The Holocaust in Lithuania

Map of Reichskommissariat Ostland, 1942

Holocaust in Reichskommissariat Ostland (which included Lithuania): a map
Period June–December 1941
Killed 190,000–195,000
Units Einsatzgruppen, Ypatingasis būrys

The Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Lithuania resulted in the near total destruction of Lithuanian Jews[a] living in the Nazi-controlled Lithuanian and Polish territories (Generalbezirk Litauen of Reichskommissariat Ostland). Out of approximately 208,000-210,000 Jews, an estimated 190,000–195,000 were murdered before the end of World War II (wider estimates are sometimes published), most between June and December 1941. More than 95% of Lithuania's Jewish population was massacred over the three-year German occupation — a more complete destruction than befell any other country affected by the Holocaust. Historians attribute this to the massive collaboration in the genocide by the Christian locals, though the reasons for this collaboration are still debated.[1][2][3][4] The Holocaust resulted in the largest-ever loss of life in so short a period of time in the history of Lithuania.[4]

The events that took place in the western regions of the USSR occupied by Nazi Germany in the first weeks after the German invasion, including Lithuania, marked the sharp intensification of the Holocaust.[5][6][7][b]

An important component to the Holocaust in Lithuania was that the occupying Nazi German administration fanned antisemitism by blaming the Soviet regime's recent annexation of Lithuania, a year earlier, on the Jewish community. Another significant factor was the large extent to which the Nazis' design drew upon the physical organization, preparation and execution of their orders by local Lithuanian auxiliaries of the Nazi occupation regime.[2][3]

Background

For more details on this topic, see History of the Jews in Lithuania.

The Soviet Union invaded and occupied and subsequently annexed Lithuania in 1940. The German invasion of the Soviet Union, on 22 June 1941, came after a year of Soviet occupation which had culminated in mass deportations across the Baltics only a week before the invasion. The Germans were welcomed as liberators and received support from Lithuania's irregular militia against retreating Soviet forces. Many Lithuanians believed Germany would allow the re-establishment of the country's independence.[8] In order to appease the Germans, some people expressed significant antisemitic sentiments.[9] Nazi Germany, which had seized the Lithuanian territories in the first week of the offensive, used this situation to its advantage and indeed in the first days permitted a Lithuanian Provisional Government of the Lithuanian Activist Front to be established.[8] For a brief period it appeared that the Germans were about to grant Lithuania significant autonomy, comparable with that given to Slovak Republic.[8] However, after about a month, the more independently minded Lithuanian organizations were disbanded around August and September 1941, as the Germans seized more control.[8]

Destruction of Lithuanian Jewry

Map titled "Jewish Executions Carried Out by Einsatzgruppe A" from the Stahlecker's report. Marked "Secret Reich Matter", the map shows the number of Jews shot in Reichskommissariat Ostland. According to this map the estimated numbers of Jews killed in Lithuania is 136,421 by the date that his map was created.

Estimated number of victims

Prior to the German invasion, the population of Jews was estimated to be about 210,000,[3] although according to data from the Lithuanian statistics department, as of 1 January 1941 there were 208,000 Jews.[4] This estimate, based on the officially accounted for prewar emigration within the USSR (approx. 8,500), the number of escapees from Kaunas and Vilnius Ghettos, (1,500-2,000), as well as the number of the survivors in the concentration camps when they were liberated by the Red Army, (2,000-3,000), puts the number of Lithuanian Jews murdered in the Holocaust at 195,000 to 196,000.[4] It is difficult to estimate the exact number of casualties of the Holocaust and the latter number cannot be final or indisputable. The numbers given by historians differ significantly ranging from 165,000 to 254,000, the higher number probably including non-Lithuanian Jews among other Reich (empirical) dissenters labeled as Jewish killed in Lithuania.[4]

