Algirdas Jonas Klimaitis (1923 in Kaunas – 1988 in Germany) was a Lithuania

Lithuanians

Lithuanians are the Baltic ethnic group native to Lithuania, where they number around 2,765,600 people. Another million or more make up the Lithuanian diaspora, largely found in countries such as the United States, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Russia, United Kingdom and Ireland. Their native language...

n para-military commander.

When the Nazi Germans

Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

 entered Lithuania

Lithuania

Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...

, in 1941, at the start of Operation Barbarossa

Operation Barbarossa

Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a front., the largest invasion in the history of warfare...

, he formed a military unit of roughly 600 members, which was not subordinate to the Lithuanian Activist Front

Lithuanian Activist Front

Lithuanian Activist Front or LAF was a short-lived resistance organization established in 1940 after Lithuania was occupied by the Soviet Union. The goal of the organization was to liberate Lithuania and re-establish its independence...

 or the Provisional Government of Lithuania

Provisional Government of Lithuania

The Provisional Government of Lithuania was a temporary government aiming for independent Lithuania during the last days of the Soviet occupation and the first weeks of German Nazi occupation in 1941. It was secretly formed on 22 April, 1941, announced on 23 June, 1941, and dissolved on 5 August,...

, and engaged in firefights with the Soviet army for the control of Kaunas

Kaunas

Kaunas is the second-largest city in Lithuania and has historically been a leading centre of Lithuanian economic, academic, and cultural life. Kaunas was the biggest city and the center of a powiat in Trakai Voivodeship of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania since 1413. During Russian Empire occupation...

. On the evening of June 23, most of the city was in the hands of the insurgents.

On the night of 25–26 June, a pogrom led by Klimaitis unit was instigated by Nazi Security Police (Sipo)

Sicherheitspolizei

The Sicherheitspolizei , often abbreviated as SiPo, was a term used in Nazi Germany to describe the state political and criminal investigation security agencies. It was made up by the combined forces of the Gestapo and the Kripo between 1936 and 1939...

 and SD (Sicherheitsdienst

Sicherheitsdienst

Sicherheitsdienst , full title Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS, or SD, was the intelligence agency of the SS and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. The organization was the first Nazi Party intelligence organization to be established and was often considered a "sister organization" with the...

 or Security Service, the intelligence arm of the Nazi Party), under SS Brigadeführer

Brigadeführer

SS-Brigadeführer was an SS rank that was used in Nazi Germany between the years of 1932 and 1945. Brigadeführer was also an SA rank....

 Franz Walter Stahlecker

Franz Walter Stahlecker

Franz Walter Stahlecker was Commander of the Sicherheitspolizei and the Sicherheitsdienst for the Reichskommissariat Ostland in 1941/42...

. By 28 June 1941, according to Stahlecker, the commander of the German Einsatzgruppe A, 3,800 people had been killed in Kaunas and a further 1,200 in surrounding towns in the region. Klimaitis' men destroyed several synagogues and about sixty Jewish houses. Some sources claim that the number of victims in Stahlecker's report were probably exaggerated..

After the war, Algirdas Klimaitis, moved to Hamburg

Hamburg

-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

, Germany, where he died in 1988.