Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Lithuania

The Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Lithuania resulted in the near total destruction of Lithuanian Jews

Lithuanian Jews

Lithuanian Jews or Litvaks are Jews with roots in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania:...

living in the Nazi-controlled Lithuanian territories

Occupation of Lithuania by Nazi Germany

The occupation of Lithuania by Nazi Germany refers to the occupation of Lithuania by Nazi Germany from the start of the German invasion of Soviet Union to the end of the Battle of Memel . At first the Germans were welcomed as "liberators" from the repressive Soviet regime which occupied Lithuania...

(Generalbezirk Litauen of Reichskommissariat Ostland

Reichskommissariat Ostland

Reichskommissariat Ostland, literally "Reich Commissariat Eastland", was the civilian occupation regime established by Nazi Germany in the Baltic states and much of Belarus during World War II. It was also known as Reichskommissariat Baltenland initially...

). Out of approximately 208,000 to 210,000 Jews, an estimated 195,000–196,000 were murdered before the end of World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

(wider estimates are sometimes published); most between June and December 1941. The Holocaust resulted in the largest ever loss of life in so short a space of time in the History of Lithuania

History of Lithuania

The history of Lithuania dates back to at least 1009, the first recorded written use of the term. Lithuanians, a branch of the Baltic peoples, later conquered neighboring lands, establishing the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and in the 13th century the short-lived Kingdom of Lithuania. The Grand Duchy...

.

The events that took place in the western regions of the USSR occupied by Nazi Germany

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...

in the first weeks after the German invasion

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...

, including Lithuania, marked the sharp intensification of the Holocaust.

An important component to the Holocaust in Lithuania was that the occupying Nazi German administration fanned anti-Semitism

Anti-Semitism

Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...

by blaming the Soviet

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

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.

Background

The Soviet Union invaded and occupied and subsequently annexed Lithuania in 1940. The German invasion of the Soviet Union

Operation Barbarossa

, 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. In order to appease the Germans, some people expressed significant anti-semitic sentiments. Nazi Germany, which had seized the Lithuanian territories in the first day 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

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...

to be established. For a brief period it appeared that the Germans were about to grant Lithuania significant autonomy, comparable with that given to Slovak Republic. However, after about a month, the more independently minded Lithuanian organizations were disbanded around August and September 1941, as the Germans seized more control.

The destruction of Lithuanian Jewry

Estimated number of victims

Prior to the German invasion, the population of Jews was estimated to be about 210,000, although according to data from the Lithuanian statistics department, as of 1 January 1941 there were 208,000 Jews. 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

Red Army

The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...

, (2,000-3,000), puts the number of Lithuanian Jews murdered in the Holocaust at 195,000 to 196,000. 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 killed in Lithuania.

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.

The Lithuanian port city of Klaipėda

Klaipeda

Klaipėda is a city in Lithuania situated at the mouth of the Nemunas River where it flows into the Baltic Sea. It is the third largest city in Lithuania and the capital of Klaipėda County....

(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

Einsatzgruppen

Einsatzgruppen were SS paramilitary death squads that were responsible for mass killings, typically by shooting, of Jews in particular, but also significant numbers of other population groups and political categories...

, followed the advance of the German army units and immediately began organizing the murder of Jews. 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 eleven miles 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. About 80,000 Jews were killed by October and about 175,000 by the end of the year. The majority of Jews in Lithuania were not required to live in ghetto

Ghetto

A ghetto is a section of a city predominantly occupied by a group who live there, especially because of social, economic, or legal issues.The term was originally used in Venice to describe the area where Jews were compelled to live. The term now refers to an overcrowded urban area often associated...

s nor sent to the Nazi concentration camps

Nazi concentration camps

Nazi Germany maintained concentration camps throughout the territories it controlled. The first Nazi concentration camps set up in Germany were greatly expanded after the Reichstag fire of 1933, and were intended to hold political prisoners and opponents of the regime...

which by then 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

Ninth Fort

The Ninth Fort is a stronghold in the northern part of Šilainiai elderate, Kaunas, Lithuania. It is a part of the Kaunas Fortress, which was constructed in the late 19th century. During the occupation of Kaunas and the rest of Lithuania by the Soviet Union, the fort was used as a prison and...

near Kaunas and the Ponary Forest near Vilnius

Vilnius

Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania, and its largest city, with a population of 560,190 as of 2010. It is the seat of the Vilnius city municipality and of the Vilnius district municipality. It is also the capital of Vilnius County...

