Historical Context
The Holocaust in Lithuania in 1941-1944
Dr. Arūnas Bubnys
With the ascent of the National Socialist Party to power in Germany, anti-Semitic ideology and persecution of the Jews became the state policy. Later, this policy was channelled to the European countries occupied by the Third Reich. The persecution and extermination of the Jews was initiated and organised by the Nazi Germany, but in many occupied countries including Lithuania, the Nazis managed to involve a part of local populations and collaborationist government institutions into their criminal enterprise. The Nazi propaganda succeeded in using the anticommunist and anti-Jew climate accumulated during the period of the Soviet occupation, and convinced a portion of Lithuanians that bolshevism is a Jewish regime and that the Jews bear responsibility for the misfortunes suffered during the Soviet occupation and annexation.
Genocide of the Jews (the Holocaust) in Lithuania may be relatively divided into the following periods:
1) End of July 1941 – November 1941;
2) December 1941 – March 1943;
3) April 1943 – July 1944.
End of July 1941 – November 1941
The second half of 1941 was the most horrible and tragic period for Lithuanian Jews. By December 1941, around 80% of the Jews living in Lithuania at the time had been killed. The occupational government was the initiator of the persecution and extermination of Jews. In making preparations for the war with the Soviet Union, the leadership of the Third Reich had planned from the start that the war in the East would be very different from the war in Western Europe. Even back in March 1941, Adolf Hitler emphasized, that war with Russia would be a do-or-die fight between two irreconcilable ideologies (Nazism and Bolshevism), a war of two mindsets. Every real and potential enemy of Nazism had to be eradicated without remorse. The Nazis saw Jews as the main enemy of the Third Reich. It was Hitler’s conviction that the Wehrmacht would be incapable of executing the objectives of the ideological warfare. This was primarily the job of operational groups (Einsatzgruppen), functioning in the rear of the Wehrmacht and under the control of the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt, further – RSHA) in Berlin. In the preparations to attack the Soviet Union, the Nazis formed four Einsatzgruppen – A, B, C and D. The leaders of these groups were assigned directly by Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich. One Einsatzgruppe was assigned to each of the army groups (North, Centre and South). Einsatzgruppe A was assigned to the Northern army group, responsible for occupying the Baltic states and advancing in the direction of Leningrad. This Einsatzgruppe consisted of Einsatzkommando 2 and 3, as well as Sonderkommandos 1a and 1b. (1) SS-Brigadeführer Walter Stahlecker was assigned to lead Einsatzgruppe A. Einsatzkommando 3, which functioned in Lithuania, was commanded by SS-Standartenführer Karl Jäger. Einsatzgruppe A had around 990 officers. (2)
Stahlecker reached Kaunas as early as 25 June 1941, together with the first Wehrmacht units, while Einsatzkommando 3/A, lead by Jäger, took over the functions of the Security Police in Lithuania on 2 July 1941. Jäger set up his headquarters in Kaunas. Einsatzkommando 3/A took the region of Vilnius under its jurisdiction on 9 August 1941 and Šiauliai on 2 October 1941. (3)
The killings of Jews in Lithuania began on the first days of war with the Soviets. Even before the ghettos were established (August of 1941) thousands of Jews were killed. The earliest organised mass killings of Jews were carried out in those districts of Lithuania that had a border with Germany, as well as in the city of Kaunas. On the first day of war Stahlecker came to the town of Tilžė and ordered the leader of the Security Police Hans Joachim Böhme to begin killing Jews and Communists in the 25 km wide borderland strip. The Einsatzkommando, formed from Gestapo and SD members and German policemen from Klaipėda, soon began the killings in the Lithuanian borderland. The Tilžė Gestapo carried out the first massacre on 24 June 1941 in Gargždai. 201 people were shot. (4) The Tilžė operational group murdered 1,542 people in various parts of Lithuania, the number rose to a total of 5,502 people executed throughout the summer of 1941. (5) The absolute majority of the victims were Jewish.
After coming to Kaunas on 25 June 1941, Stahlecker began organising actions of extermination against Jews and Communists. One of the main Stahlecker’s concerns was involving locals in the killings of Jews and thus hiding the guilt of the Nazis. Stahlecker managed to carry-out mass pogroms of Jews in Kaunas by invoking and arming the platoon of Algirdas Klimaitis. This platoon (about 300 people) was not subordinate to the Lithuanian Activist Front (Lietuvos aktyvistų frontas, further – LAF), which organised the anti-soviet military coup d’état, nor to the Provisional Government of Lithuania (acting until 5 August 1941). Beginning with July 1941, when all of Lithuania was occupied by the Nazis and the country was subject to the occupational regime, the persecution of Jews changed in its nature. Instead of isolated pogroms, mass killings began. First, it happened in Kaunas. On 2 July 1941 Einsatzkommando 3/A of the German security police and SD officially took over security functions in Lithuania. On 28 June 1941, Kaunas partisan forces were disarmed. On the same day (June 28), the organisation of the National Labour Protection Battalion (Tautos darbo apsaugos batalionas, further – TDA) began in Kaunas. The TDA Battalion (usually the 3rd company) and German Gestapo officers began executing mass killings of Jews in the forts and the province of Kaunas. 7th Fort in Kaunas became the first place of mass killings. By the order of Einsatzkommando 3/A leader Karl Jäger, 463 Jews were shot there on 4 July 1941 and 2,514 Jews on 6 July. (6)
The killings of Kaunas Jews were organised in the 7th Fort in August 1941, and in the 9th Fort starting October 1941 until the end of the occupation. The largest killing action was carried out on 29 October 1941. On the eve of the massacre, the Gestapo conducted a selection of the Jews in the Kaunas Ghetto. About 10,000 Jews were selected for execution – mostly multi-child families, physically weak persons, the elderly and the sick. 29 October 1941, the condemned Jews were taken from the Kaunas Ghetto to the 9th Fort and shot in huge pits dug in advance. The massacre took place the whole day and ended at nightfall. The shootings were carried out by the 3rd company of the said TDA Battalion as well as about 20 German officers and soldiers. According to the Jäger Report, 9,200 Jews were massacred in the 9th Fort on 29 October 1941, including 2,007 men, 2,920 women and 4,273 children. Karl Jäger cynically referred to this slaughter as cleaning of the ghetto from useless Jews. (7)
The major number of killings of Jews that took place in Lithuania in 1941 (except the districts of Vilnius and Šiauliai) are associated to the Rollkommando, lead by SS-Obersturmführer Joachim Hamann. In his infamous report written 1 December 1941, Karl Jäger states that “extermination of the Jews could only be achieved thanks to the Rollkommando of selected men commanded by Obershturmführer Hamann who clearly understood my goals and was capable of ensuring co-operation with Lithuanian partisans and corresponding civil institutions”. (8) Hamman’s mobile squad was not a constantly active punitive unit with a fixed dislocation. Usually it would be formed of a few German Gestapo officers and several dozens of TDA soldiers to take care of some particular action. Often, Hamann himself would not even go to killing actions in the province, limiting his duties to handing out assignments to officers of the TDA battalion. The Rollkommando would go on a killing action only after all the preparations had been made: the condemned Jews gathered in one place, local policemen and auxiliary policemen (the so-called “white armbands”) assigned for their protection, a desolate spot chosen (usually in forests or remote fields), the holes dug.
Hamann’s Rollkommando was a very effective tool of the Nazi holocaust policy. It is responsible for killing at least 39,000 people – a number rivalled only by the German Security Police and SD special force in Vilnius and the 2nd (later called the 12th) Lithuanian police battalion lead by major Antanas Impulevičius organised in Kaunas. The latter, however, carried out mass killings in Belarus, rather than Lithuania (in autumn of 1941). Alongside the arrests and shootings of Jews, Jewish ghettos were being founded (ghettoisation). The order to establish the Kaunas Ghetto was issued by Kaunas military commandant Jurgis Bobelis and Kaunas City Governor Kazimieras Palčiauskas. All Jews of Kaunas City had to move to the ghetto established in Vilijampolė neighbourhood by 15 August 1941. Those defying the order were facing arrests. (9)
Even before the ghetto was founded, a few thousand Kaunas Jews were killed in June and July of 1941. (10) On 15 August 1941, the Kaunas Ghetto was fenced with barbed wire. The ghetto was protected by German and Lithuanian policemen. Fritz Jordan, the assistant of the Kaunas city county commissioner Hans Cramer, was assigned the commandant of the ghetto. Around 30,000 Jews were imprisoned in the Kaunas Ghetto. The internal administration of the ghetto was under the command of the Jewish Council and its chairman doctor Elchanan Elkes. Jewish ghetto police was formed in August of 1941 under the command of Michail Kopelman. Later, the number of ghetto policemen grew and reached 220–230 people. (11) The locked-in Jews were to be exterminated gradually, after being exploited for the German war effort.
