the 1940s and who haven’t seen any compensation,” Skvernelis said.
The bill’s passage was welcomed by the United States embassy in Lithuania.
“The passing of this legislation is an important step in recognizing the tragedy of the Holocaust in Lithuania,” Robert Gilchrist, the U.S. ambassador to Lithuania, said in a statement. “The United States Government strongly welcomes and endorses the Lithuanian government’s proposal to address longstanding issues of restitution for the Lithuanian Jewish community devastated during the Holocaust.”
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Remains of Omer Neutra, Israeli-American hostage killed on Oct. 7, are returned to Israel
Hamas has returned remains belonging to Omer Neutra, an Israeli-American who was killed while serving in the Israeli army on Oct. 7, 2023, to Israel.
Neutra was one of two Israeli-American soldiers killed that day, along with Itay Chen, whose bodies were still being held by Hamas in Gaza weeks after the start of a ceasefire under which the group was required to release all hostages. Twenty living hostages were released at the ceasefire’s start, but Hamas has released deceased hostages intermittently and with snafus that have tested the truce.
On Sunday, Hamas transferred remains that it said came from three deceased hostages, which if confirmed would reduce the number of Israeli hostages in Gaza to eight. Neutra was the first to be positively identified.
“With heavy hearts and a deep sense of relief — we share the news that, Captain Omer Neutra Z”L has finally been returned for burial in the land of Israel,” his family said in a statement.
Neutra, who was 21 when he was killed, was the son of Israeli parents who grew up on Long Island, where he attended Jewish day school and camp. Following graduation, he moved to Israel and enlisted in the military. He was serving as a tank commander on Oct. 7.
For more than a year, his parents labored under the possibility that he was alive. Orna and Ronen Neutra became prominent faces of the movement to free the hostages, speaking at the Republican National Convention in 2024 as well as at a gathering of the Republican Jewish Coalition and numerous other forums. They also spoke directly with both U.S. presidents during their son’s captivity, Joe Biden and Donald Trump, in an effort to free their son and the other hostages.
After the Israeli army announced in December 2024 that it had concluded that Neutra had been killed on Oct. 7, his school and Jewish community on Long Island held a memorial service for him, while his town of Plainview named both a street and park for him. But family members continued to lobby for the remaining hostages, to return those who remained alive and give those whose loved ones had been killed the closure they desperately sought.
“They will now be able to bury Omer with the dignity he deserves,” the family’s statement said. “Omer has returned to the land he loved and served. His parents’ and brother’s courage and resolve have touched the hearts of countless people around the world.”
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Iran’s President Says Tehran Will Rebuild Its Nuclear Facilities
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian addresses the 80th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) at the UN headquarters in New York, US, Sept. 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Jeenah Moon
Tehran will rebuild its nuclear facilities “with greater strength,” Iran‘s President Masoud Pezeshkian told state media on Sunday, adding that the country does not seek a nuclear weapon.
US President Donald Trump has warned that he would order fresh attacks on Iran‘s nuclear sites should Tehran try to restart facilities that the United States bombed in June.
Pezeshkian made his comments during a visit to the country’s Atomic Energy Organization, during which he met with senior managers from Iran’s nuclear industry.
“Destroying buildings and factories will not create a problem for us, we will rebuild and with greater strength,” the Iranian president told state media.
In June, the US launched strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities that Washington says were part of a program geared towards developing nuclear weapons. Tehran maintains that its nuclear program is for purely civilian purposes.
“It’s all intended for solving the problems of the people, for disease, for the health of the people,” Pezeshkian said in reference to Iran‘s nuclear activities.
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Nigeria Says US Help Against Islamist Insurgents Must Respect Its Sovereignty
A drone view of Christians departing St. Peter and Paul Catholic Church after a Sunday mass in Palmgrove, Lagos, Nigeria November 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Sodiq Adelakun
Nigeria said on Sunday it would welcome US help in fighting Islamist insurgents as long as its territorial integrity is respected, responding to threats of military action by President Donald Trump over what he said was the ill-treatment of Christians in the West African country.
Trump said on Saturday he had asked the Defense Department to prepare for possible “fast” military action in Nigeria if Africa’s most populous country fails to crack down on the killing of Christians.
“We welcome US assistance as long as it recognizes our territorial integrity,” Daniel Bwala, an adviser to Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, told Reuters.
Bwala sought to play down tensions between the two states, despite Trump calling Nigeria a “disgraced country.”
“I am sure by the time these two leaders meet and sit, there would be better outcomes in our joint resolve to fight terrorism,” he said.
ISLAMIST INSURGENTS WREAK HAVOC FOR YEARS
Nigeria, a country of more than 200 million people and around 200 ethnic groups, is divided between the largely Muslim north and mostly Christian south.
Islamist insurgents such as Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province have wrought havoc in the country for more than 15 years, killing thousands of people, but their attacks have been largely confined to the northeast of the country, which is majority Muslim.
While Christians have been killed, the vast majority of the victims have been Muslims, analysts say.
In central Nigeria there have been frequent clashes between mostly Muslim herders and mainly Christian farmers over access to water and pasture, while in the northwest of the country, gunmen routinely attack villages, kidnapping residents for ransom.
VIOLENCE ‘DEVASTATES ENTIRE COMMUNITIES’
“Insurgent groups such as Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa often present their campaigns as anti-Christian, but in practice their violence is indiscriminate and devastates entire communities,” said Ladd Serwat, senior Africa analyst at US crisis-monitoring group ACLED.
“Islamist violence is part of the complex and often overlapping conflict dynamics in the country over political power, land disputes, ethnicity, cult affiliation, and banditry,” he said.
ACLED research shows that out of 1,923 attacks on civilians in Nigeria so far this year, the number of those targeting Christians because of their religion stood at 50. Serwat said recent claims circulating among some US right-wing circles that as many as 100,000 Christians had been killed in Nigeria since 2009 are not supported by available data.
NIGERIA REJECTS ALLEGATIONS OF RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE
Trump‘s threat of military action came a day after his administration added Nigeria back to a “Countries of Particular Concern” list of nations that the US says have violated religious freedoms. Other nations on the list include China, Myanmar, North Korea, Russia and Pakistan.
Tinubu, a Muslim from southern Nigeria who is married to a Christian pastor, on Saturday pushed back against accusations of religious intolerance and defended his country’s efforts to protect religious freedom.
When making key government and military appointments, Tinubu, like his predecessors, has sought to strike a balance to make sure that Muslims and Christians are represented equally. Last week, Tinubu changed the country’s military leadership and appointed a Christian as the new defense chief.
In the capital Abuja, some Christians going to Sunday Mass said they would welcome a US military intervention to protect their community.
STRIKES WOULD TARGET SMALL GROUPS ACROSS WIDE AREA
“I feel if Donald Trump said they want to come in, they should come in and there is nothing wrong with that,” said businesswoman Juliet Sur.
Security experts said any US airstrikes would most likely seek to target small groups scattered across a very large swathe of territory, a task that could be made more difficult given the US withdrew its forces last year from Niger, which borders Nigeria in the north.
The militant groups move between neighboring countries Cameroon, Chad and Niger, and the experts said the US may require help from the Nigerian military and government, which Trump threatened to cut off from assistance.