Storm in the Land of Rain: A Mother's Dying Wish Becomes Her Daughter's Nightmare

An award-winning journalist discovers that her grandfather, the legendary and heroic Lithiuanian "General Storm" who survived a Nazi concentration camp only to later be executed by the Russians, may also have been a Jew-killing antisemite. A fascinating story of bravery, betrayal, and the transformative power of seeking and finding the truth at whatever the cost.

Hero–or Nazi?

Silvia Foti was raised on reverent stories about her hero grandfather, a martyr for Lithuanian independence and an unblemished patriot. Jonas Noreika, remembered as “General Storm,” had resisted his country’s German and Soviet occupiers in World War II, surviving two years in a Nazi concentration camp only to be executed in 1947 by the KGB. His granddaughter, growing up in Chicago, was treated like royalty in her tightly knit Lithuanian community.

But in 2000, when Silvia traveled to Lithuania for a ceremony honoring her grandfather, she heard a very different story—a “rumor” that her grandfather had been a “Jew-killer.”

Storm in the Land of Rain is Silvia’s account of her wrenching twenty-year quest for the truth, from a beautiful house confiscated from its Jewish owners, to familial confessions and the Holocaust tour guide who believed that her grandfather had murdered members of his family.

A heartbreaking and dramatic story based on exhaustive documentary research and soul-baring interviews, Storm in the Land of Rain is an unforgettable journey into World War II history, intensely personal but filled with universal lessons about courage, faith, memory, and justice.