The Holocaust events

Chronologically, the genocide in Lithuania can be divided into three phases: phase 1) summer to the end of 1941; phase 2) December 1941 – March 1943; phase 3) April 1943 – mid-July 1944.[10]

Kaunas Ninth Fort

The Lithuanian port city of Klaipėda (Memel in German) had historically been a member of the German Hanseatic League, and had belonged to Germany and East Prussia prior to 1918. The city was semi-autonomous during the period of Lithuanian independence, and under League of Nations supervision. Approximately 8,000 Jews lived in Memel when it was absorbed into the Reich on March 15, 1939. Its Jewish residents were expelled, and most fled into Lithuania proper. In 1941, German killing squads, the Einsatzgruppen, followed the advance of the German army units and immediately began organizing the murder of Jews.[6] Most Lithuanian Jews perished in the first phase during the first months of the occupation and before the end of 1941. The first recorded action of the Einsatzgruppen (Einsatzgruppe A) took place on June 22, 1941, in the border town of Gargzdai (called Gorzdt in Yiddish and Garsden in German), which was one of the oldest Jewish settlements in the country and only 18 kilometres (11 mi) from German-annexed Memel. Approximately 800 Jews were shot that day in what is known as the Garsden Massacre. Approximately 100 non-Jewish Lithuanians were also executed, many for trying to aid their Jewish neighbors.[2][3] About 80,000 Jews were killed by October and about 175,000 by the end of the year.[2] The majority of Jews in Lithuania were not required to live in ghettos[c] nor sent to the Nazi concentration camps which at that time were just in the preliminary stages of operation. Instead they were shot in pits near their places of residence with the most infamous mass murders taking place in the Ninth Fort near Kaunas and the Ponary Forest near Vilnius.[6][11][12] By 1942 about 45,000 Jews survived, largely those who had been sent to ghettos and camps.[c] In the second phase, the Holocaust slowed, as Germans decided to use the Jews as forced labor to fuel the German war economy.[13] In the third phase, the destruction of Jews was again given a high priority; it was in that phase that the remaining ghettos and camps were liquidated.

Two factors contributed to the rapid destruction of Lithuanian Jewry. The first was the significant support for the "de-Jewification" of Lithuania coming from the Lithuanian populace.[9][13] The second was the German plan for early colonization of Lithuania – which shared a border with German East Prussia – in accordance with their Generalplan Ost; hence the high priority given to the extermination of the relatively small Lithuanian Jewish community.[13]

Participation of local collaborators

German soldiers and locals watch a Lithuanian synagogue burn, 9 July 1941

The Nazi German administration directed and supported the organized killing of Lithuanian Jews. Local Lithuanian auxiliaries of the Nazi occupation regime carried out logistics for the preparation and execution of the murders under Nazi direction.[2][3][13] Nazi SS Brigadeführer Franz Walter Stahlecker arrived in Kaunas on 25 June 1941 and gave agitation speeches in the city to instigate the murder of Jews. Initially this was in the former State Security Department building, but officials there refused to take any action. Later, he gave speeches in the city.[14] In a report of October 15, Stahlecker wrote that they had succeeded in covering up their vanguard unit (Vorkommando) actions, and it was made to look like it was the initiative of the local population.[14][15] Groups of partisans, civil units of nationalist-rightist anti-Soviet affiliation, initiated contact with the Germans as soon as they entered the Lithuanian territories.[2] A rogue unit of insurgents headed by Algirdas Klimaitis and encouraged by Germans from the Sicherheitspolizei and Sicherheitsdienst, started anti-Jewish pogroms in Kaunas (Kovno) on the night of 25–26 June 1941. Over a thousand Jews perished over the next few days in what was the first pogrom in Nazi-occupied Lithuania.[6][15][16] Different sources give different figures, one being 1,500[6] and another 3,800, with additional victims in other towns of the region.[16]

On 24 June 1941, the Lithuanian Security Police (Lietuvos saugumo policija), subordinate to Nazi Germany's Security Police and Nazi Germany's Criminal Police, was created. It would be involved in various actions against the Jews and other enemies of the Nazi regime.[15] Nazi commanders filed reports purporting the "zeal" of the Lithuanian police battalions surpassed their own.[9] The most notorious Lithuanian unit participating in the Holocaust was the Lithuanian Sonderkommando Squad (Ypatingasis būrys) from the Vilnius (Vilna, Wilno) area which killed tens of thousands of Jews, Poles and others in the Ponary massacre.[11][12][15] Another Lithuanian organization involved in the Holocaust was the Lithuanian Labor Guard.[2] Many Lithuanian supporters of the Nazi policies came from the fascist Iron Wolf organization.[3] Overall, the nationalistic Lithuanian administration was interested in the liquidation of the Jews as a perceived enemy and potential rivals of ethnic Lithuanians and thus not only did not oppose Nazi Holocaust policy but in effect adopted it as their own.[13]

Holocaust mass graves near city of Jonava.

A combination of factors serves as an explanation for participation of some Lithuanians in genocide against Jews.[9] Those factors include national traditions and values, including antisemitism, common throughout contemporary Central Europe, and a more Lithuanian-specific desire for a "pure" Lithuanian nation-state with which the Jewish population was believed to be incompatible.[3] There were a number of additional factors, such as severe economic problems which led to the killing of Jews over personal property.[9] Finally the Jews were seen as having supported the Soviet regime in Lithuania during 1940–1941.[d][3][9][13] During the period leading up to the German invasion, the Jews were blamed by some for virtually every misfortune that had befallen Lithuania.[3][13]

The involvement of the local population and institutions, in relatively high numbers, in the destruction of Lithuanian Jewry became a defining factor of the Holocaust in Lithuania.[2][3][13]

Not all of the Lithuanian populace supported the killings.[17] Out of a population of close to 3,000,000 (80% of it ethnic Lithuanians),[18] a few thousands took an active part in the killings while many hundreds risked their lives sheltering the Jews.[9] Israel has recognized 723 Lithuanians as Righteous Among the Nations for risking their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.[3][9][19][20] In addition, many members of the Polish minority in Lithuania also helped to shelter the Jews.[17] Lithuanians and Poles who risked their lives saving Jews were persecuted and often executed by the Nazis.[21]

Comprehension and remembrance

The genocide in Lithuania is seen by some historians as one of the earliest large-scale implementations of the Final Solution, leading some scholars to express an opinion that the Holocaust began in Lithuania in the summer of 1941.[6][7]^ Other scholars say the Holocaust started in September 1939 with the onset of the Second World War,[22] or even earlier, on Kristallnacht in 1938,[23] or, according to the Jewish Virtual Library, when Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933.

The Soviet government, for political reasons, tried to minimize the unique suffering of the Jews.[24] In Lithuania and throughout the Soviet Union, memorials did not mention Jews in particular; instead they were built to commemorate the suffering of "local inhabitants".[24] People guilty of Nazi collaboration and crimes against Jews were not punished severely.[24]

Since Lithuania regained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, the debate over Lithuanian participation in the Holocaust has been fraught with difficulty. Modern Lithuanian nationalists stress anti-Soviet resistance, but some Lithuanian partisans, seen in Lithuania as heroes in the struggle against Soviet occupation, were also Nazi collaborators who had cooperated in the murder of Lithuanian Jewry.[25] The post-Soviet Lithuanian government has on a number of occasions stated a commitment to commemorating the Holocaust, combating antisemitism, and bringing Nazi-era war criminals to justice.[20] The National Coalition Supporting Soviet Jewry have said "Lithuania has made slow but significant progress in the prosecution of suspected Lithuanian collaborators in the Nazi genocide".[20] Lithuania was the first of the newly independent post-Soviet states to legislate for the protection and marking of Holocaust-related sites.[20] In 1995, president of Lithuania Algirdas Brazauskas speaking before the Israeli Knesset, offered a public apology to the Jewish people for the Lithuanian participation in the Holocaust.[17] On 20 September 2001, to mark the 60th anniversary of the Holocaust in Lithuania, the Seimas (Lithuanian parliament) held a session during which Alfonsas Eidintas, the historian nominated as the Republic's next ambassador to Israel, delivered an address accounting for the annihilation of Lithuania's Jews.[26]

There has been criticism that Lithuania is dragging its feet on the issue; in 2001 Dr. Efraim Zuroff, Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, criticized the Lithuanian government for its unwillingness to prosecute Lithuanians involved in the Holocaust.[27] In 2002 the Simon Wiesenthal Center declared its dissatisfaction with the Lithuanian government’s efforts and launched a controversial "Operation Last Chance" offering monetary rewards for evidence that leads to the prosecution of war criminals; this campaign has encountered much resistance in Lithuania and the other former Soviet bloc countries.[20] More recently, in 2008, the Simon Weisenthal Center which had initially ranked Lithuania high during on-going trials to bring Lithuanian war criminals to justice, noted, in its annual report, no progress and the lack of any real punishment by Lithuanian justice organs for Holocaust perpetrators.[28]

There has been limited debate on the place of the Holocaust in Lithuanian national memory; historically Lithuanians have denied national participation in the Holocaust or labeled the Lithuanian participants in genocide as fringe extreme elements.[26][29] The memories of that time and the discussion of those events in Jewish and Lithuanian historiographies are quite different,[26] although Lithuanian historiography in the past two decades has improved, compared to the Soviet historiography, with the works of scholars such as Alfonsas Eidintas, Valentinas Brandišauskas and Arūnas Bubnys, among others, being positively reviewed by the Western and Jewish historians.[10][26][30] The issue remains controversial to this day.[26][30] According to Lithuanian historians, the contentious issues involve the role of the Lithuanian Activist Front, the Lithuanian Provisional Government and participation of Lithuanian civilians and volunteers in the Holocaust.[26]

See also

Notes

a ^ While this article discusses the Holocaust on the Lithuanian territories, which primarily affected and resulted in the destruction of Lithuanian Jewry, tens of thousands of non-Lithuanian Jews also died on Lithuanian territories. This included primarily: 1) Polish Jews from Vilnius and others who sought refuge in Lithuania escaping the invasion of Poland in 1939 and 2) Jews from various Western countries shipped to extermination sites in Lithuania.[31]

b ^ Some scholars have noted that the German Final Solution and the Holocaust actually began in Lithuania.
Dina Porat: "The Final Solution – the systematic overall physical extermination of Jewish communities one after the other – began in Lithuania.[6]
Konrad Kwiet: "Lithuanian Jews were among the first victims of the Holocaust [...] The Germans carried out the mass executions [...] signalling the beginning of the "Final Solution."[7] See also, Konrad Kwiet, "The Onset of the Holocaust: The Massacres of Jews in Lithuania in June 1941." Annual lecture delivered as J. B. and Maurice Shapiro Senior Scholar-in-Residence at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on 4 December 1995. Published under the same title but expanded in Power, Conscience and Opposition: Essays in German History in Honour of John A Moses, ed. Andrew Bonnell et al. (New York: Peter Lang, 1996), pp. 107–21

c ^ Three major ghettos in Lithuania were established: Vilnius ghetto (with a population of about 20,000), Kaunas Ghetto (17,500) and the Shavli Ghetto (5,000); there were also a number of smaller ghettos and labor camps.[2]

d ^ The propaganda line of Jewish Bolshevism was used intensively by Nazis in instigating antisemitic feelings among Lithuanians. It built upon the pre-invasion antisemitic propaganda of the anti-Soviet Lithuanian Activist Front which had seized upon the fact that more Jews than Lithuanians supported the Soviet regime. This had helped to create an entire mythos of Jewish culpability for the sufferings of Lithuania under the Soviet regime (and beyond). A LAF pamphlet read: "For the ideological maturation of the Lithuanian nation it is essential that anticommunist and anti-Jewish action be strengthened [...] It is very important that this opportunity be used to get rid of the Jews as well. We must create an atmosphere that is so stifling for the Jews that not a single Jew will think that he will have even the most minimal rights or possibility of life in the new Lithuania. Our goal is to drive out the Jews along with the Red Russians. [...] The hospitality extended to the Jews by Vytautas the Great is hereby revoked for all time because of their repeated betrayals of the Lithuanian nation to its oppressors." An extreme faction of the supporters of Augustinas Voldemaras, a group which also worked within the LAF, actually envisioned a racially exclusive "Aryan" Lithuanian state. With the start of German occupation, one of Kaunas' newspapers – Į Laisvę (Towards Freedom), commenced a spirited antisemitic crusade, reinforcing the identity of the Jew with communism in popular consciousness: "Jewry and Bolshevism are one, parts of an indivisible entity."[3][26]

