[5] In 1939, in the military magazine Kardas, he published an essay, "The Fruitfulness of Authoritarian Politics", praising the leadership of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.

[citation needed] On 20 July, Noreika led a "Manifestation of Freedom and Friendship with Germany," where a crowd of thousands approved a resolution that he had written in support of Lithuania's Provisional Government and complete independence, as well as the German Army, the Reich and Hitler, and the Lithuanian Activist Front.

[11] On 30 July, Noreika participated in a committee in Telšiai which sentenced Jurgis Endriuška to three months of a labour camp for leading a Communist Youth choir.

[15] Noreika also sent a proposal on 23 August to Lithuania's General Counselors that they permit the construction of a forced labour camp at Skaistgirys to imprison 200 Lithuanian "undesirables.

[18] Noreika was arrested and dismissed from his position of governor on 23 February 1943, for failing to fulfil orders to raise a Waffen-SS division from the local population.

[1] They were housed separately from other inmates, allowed to wear civilian clothes, move about freely throughout the camp, receive parcels, write letters, and continue their education.

[21] Soon, along with Ona Lukauskaitė-Poškienė and Stasys Gorodeckis, Noreika founded the self-proclaimed National Council of Lithuania, which worked to centralize anti-Soviet partisan forces throughout the country.

The state-run Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania (LGGRTC) denies these claims,[26][27] and argues that Noreika misunderstood the true purpose of the Nazi ghettos, and in fact saved the lives of Jews in Šiauliai.

[28][29] A sub-commission of the International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania found the LGGRTC's findings unacceptable and offensive, and objected to the commemoration of Noreika.

[31] The memorial plaque at the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences'es Vrublevsky Library was destroyed on 7 April 2019 in a livestreamed demonstration by human rights attorney Stanislovas Tomas.

[33] The new plaque was removed by the Vilnius municipality on 27 July 2019, days after the changing of a street name honouring another collaborator, Kazys Škirpa.

The plaque remains the subject of legal and political controversy and a focal point of disagreements about the role of Lithuanians like Noreika and the Provisional Government of Lithuania in the Holocaust.

On 27 January 2021, the New York Times published an opinion piece by Noreika's granddaughter, journalist Silvia Foti, in which she says,"I learned that the man I had believed was a savior who did all he could to rescue Jews during World War II had, in reality, ordered all Jews in his region of Lithuania to be rounded up and sent to a ghetto where they were beaten, starved, tortured, raped and then murdered.