Wiesenthal Center: Lithuanian Military Exercises at Holocaust Mass Murder Site "Totally Inappropriate"

Jerusalem-The Simon Wiesenthal Center today issued a statement harshly condemning military exercises being held by the Lithuanian Army at the Seventh Fort in Kaunas (Kovno), the site of the massmurder of several thousand Jews in July 1941.

In a statement issued here by its director of Eastern European Affairs, Dr. Efraim Zuroff, the Center labelled the decision to conduct military training at the site "grossly insensitive," andcalled upon the army to immediately halt the exercises at the mass murder site and move them to an alternate venue.

According to Zuroff:

"The original sin in this regard was the horrendous mistake of privatizing the mass murder site by the government in 2009 over the objections of the Lithuanian Jewish community. Given the factthat the area where the victims are buried is not fenced off, nor is it appropriately marked, there is a danger of the desecration of the dead. We urge the Lithuanian authorities to acknowledgetheir lack of sensitivity to these Holocaust victims and immediately move the military exercises elsewhere."

For additional information please contact the Israel Office of the Wiesenthal Center: Tel: 972-2-563-1274 or Tel: 972-50-721-4156, join the Center on Facebook, www.facebook.com/simonwiesenthalcenter, or follow @simonwiesenthal and @EZuroff for news updates sent direct to your Twitter feed.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families in the UnitedStates. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the OAS, the Council of Europe and the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino).