Lithuania’s Court of Appeal found lawmaker Remigijus Žemaitaitis guilty of inciting hatred against Jews and grossly trivialising the Holocaust, increasing his fine to 10,000 euros.
Žemaitaitis, leader of the Nemunas Dawn party, said he would appeal the ruling, accusing the court of making a political decision.
“It is a pity that political decisions are still prevalent in the courts,” Žemaitaitis told reporters. He said he would seek a new assessment of the evidence at the cassation stage.
The appeals court overturned part of an earlier ruling by the Vilnius Regional Court, which had fined Žemaitaitis 5,000 euros. Prosecutor Justas Laucius had sought a much larger penalty of 52,250 euros.
Presiding Judge Vitalija Norkūnaitė said Žemaitaitis had used public statements and social media posts to “grossly trivialise the genocide of the Jewish people, the Holocaust, and committed a continuous criminal offense”.
The court found that the politician deliberately fuelled ethnic division by making generalised accusations against Jews and linking them to historical events involving the destruction of Lithuania.
Judges said Žemaitaitis had systematically distorted historical facts, used offensive language and employed “dehumanising comparisons”.
The panel specifically cited his comparisons between the Holocaust and Soviet crimes, as well as references to Jewish people using demeaning terminology, saying such statements constituted a criminal trivialisation of the Holocaust.
The court concluded that the offenses were more serious than initially assessed by the lower court. The ruling took effect immediately but can still be appealed to the Supreme Court of Lithuania.
The case stems from Facebook posts and public comments made by Žemaitaitis in May and June 2023. He was commenting on news about Israel having demolished an EU-funded school in the West Bank.
Prosecutors said he referred to Israel as “animals” and claimed that Jews had contributed to the destruction of the Lithuanian nation.
The comments also led to impeachment proceedings. In April 2024, Lithuania’s Constitutional Court ruled that Žemaitaitis had broken his parliamentary oath and committed a serious violation of the constitution.
Following the ruling, Žemaitaitis resigned his parliamentary seat in order to run in the presidential and parliamentary elections. He was later re-elected to the Seimas, Lithuania’s parliament, in the autumn of 2024.