The organisation of the Vilnius Ghetto was initiated by the commissioner of the Vilnius City Hans Hingst in the first days of September 1941. Practical organisational work was entrusted to Hingst’s adjutant and reporter for Jewish affairs Franz Murer. Murer, together with the Vilnius Mayor Karolis Dabulevičius, selected the site for the ghetto in the Vilnius Old Town. 6 September 1941, the Vilnius Jews herded into the ghetto. More than 10,000 Vilnius Jews were murdered by the German security police and SD task-force in Paneriai even before the establishment of the ghetto. About 30,000 Jews were moved to the ghetto No. 1 and about 9,000 to 11,000 in the ghetto No. 2. (12) Even after closing the Jews in the ghetto, actions of mass extermination continued until the end of 1941. After completing a few actions in October 1941, the second ghetto was liquidated. All of its inhabitants were killed in Paneriai. Before the beginning of the Nazi-Soviet war, around 60,000 Jews lived in Vilnius. Around 33,000–34,000 were killed by the end of 1941. (13) Over 20,000 Jews from the Vilnius ghetto were temporarily allowed to live and work whatever jobs were needed to be done for the Nazi government. Jewish ghettos were founded in other Lithuanian cities and towns as well, but most of them were liquidated during the summer and autumn of 1941. After 1941, only the Vilnius, Kaunas, Šiauliai and Švenčionys ghettos remained. According to the calculations by the Israeli historian Yitzhak Arad, around 164,000–167,000 (around 80% of Jews remaining in Lithuania) Lithuanian Jews were killed from the beginning of the Nazi–Soviet war to December of 1941. At the end of this period, only around 43,000 Jews were left in Lithuania: around 20,000 thousand in the Vilnius Ghetto, 17,500 in the Kaunas Ghetto, around 5,500 in the Šiauliai Ghetto and around 500 in the Švenčionys Ghetto. (14)
With the ascent of the National Socialist Party to power in Germany, anti-Semitic ideology and persecution of the Jews became the state policy. Later, this policy was channelled to the European countries occupied by the Third Reich. The persecution and extermination of the Jews was initiated and organised by the Nazi Germany, but in many occupied countries including Lithuania, the Nazis managed to involve a part of local populations and collaborationist government institutions into their criminal enterprise. The Nazi propaganda succeeded in using the anticommunist and anti-Jew climate accumulated during the period of the Soviet occupation, and convinced a portion of Lithuanians that bolshevism is a Jewish regime and that the Jews bear responsibility for the misfortunes suffered during the Soviet occupation and annexation.
Genocide of the Jews (the Holocaust) in Lithuania may be relatively divided into the following periods:
1) End of July 1941 – November 1941;
2) December 1941 – March 1943;
3) April 1943 – July 1944.
End of July 1941 – November 1941
The second half of 1941 was the most horrible and tragic period for Lithuanian Jews. By December 1941, around 80% of the Jews living in Lithuania at the time had been killed. The occupational government was the initiator of the persecution and extermination of Jews. In making preparations for the war with the Soviet Union, the leadership of the Third Reich had planned from the start that the war in the East would be very different from the war in Western Europe. Even back in March 1941, Adolf Hitler emphasized, that war with Russia would be a do-or-die fight between two irreconcilable ideologies (Nazism and Bolshevism), a war of two mindsets. Every real and potential enemy of Nazism had to be eradicated without remorse. The Nazis saw Jews as the main enemy of the Third Reich. It was Hitler’s conviction that the Wehrmacht would be incapable of executing the objectives of the ideological warfare. This was primarily the job of operational groups (Einsatzgruppen), functioning in the rear of the Wehrmacht and under the control of the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt, further – RSHA) in Berlin. In the preparations to attack the Soviet Union, the Nazis formed four Einsatzgruppen – A, B, C and D. The leaders of these groups were assigned directly by Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich. One Einsatzgruppe was assigned to each of the army groups (North, Centre and South). Einsatzgruppe A was assigned to the Northern army group, responsible for occupying the Baltic states and advancing in the direction of Leningrad. This Einsatzgruppe consisted of Einsatzkommando 2 and 3, as well as Sonderkommandos 1a and 1b. (1) SS-Brigadeführer Walter Stahlecker was assigned to lead Einsatzgruppe A. Einsatzkommando 3, which functioned in Lithuania, was commanded by SS-Standartenführer Karl Jäger. Einsatzgruppe A had around 990 officers. (2)
Stahlecker reached Kaunas as early as 25 June 1941, together with the first Wehrmacht units, while Einsatzkommando 3/A, lead by Jäger, took over the functions of the Security Police in Lithuania on 2 July 1941. Jäger set up his headquarters in Kaunas. Einsatzkommando 3/A took the region of Vilnius under its jurisdiction on 9 August 1941 and Šiauliai on 2 October 1941. (3)
The killings of Jews in Lithuania began on the first days of war with the Soviets. Even before the ghettos were established (August of 1941) thousands of Jews were killed. The earliest organised mass killings of Jews were carried out in those districts of Lithuania that had a border with Germany, as well as in the city of Kaunas. On the first day of war Stahlecker came to the town of Tilžė and ordered the leader of the Security Police Hans Joachim Böhme to begin killing Jews and Communists in the 25 km wide borderland strip. The Einsatzkommando, formed from Gestapo and SD members and German policemen from Klaipėda, soon began the killings in the Lithuanian borderland. The Tilžė Gestapo carried out the first massacre on 24 June 1941 in Gargždai. 201 people were shot. (4) The Tilžė operational group murdered 1,542 people in various parts of Lithuania, the number rose to a total of 5,502 people executed throughout the summer of 1941. (5) The absolute majority of the victims were Jewish.
After coming to Kaunas on 25 June 1941, Stahlecker began organising actions of extermination against Jews and Communists. One of the main Stahlecker’s concerns was involving locals in the killings of Jews and thus hiding the guilt of the Nazis. Stahlecker managed to carry-out mass pogroms of Jews in Kaunas by invoking and arming the platoon of Algirdas Klimaitis. This platoon (about 300 people) was not subordinate to the Lithuanian Activist Front (Lietuvos aktyvistų frontas, further – LAF), which organised the anti-soviet military coup d’état, nor to the Provisional Government of Lithuania (acting until 5 August 1941). Beginning with July 1941, when all of Lithuania was occupied by the Nazis and the country was subject to the occupational regime, the persecution of Jews changed in its nature. Instead of isolated pogroms, mass killings began. First, it happened in Kaunas. On 2 July 1941 Einsatzkommando 3/A of the German security police and SD officially took over security functions in Lithuania. On 28 June 1941, Kaunas partisan forces were disarmed. On the same day (June 28), the organisation of the National Labour Protection Battalion (Tautos darbo apsaugos batalionas, further – TDA) began in Kaunas. The TDA Battalion (usually the 3rd company) and German Gestapo officers began executing mass killings of Jews in the forts and the province of Kaunas. 7th Fort in Kaunas became the first place of mass killings. By the order of Einsatzkommando 3/A leader Karl Jäger, 463 Jews were shot there on 4 July 1941 and 2,514 Jews on 6 July. (6)
The killings of Kaunas Jews were organised in the 7th Fort in August 1941, and in the 9th Fort starting October 1941 until the end of the occupation. The largest killing action was carried out on 29 October 1941. On the eve of the massacre, the Gestapo conducted a selection of the Jews in the Kaunas Ghetto. About 10,000 Jews were selected for execution – mostly multi-child families, physically weak persons, the elderly and the sick. 29 October 1941, the condemned Jews were taken from the Kaunas Ghetto to the 9th Fort and shot in huge pits dug in advance. The massacre took place the whole day and ended at nightfall. The shootings were carried out by the 3rd company of the said TDA Battalion as well as about 20 German officers and soldiers. According to the Jäger Report, 9,200 Jews were massacred in the 9th Fort on 29 October 1941, including 2,007 men, 2,920 women and 4,273 children. Karl Jäger cynically referred to this slaughter as cleaning of the ghetto from useless Jews. (7)
The major number of killings of Jews that took place in Lithuania in 1941 (except the districts of Vilnius and Šiauliai) are associated to the Rollkommando, lead by SS-Obersturmführer Joachim Hamann. In his infamous report written 1 December 1941, Karl Jäger states that “extermination of the Jews could only be achieved thanks to the Rollkommando of selected men commanded by Obershturmführer Hamann who clearly understood my goals and was capable of ensuring co-operation with Lithuanian partisans and corresponding civil institutions”. (8) Hamman’s mobile squad was not a constantly active punitive unit with a fixed dislocation. Usually it would be formed of a few German Gestapo officers and several dozens of TDA soldiers to take care of some particular action. Often, Hamann himself would not even go to killing actions in the province, limiting his duties to handing out assignments to officers of the TDA battalion. The Rollkommando would go on a killing action only after all the preparations had been made: the condemned Jews gathered in one place, local policemen and auxiliary policemen (the so-called “white armbands”) assigned for their protection, a desolate spot chosen (usually in forests or remote fields), the holes dug.
Hamann’s Rollkommando was a very effective tool of the Nazi holocaust policy. It is responsible for killing at least 39,000 people – a number rivalled only by the German Security Police and SD special force in Vilnius and the 2nd (later called the 12th) Lithuanian police battalion lead by major Antanas Impulevičius organised in Kaunas. The latter, however, carried out mass killings in Belarus, rather than Lithuania (in autumn of 1941). Alongside the arrests and shootings of Jews, Jewish ghettos were being founded (ghettoisation). The order to establish the Kaunas Ghetto was issued by Kaunas military commandant Jurgis Bobelis and Kaunas City Governor Kazimieras Palčiauskas. All Jews of Kaunas City had to move to the ghetto established in Vilijampolė neighbourhood by 15 August 1941. Those defying the order were facing arrests. (9)
Even before the ghetto was founded, a few thousand Kaunas Jews were killed in June and July of 1941. (10) On 15 August 1941, the Kaunas Ghetto was fenced with barbed wire. The ghetto was protected by German and Lithuanian policemen. Fritz Jordan, the assistant of the Kaunas city county commissioner Hans Cramer, was assigned the commandant of the ghetto. Around 30,000 Jews were imprisoned in the Kaunas Ghetto. The internal administration of the ghetto was under the command of the Jewish Council and its chairman doctor Elchanan Elkes. Jewish ghetto police was formed in August of 1941 under the command of Michail Kopelman. Later, the number of ghetto policemen grew and reached 220–230 people. (11) The locked-in Jews were to be exterminated gradually, after being exploited for the German war effort.
The organisation of the Vilnius Ghetto was initiated by the commissioner of the Vilnius City Hans Hingst in the first days of September 1941. Practical organisational work was entrusted to Hingst’s adjutant and reporter for Jewish affairs Franz Murer. Murer, together with the Vilnius Mayor Karolis Dabulevičius, selected the site for the ghetto in the Vilnius Old Town. 6 September 1941, the Vilnius Jews herded into the ghetto. More than 10,000 Vilnius Jews were murdered by the German security police and SD task-force in Paneriai even before the establishment of the ghetto. About 30,000 Jews were moved to the ghetto No. 1 and about 9,000 to 11,000 in the ghetto No. 2. (12) Even after closing the Jews in the ghetto, actions of mass extermination continued until the end of 1941. After completing a few actions in October 1941, the second ghetto was liquidated. All of its inhabitants were killed in Paneriai. Before the beginning of the Nazi-Soviet war, around 60,000 Jews lived in Vilnius. Around 33,000–34,000 were killed by the end of 1941. (13) Over 20,000 Jews from the Vilnius ghetto were temporarily allowed to live and work whatever jobs were needed to be done for the Nazi government. Jewish ghettos were founded in other Lithuanian cities and towns as well, but most of them were liquidated during the summer and autumn of 1941. After 1941, only the Vilnius, Kaunas, Šiauliai and Švenčionys ghettos remained. According to the calculations by the Israeli historian Yitzhak Arad, around 164,000–167,000 (around 80% of Jews remaining in Lithuania) Lithuanian Jews were killed from the beginning of the Nazi–Soviet war to December of 1941. At the end of this period, only around 43,000 Jews were left in Lithuania: around 20,000 thousand in the Vilnius Ghetto, 17,500 in the Kaunas Ghetto, around 5,500 in the Šiauliai Ghetto and around 500 in the Švenčionys Ghetto. (14)
December 1941 – March 1943
The period of stability, during which no mass killings of the Jews were carried out. The Nazis concentrated on the exploitation of the Jewish workforce in the German military economy. Almost every able man and woman was working various labours in the workshops of the ghetto, different factories, companies and special Jewish labour camps. January 1943 report of the commander of the German security police and SD in Lithuania says that each day about 9,600 Jews from the Kaunas ghetto worked in 140 places. 1,400 men and women worked in the ghetto workshops. Most of the Jewish workers worked for Wehrmacht and filled military orders. Due to hard work, malnutrition and poor healthcare, about 50 people would die every week in the ghetto. (15)
