Aleksandras Lileikis

World War II In 1939, when Lithuania gained Vilnius as a result of the Soviet–Lithuanian Mutual Assistance Treaty, Lileikis became the deputy of the commander of the Vilnius district of the Lithuanian Security Police. He worked at suppressing the Polish resistance in Lithuania and investigated the death of the Soviet soldier Butayev, which was part of the official pretext for the Soviet ultimatum to Lithuania. He fled to Germany in 1940 due to the Soviet occupation of Lithuania and applied for German citizenship in June 1941.

In August 1941, after the German invasion of the Soviet Union and German occupation of Lithuania, he returned to Lithuania and reorganized the Lithuanian Security Police in Vilnius (about 130 men) on Gestapo lines according to instructions he received in Germany, complete with a special division (Komunistų-Žydų Skyrius) for dealing with "Jews and Communists". The Lithuanian Security Police had jurisdiction over Jews in hiding, non-Jews who helped Jews, and Jews suspected of Communist associations. Usually, escaped or suspected Jews were arrested by the regular police and handed over to the security police for investigation and interrogation. The security police would then hand over the Jews to the German police or Ypatingasis būrys, a Lithuanian collaborationist death squad which murdered an estimated 70,000 Jews at nearby Ponary. Acting as a desk murderer, Lileikis signed documents handing at least 75 Jews to Ypatingasis būrys. Lileikis fully understood that the Jews would be murdered. The Security Police also dealt with the Soviet partisans and Polish underground. For example, a report from 16 February to 21 March 1942 details that the security police in Vilnius arrested 319 people and 137 of them were sent to Ponary: 73 Jews, 23 Communists, 14 members of the Polish resistance, 20 document counterfeiters, and 7 spies. The duties related to non-Jewish groups increased as the number of Jews in the Vilna Ghetto dwindled and the anti-Nazi resistance grew. At the time, Lileikis was the oldest person to be subject to such an action. The CIA tried to stop the case from being filed, threatening not to allow the disclosure of some of the classified records in court. Describing Lileikis as "one of the most important Nazi collaborators" to be investigated by the United States, OSI accused Lileikis of lying about his World War II activities on his immigration paperwork. Lileikis refused to comment on the allegations to the Associated Press and invoked the Fifth Amendment when questioned by prosecutors. Lileikis refused to state even simple details on his life, such as his date and place of birth. Under federal law, the Fifth Amendment applies only to criminal proceedings; the prosecution argued that Lileikis should not be entitled to Fifth Amendment protection because he was not subject to criminal prosecution in the United States. The defense argued that Lileikis had a legitimate fear of prosecution in Lithuania, and should therefore not be compelled to testify.

In 1995, Judge Richard Stearns of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts ruled that Lileikis was not entitled to Fifth Amendment protection because the government had a "legitimate need for a witness's testimony" in enforcing "the organic laws of the United States". On 16 November, he granted the prosecution's motion to compel Lileikis' testimony; since he still refused to testify, the prosecution filed another motion on 18 December seeking that allegations which Lileikis refused to answer be admitted as if Lileikis had confessed to them. This motion was granted by the court on 9 January 1996. The Holocaust historian Yitzhak Arad and several other experts submitted affidavits along with more than a thousand pages of archival documents relating to the Nazi occupation of Lithuania, the Holocaust in Lithuania, and Lileikis' activities. On 24 May 1996, Stearns found him responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Jews. Lithuania initially indicated that he would not be prosecuted due to the lack of eyewitnesses. In 1997, he told the Lithuanian newspaper Respublika that "All of us were collaborators—the whole nation, since it was acting according to Nazi laws" and acknowledged that he had made "mistakes". The U.S. Department of Justice and Jewish organizations accused him of feigning illness. The trial was well-publicized in Lithuania. Lileikis died of a heart attack at Santara Clinics in Vilnius on 26 September 2000,