. By 1942 about 45,000 Jews survived, largely those who had been sent to ghettos and camps. In the second phase, the Holocaust slowed, as Germans decided to use the Jews as forced labor to fuel the German war economy

Economy of Nazi Germany

World War I and the subsequent Treaty of Versailles with its severe reparations imposed on Germany led to a decade of economic woes, including hyperinflation in the mid 1920s...

. 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. The second was the German plan for early colonization of Lithuania - which shared a border with German East Prussia

East Prussia

East Prussia is the main part of the region of Prussia along the southeastern Baltic Coast from the 13th century to the end of World War II in May 1945. From 1772–1829 and 1878–1945, the Province of East Prussia was part of the German state of Prussia. The capital city was Königsberg.East Prussia...

- in accordance with their Generalplan Ost

Generalplan Ost

Generalplan Ost was a secret Nazi German plan for the colonization of Eastern Europe. Implementing it would have necessitated genocide and ethnic cleansing to be undertaken in the Eastern European territories occupied by Germany during World War II...

; hence the high priority given to the extermination of the relatively small Lithuanian Jewish community.

Participation of local collaborators

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. Nazi 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 was Commander of the Sicherheitspolizei and the Sicherheitsdienst for the Reichskommissariat Ostland in 1941/42...

arrived in 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 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. 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. Groups of partisans, civil units of nationalist-rightist anti-Soviet affiliation, initiated contact with the Germans as soon as they entered the Lithuanian territories.
A rogue unit of insurgents headed by Algirdas Klimaitis

Algirdas Klimaitis

Algirdas Jonas Klimaitis was a Lithuanian para-military commander.When the Nazi Germans entered Lithuania, in 1941, at the start of Operation Barbarossa, he formed a military unit of roughly 600 members, which was not subordinate to the Lithuanian Activist Front or the Provisional Government of...

and encouraged by Germans from the Sicherheitspolizei

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 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...

, started anti-Jewish pogroms in Kaunas

Kaunas pogrom

The Kaunas pogrom was a massacre of Jewish people living in Kaunas, Lithuania that took place in from June 25 to June 29, 1941 – the first days of the Operation Barbarossa and of Nazi occupation of Lithuania. The most infamous incident occurred in the Lietūkis garrage, where several Jews were...

(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. Different sources give different figures, one being 1,500 and another 3,800, with additional victims in other towns of the region.

On 24 June 1941, the Lithuanian Security Police

Lithuanian Security Police

The Lithuanian Security Police, also referred to as Saugumas , was a Lithuanian Nazi collaborationist police force that operated from 1941 to 1944. It had a staff of approximately 400 people, 250 of them in Kaunas and around another 130 in Vilnius....

(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. Nazi commanders filed reports purporting the "zeal" of the Lithuanian police battalions surpassed their own. The most notorious Lithuanian unit participating in the Holocaust was the Lithuanian Sonderkommando Squad

Ypatingasis burys

Ypatingasis būrys or Special SD and German Security Police Squad was a Nazi killing squad of approximately 50 men, also called the "Lithuanian equivalent of Sonderkommando", operating in the Vilnius Region...

(Ypatingasis būrys) from the Vilnius

Vilnius

(Vilna, Wilno) area which killed tens of thousands of Jews, Poles and others in the Ponary massacre

Ponary massacre

The Ponary massacre was the mass-murder of 100,000 people, mostly Polish Jews, by German SD and SS and Lithuanian Nazi collaborators Sonderkommando collaborators...