Leaders of the ghettos believed that the ghettos would not be liquidated as long as they were economically viable to the Nazis. Therefore the administrations of the ghettos sought to employ as many Jewish workers as they could and to increase their productivity. For example, in the summer of 1943, about 14,000 of the Vilnius Ghetto Jews (two thirds of the entire ghetto population) were working in various companies and Jewish labour camps. (16)
In April 1943, the commander of the German security police and SD in Lithuania informed the RSHA, that 44,584 Jews were remaining in the General Area of Lithuania: 23,950 in the Vilnius Ghetto, 15,875 in the Kaunas Ghetto and 4,759 in the Šiauliai Ghetto. About 30,000 Jews were working for the German military.(17)
April 1943 – July 1944
The peaceful period ended in spring of 1943. In February 1943, the Nazi administration decided to begin liquidating the ghettos. It was first done in the districts of Svyriai and Ašmena, which were attached to the General Region of Lithuania. During this period, the Soviet partisan movement gained a lot of strength in the Eastern part of the Vilnius District. A portion of the Jews that had run away from ghettos joined the Soviet partisan forces. This encouraged the Nazi administration to begin liquidating the ghettos and labour camps in the district of Vilnius. First, the ghettos in Švenčionys, Mikailiškiai, Ašmena and Salos were liquidated in March 1943. About 3,000 prisoners of these ghettos were moved to the Vilnius Ghetto while the rest were told they would be taken to the Kaunas Ghetto. 5 April 1943, a train with the Jews from the East Lithuania towns halted in Paneriai. Here the Jews were detrained and shot in Paneriai forest. Lithuanian policemen also participated in the shooting of the Jews. A total of about 4,000–5,000 Jews were killed. Only a few managed to escape and return to the Vilnius Ghetto. (18)
In the beginning of July 1943, labour camps subject to the Vilnius Ghetto and found in Kena and Bezdonys were liquidated. Around 500–600 Jews working in these camps were shot by German Gestapo officers and Lithuanian policemen. Around 600–700 Jews from the labour camps in Baltoji Vokė and Riešė were transferred to the Vilnius Ghetto or escaped. (19)
On 21 June 1943, Heinrich Himmler issued an order to liquidate all the ghettos in the territory of Ostland. The Jews that were capable of working were to be transferred to concentration camps run by the SS. The Kaunas and Šiauliai ghettos were turned into concentration camps and it was decided that the Vilnius Ghetto would be liquidated. (20)
On 23 September 1943, the Vilnius Ghetto was liquidated. All residents of the ghetto (about 11,000) were divided into two groups: able men and women were sent to Estonian and Latvian concentration camps, while elderly men and women, and children (about 5 000) were taken to concentration camps in Poland and annihilated. After the Vilnius Ghetto was liquidated, around 1,200 people were left to work in the “Kailis” factory in Vilnius and around the same number at the military automobile repair works in Subačiaus street. (21) According to the documents of the German security police and SD, 24,108 Jews were imprisoned in the Vilnius region before the liquidation of the Vilnius Ghetto. 14,000 Jews were taken to work in Estonia (Vaivara), 2,382 Jews were left in Vilnius and another 1,720 Jews in villages (22). Only 2,000–3,000 of the 60,000 Vilnius Jewish population survived the Nazi occupation. About one third of the survivors were fugitives from the ghetto. Most of them joined the Soviet partisans. (23)
On 26 March 1943, killing actions in the Kaunas Ghetto were renewal. A cruel action supervised by the head of the Lithuanian concentration camps SS-Obersturmbannführer Wilhelm Göcke, Oberführer Wilhelm Fuchs and Oberscharführer Bruno Kittel, took place that day, during which families were deprived of their children. SS officers and Ukrainian policemen raided the ghetto and searched the houses taking children from their mothers and putting them on buses. Women who tried to resist were beaten with rifle stocks and hounded. About 1,700 children and old people were taken from the ghetto in two days transported to Auschwitz for annihilation. 130 ghetto policemen were also arrested. The next day (27 March 1944) 34 Jewish policemen were shot and killed in the 9th Fort. (24)