References

  1. ↑ Daniel Brook, "Double Genocide. Lithuania wants to erase its ugly history of Nazi collaboration—by accusing Jewish partisans who fought the Germans of war crimes.", Slate, July 26, 2015
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Porat, Dina (2002). "The Holocaust in Lithuania: Some Unique Aspects". In David Cesarani. The Final Solution: Origins and Implementation. Routledge. pp. 161–162. ISBN 0-415-15232-1.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 MacQueen, Michael (1998). "The Context of Mass Destruction: Agents and Prerequisites of the Holocaust in Lithuania". Holocaust and Genocide Studies. 12 (1): 27–48. doi:10.1093/hgs/12.1.27. ISSN 8756-6583.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Bubnys, Arūnas (2004). "Holocaust in Lithuania: An Outline of the Major Stages and Their Results". The Vanished World of Lithuanian Jews. Rodopi. pp. 218–219. ISBN 90-420-0850-4.
  5. ↑ Matthäus, Jürgen (2007). "Operation Barbarossa and the onset of the Holocaust". In Christopher R. Browning. The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939–March 1942. University of Nebraska Press. pp. 244–294. ISBN 0-8032-5979-4.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Porat, Dina (2002). "The Holocaust in Lithuania: Some Unique Aspects". In David Cesarani. The Final Solution: Origins and Implementation. Routledge. p. 159. ISBN 0-415-15232-1.
  7. 1 2 3 Kwiet, Konrad (1998). "Rehearsing for Murder: The Beginning of the Final Solution in Lithuania in June 1941". Holocaust and Genocide Studies. 1 (12): 3–26. doi:10.1093/hgs/12.1.3. ISSN 8756-6583.
  8. 1 2 3 4 Piotrowski, Tadeusz (1997). Poland's Holocaust. McFarland & Company. pp. 163–164. ISBN 0-7864-0371-3.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Porat, Dina (2002). "The Holocaust in Lithuania: Some Unique Aspects". In David Cesarani. The Final Solution: Origins and Implementation. Routledge. pp. 165–166. ISBN 0-415-15232-1.
  10. 1 2 Bubnys, Arūnas (2004). "Holocaust in Lithuania: An Outline of the Major Stages and Their Results". The Vanished World of Lithuanian Jews. Rodopi. pp. 205–206. ISBN 90-420-0850-4.
  11. 1 2 "Śledztwo w sprawie masowych zabójstw Polaków w latach 1941 - 1944 w Ponarach koło Wilna dokonanych przez funkcjonariuszy policji niemieckiej i kolaboracyjnej policji litewskiej" (in Polish). Institute of National Remembrance. Archived from the original on 2007-10-17. Retrieved 10 February 2007.
  12. 1 2 Michalski, Czesław (Winter 2000–2001). "Ponary - Golgota Wileńszczyzny". Konspekt (in Polish). Academy of Pedagogy in Kraków. 5.
  13. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Bubnys, Arūnas (2004). "Holocaust in Lithuania: An Outline of the Major Stages and Their Results". The Vanished World of Lithuanian Jews. Rodopi. pp. 214–215. ISBN 90-420-0850-4.
  14. 1 2 "Extracts from a Report by Einsatzgruppe a in the Baltic Countries". Jewish Virtual Library. October 15, 1941. Retrieved 2008-08-06.
  15. 1 2 3 4 Bubnys, Arūnas (1997). "Vokiečių ir lietuvių saugumo policija (1941–1944) (German and Lithuanian security police: 1941–1944)". Genocidas ir rezistencija (in Lithuanian). 1 (1). ISSN 1392-3463.
  16. 1 2 MacQueen, Michael (1998). "Nazi Policy towards the Jews in Reichskommissariat Ostland, June–December 1941". In Zvi Y. Gitelman. Bitter Legacy: Confronting the Holocaust in the USSR. Indiana University Press. p. 97. ISBN 0-253-33359-8.
  17. 1 2 3 Piotrowski, Tadeusz (1997). Poland's Holocaust. McFarland & Company. pp. 175–176. ISBN 0-7864-0371-3.
  18. ↑ Smith, David J. (2002). The Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Routledge. p. 9. ISBN 0-415-28580-1.
  19. ↑ "Righteous Among the Nations - per Country & Ethnic Origin". Yad Vashem. January 1, 2008. Retrieved 2009-03-15.
  20. 1 2 3 4 5 "NCSJ Country Report: Lithuania". Advocates on Behalf of Jews in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic States & Eurasia. 2003. Retrieved 13 March 2007.
  21. ↑ Sakaitė, Viktorija (1998). "Žydų gelbėjimas (Rescue of Jews)". Genocidas ir rezistencija (in Lithuanian). 2 (4). ISSN 1392-3463.
  22. ↑ Mineau, André (1999). The Making of the Holocaust: Ideology and Ethics in the Systems. Rodopi. p. 117. ISBN 90-420-0705-2.
  23. ↑ Freeman, Joseph (1996). Job: The Story of a Holocaust Survivor. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 0-275-95586-9.
  24. 1 2 3 Levin, Dov (2000). The Litvaks: A Short History of the Jews in Lithuania. Berghahn Books. pp. 240–241. ISBN 965-308-084-9.
  25. ↑ Walkowitz, Daniel J.; Lisa Maya Knauer (2004). Memory and the Impact of Political Transformation in Public Space. Duke University Press. p. 188. ISBN 0-8223-3364-3.
  26. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Sužiedėlis, Saulius (Winter 2001). "The Burden of 1941". Lituanus. 4 (47). ISSN 0024-5089.
  27. ↑ Zuroff, Efraim (August 28, 2001). "Can Lithuania face its Holocaust past?". Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel. Retrieved 2009-03-15.
  28. ↑ "Wiesenthal Center Denounces Lithuanian Decision not to Implement Jail Sentence for Convicted Nazi Criminal Based on Flawed Medical Examination". Simon Wiesenthal Center. November 16, 2008. Retrieved 2009-03-15.
  29. ↑ MacQueen, Michael (2005-07-03). "Lithuanian Collaboration in the "Final Solution": Motivations and Case Studies". Lithuania and the Jews: The Holocaust Chapter (PDF). United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. pp. 1–16.
  30. 1 2 Senn, Alfred E. (Winter 2001). "Reflections on the Holocaust in Lithuania: A new Book by Alfonsas Eidintas". Lituanus. 4 (47). ISSN 0024-5089.
  31. ↑ Miller-Korpi, Katy (May 1998). "The Holocaust in the Baltics". Encyclopedia of Baltic History. University of Washington. Retrieved 13 March 2008.

Further reading

External links

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