. Another Lithuanian organization involved in the Holocaust was the Lithuanian Labor Guard. Many Lithuanian supporters of the Nazi policies came from the fascist Iron Wolf

Iron Wolf (Lithuania)

Iron Wolf was a Lithuanian fascist movement formed by Augustinas Voldemaras in 1927. Set up as a guard movement for Voldemaras' Tautininkai, the Iron Wolves were used by Voldemaras to target his political opponents. The movement was banned in 1930, although it continued as an underground group...

organization. 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.

A combination of factors serves as an explanation for participation of some Lithuanians in genocide against Jews. Those factors include national traditions and values, including anti-semitism, 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. There were a number of additional factors, such as severe economic problems which led to the killing of Jews over personal property. Finally the Jews were seen as having supported the Soviet regime in Lithuania during 1940-1941. During the period leading up to the German invasion, the Jews were blamed by some for virtually every misfortune that had befallen Lithuania.

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.

Not all of the Lithuanian populace supported the killings. Out of a population of close to 3,000,000 (80% of it ethnic Lithuanians), a few thousands took an active part in the killings while many hundreds risked their lives sheltering the Jews. Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

has recognized 723 Lithuanians as Righteous Among the Nations

Righteous Among the Nations

Righteous among the Nations of the world's nations"), also translated as Righteous Gentiles is an honorific used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from extermination by the Nazis....

for risking their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. In addition, many members of the Polish minority in Lithuania

Polish minority in Lithuania

The Polish minority in Lithuania numbered 234,989 persons, according to the Lithuanian census of 2001, or 6.74% of the total population of Lithuania. It is the largest ethnic minority in the country and the second largest Polish diaspora group among the post-Soviet states...

also helped to shelter the Jews. Lithuanians and Poles who risked their lives saving Jews were persecuted and often executed by the Nazis.

Comprehension and remembrance

The genocide in Lithuania is seen by some historians as one of the earliest large-scale implementations of the Final Solution

Final Solution

The Final Solution was Nazi Germany's plan and execution of the systematic genocide of European Jews during World War II, resulting in the most deadly phase of the Holocaust...

, leading some scholars to express an opinion that the Holocaust began in Lithuania in the summer of 1941. Other scholars say the Holocaust started in September 1939 with the onset of the Second World War, or even earlier, on Kristallnacht

Kristallnacht

Kristallnacht, also referred to as the Night of Broken Glass, and also Reichskristallnacht, Pogromnacht, and Novemberpogrome, was a pogrom or series of attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and parts of Austria on 9–10 November 1938.Jewish homes were ransacked, as were shops, towns and...

in 1938, or, according to the Jewish Virtual Library

Jewish Virtual Library

Jewish Virtual Library is an online encyclopedia published by the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise . Established in 1993, it is a comprehensive website covering Israel, the Jewish people, and Jewish culture.-History:...

, when Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933.

The Soviet government, for political reasons, tried to minimize the unique suffering of the Jews. 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". People guilty of Nazi collaboration and crimes against Jews were not punished severely.

Since Lithuania regained independence from the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

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. The post-Soviet Lithuanian government has on a number of occasions stated a commitment to commemorating the Holocaust, combating anti-Semitism, and bringing Nazi-era war criminals to justice. The National Conference on Soviet Jewry

NCSJ

National Conference on Soviet Jewry is a leading US organization advocating on behalf of Jews in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic States, and Eurasia. It was started in 1971 as a volunteer organization and played an important role in the Soviet Jewry movement, including such landmark legislations as...

(NCSJ) have said "Lithuania has made slow but significant progress in the prosecution of suspected Lithuanian collaborators in the Nazi genocide". Lithuania was the first of the newly independent post-Soviet states to legislate for the protection and marking of Holocaust-related sites. In 1995, president of Lithuania Algirdas Brazauskas

Algirdas Brazauskas

Algirdas Mykolas Brazauskas was the first President of a newly independent post-Soviet Union Lithuania from 1993 to 1998 and Prime Minister from 2001 to 2006....

speaking before the Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

i Knesset

Knesset

The Knesset is the unicameral legislature of Israel, located in Givat Ram, Jerusalem.-Role in Israeli Government :The legislative branch of the Israeli government, the Knesset passes all laws, elects the President and Prime Minister , approves the cabinet, and supervises the work of the government...