As the front drew nearer to Kaunas, the Nazis decided to finalise the liquidation of Jewish concentration camps. The liquidation of the Kaunas Ghetto began on 8 July 1944, when around 1,200 people were floated away on barges, and another 900 were taken away by train on July 10. On July 12, Gestapo officers started setting the ghetto houses on fire. Those who tried to escape the houses were shot. Almost all ghetto houses and the ghetto workshops were burnt down. Hundreds of people died in flames or were shot. A total of 6,000–7,000 people were transported from the Kaunas Ghetto, around 1,000 were killed in the liquidation process and around 300-400 Jews survived. (25)
The men from the ghetto in Kaunas were taken to the concentration camp of Dachau, while the women were sent to Stutthof. The Kaunas Jews who went to Dachau worked in the construction of an underground aviation factory and did other work. Prisoners died from exhaustion on a daily basis. An especially large number died in October and November of 1944. (26) The Chairman of the Council of Elders of the Kaunas Ghetto, Elchanan Elkes, also died in Dachau. At the end of the war, the prisoners at the Dachau concentration camp were liberated by the American army. Around a thousand Lithuanian Jews survived Dachau to this moment. Around 100 of them came back to Lithuania, the rest stayed in the West.
The women and children of the Kaunas Ghetto were first taken to Stutthof. On 19 July 1944, 1,208 women and children were brought to this concentration camp. (27) On 26 July 1944, 1,893 Jews from the ghettos of Kaunas and Šiauliai (801 women, 546 girls and 546 boys) were brought from Stutthof concentration camp to Auschwitz. (28) Very few survived and were liberated. There is information that only around 8 % (around 2,400 people) of the 30,000 Jews from the Kaunas Ghetto saw the end of the war. (29)
Until October 1943, the Šiauliai Ghetto was under the command of Gebietskommissar Hans Gewecke, but starting 1 October 1943, the command was taken over by the SS. (30) The ghetto became a concentration camp. SS-Oberscharführer Herman Schlöf was put in command. After the mass killings of Jews that took place in the summer and autumn of 1941, the Šiauliai Ghetto had a relatively peaceful period. 5 November 1943, a selection of children and invalid Jews in the Šiauliai Ghetto was carried out. The action was supervised by the SS-Hauptsturmführer Förster. 570 children and 260 elderly people were taken to concentration camp (supposedly Auschwitz) by SS and ROA officers that had come from Kaunas on that day. The Judenrat members Ber Kartun, Aharon Katz and paediatrician Uriah Razovski, unable to leave the children alone in such a terrible journey, joined them and left together. (31)
15 July 1944, the liquidation of the Šiauliai Ghetto began. About 7,000 Šiauliai Jews as well as Jews brought to the Šiauliai Ghetto from Vilnius, Kaunas and Smurgainys labour camps were transported to Stutthof concentration camp in four stages. From there, men were taken to Dachau concentration camp, while women and children were taken to Auschwitz. Able women were left in Stutthof. Some of the Šiauliai Jews were liberated from Dachau by the American forces on 2 May 1945. Only 350-500 Šiauliai Jews survived the war. (32)
A total of 200,000 Lithuanian Jews were killed during the Nazi occupation. The genocide of Lithuanian Jews was the worst tragedy in Lithuanian history. Never in Lithuanian history were so many people murdered in such a short period of time (three years). The whole ethnic group of Lithuanian Jews (Litvaks) was eradicated together with its people, history, traditions, economic system and rich culture.
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(1) H. Krausnick, Hitlers Einsatzgruppen: Die Truppe des Weltanschaaungskrieges 1938–1942, Frankfurt am Main, 1985, S. 124-125.
(2) R. Hilberg, Die Vernichtung der europäischen Juden, Frankfurt am Main, Bd. 2, 1990, S. 303.
(3) H. Krausnick, Hitlers Einsatzgruppen..., S.151–152.
(4) Reports from USSR, No. 14, Bundesarchivabteilungen Posdam, S. 82; H. Krausnick, Hitlers Einsatzgruppen..., S. 142.