, offered a public apology to the Jewish people for the Lithuanian participation in the Holocaust. On 20 September 2001, to mark the 60th anniversary of the Holocaust in Lithuania, the Seimas

Seimas

The Seimas is the unicameral Lithuanian parliament. It has 141 members that are elected for a four-year term. About half of the members of this legislative body are elected in individual constituencies , and the other half are elected by nationwide vote according to proportional representation...

(Lithuanian parliament) held a session during which Alfonsas Eidintas

Alfonsas Eidintas

Alfonsas Eidintas is a historian, diplomat, and novelist.-Biography:Between 1969 and 1973 Alfonsas Eidintas studied history at Vilnius Pedagogical University, going on to serve as chief lecturer, docent, head of the Universal History Department, and Deputy Dean at that institution...

, the historian nominated as the Republic's next ambassador

Ambassador

An ambassador is the highest ranking diplomat who represents a nation and is usually accredited to a foreign sovereign or government, or to an international organization....

to Israel, delivered an address accounting for the annihilation of Lithuania's Jews.

There has been criticism that Lithuania is dragging its feet on the issue; in 2001 Dr. Efraim Zuroff

Efraim Zuroff

Efraim Zuroff is an Israeli historian of American origin, who has played a role in bringing Nazis indicted for war crimes to trial...

, Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center

Simon Wiesenthal Center

The Simon Wiesenthal Center , with headquarters in Los Angeles, California, was established in 1977 and named for Simon Wiesenthal, the Nazi hunter. According to its mission statement, it is "an international Jewish human rights organization dedicated to repairing the world one step at a time...

, criticized the Lithuanian government for its unwillingness to prosecute Lithuanians involved in the Holocaust. In 2002 the Simon Wiesenthal Center declared its dissatisfaction with the Lithuanian government’s efforts and launched a controversial "Operation Last Chance

Operation Last Chance

Operation Last Chance was launched in July 2002 by Simon Wiesenthal Center in order to track down ex-Nazis still in hiding, as most of them would be nearing the end of their lifetimes, hence the operation's name...

" 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. 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.

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. The memories of that time and the discussion of those events in Jewish and Lithuanian historiographies

Historiography

Historiography refers either to the study of the history and methodology of history as a discipline, or to a body of historical work on a specialized topic...

are quite different, although Lithuanian historiography in the past two decades has improved, compared to the Soviet historiography

Soviet historiography

Soviet historiography is the methodology of history studies by historians in the Soviet Union . In the USSR, the study of history was marked by alternating periods of freedom allowed and restrictions imposed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , and also by the struggle of historians to...

, with the works of scholars such as Alfonsas Eidintas

Alfonsas Eidintas

, Valentinas Brandišauskas and Arūnas Bubnys

Arunas Bubnys

Arūnas Bubnys is a Lithuanian historian and archivist. He started his studies at Vilnius University in 1985. In 1993 he received a Ph.D for the thesis Lietuvių antinacinė rezistencija 1941–1944 m. ....

, among others, being positively reviewed by the Western and Jewish historians. The issue remains controversial to this day. According to Lithuanian historians, the contentious issues involve the role of the Lithuanian Activist Front

Lithuanian Activist Front

, the Lithuanian Provisional Government and participation of Lithuanian civilians and volunteers in the Holocaust.

External links

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia: LITHUANIA
The Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania
Memorial to Murdered Jews of Lithuania (w/ photos of the memorial)
Atamukas, Solomonas. (2001), ’The hard long road toward the truth: on the sixtieth anniversary of the holocaust in Lithuania.’ in Lithuanus/Lithuanian Quarterly Journal of Arts and Sciences, vol. 47, 4.
Holocaust In The Baltics Information and updates on the ongoing debate, edited by Dovid Katz
Dovid Katz
Dovid Katz is an American-born, Vilnius-based Judaic studies professor, Yiddish specialist, and political activist, currently living in Lithuania.-Biography:...

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