(5) H.Krausnick, Hitlers Einsatzgruppen..., S. 142; Masinės žudynės Lietuvoje (Mass Murders in Lithuania) 1941–1944, collection of documents, V., 1973, Vol. 2, p. 26.
(6) Masinės žudynės Lietuvoje 1941–1944, collection of documents, V., 1965, Vol. 1, p. 131.
(7) Masinės žudynės Lietuvoje, Vol. 1, p. 135.
(8) Masinės žudynės Lietuvoje, Vol. 1, p. 138.
(9) Order of Kaunas Commandant No. 15 dated 10 July 1941, Lithuanian Central State Archive, f. R-1444, ap.1, b. 8, l. 40.
(10) “Kowno”, Enzyklopedie des Holocaust: die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden, München–Zürich, 1995, Bd. 2, S. 804
(11) History of Jewish Police of the Kaunas Ghetto (in Russian), Lithuanian Special Archives, f. K-1, inventory of files of unidentified ownership, b. 345, l. 11–13.
(12) I. Guzenberg, “The Vilnius Ghetto and the Population Census of 1942”, Vilnius Ghetto: Lists of Prisoners, V., 1996, part 1, p. 13; G. Šuras, Sketches: Chronicle of the Vilnius Ghetto 1941-1944, V., 1997, p. 37;
(13) “Wilna”, Enzyklopedie des Holocaust..., Bd. 3, S. 1601.
(14) Paper “Shoah: Annihilation of Lithuanian Jews” read by Prof. I. Arad in the international conference “Lithuanian Jewish community from 19th century to 1941” which took place in Telšiai 19-24 September 2001, p. 13.
(15) Masinės žudynės Lietuvoje (Mass Murders in Lithuania) 1941–1944, collection of documents, V., 1965, Vol. 1, p. 243.
(16) „Wilna“, Enzyklopedie des Holocaust: die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden, München–Zürich, 1995, Bd. 3, S. 1601.
(17) Report of the head of German Security Police and SD in Lithuania dated April 1943, Lithuanian Central State Archive, f. R-1399, ap. 1, b. 26, l. 55–56.
(18) Masinės žudynės Lietuvoje (Mass Murders in Lithuania) 1941–1944, collection of documents, V., 1965, Vol. 1, p. 172; Record of interrogation of J. Oželis-Kozlovskis dated 16 December 1944, Lithuanian Special Archive (hereinafter referred to as LSA), f. K-1, ap. 58, b. 27968/3, l. 12–48; G. Šuras, Sketches: Chronicle of the Vilnius Ghetto 1941-1944, V., 1997, p. 106–109; K. Sakowicz, Dziennik pisany w Ponarach od 11 lipca 1941 r. do 6 listopada 1943 r., Bydgoscz, 1999, p. 79–84.
(19) Record of interrogation of A. Rindziunskis dated 21 December 1943, archive of former Latvian SSR KGB, b. arch. Nr. N-18313, t. 3, ap. 164; I. Guzenberg, “The 1942 General Population Census in Lithuania: The Labour Camps of Vilnius Ghetto”, Vilnius Ghetto: Lists of Prisoners, V., 1998, part 2, p. 14–15.
(20) I. Arad, Holocaust: Katastrofa evropejskogo evrejstva (1933-1945), Erusalim, 1990, s. 88.
(21) Masinės žudynės Lietuvoje, Vol. 1, p. 172; Paper “Shoah: Anihilation of Lithuanian Jews” read by Prof. I. Arad in the international conference “Lithuanian Jewish community from 19th century to 1941” which took place in Telšiai 19-24 September 2001, p. 24.
(22) Report of the Vilnius Department of German Security Police and SD dated 11 November 1943, Lithuanian Central State Archive, f. R-1399, ap.1, b. 33, l. 4.
(23) “Wilna”, Die Enzyklopedie des Holocaust: die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden, München–Zürich, 1995, Bd. 3, S. 1603.
(24) Report of LSSR KGB dated 8 August 1944 on the murders of Jews carried out by Nazi occupants in Kaunas, LSA, f. K-1, ap. 10, b. 16, l. 94.
(25) LSA, f. K-1, ap. 10, b. 102, l. 217; Evidence of Ch. Gordon dated 12 August 1944, Department of Manuscripts of the Library of Academy of Sciences, f. 159–25, l. 5 a. p.
(26) Masinės žudynės Lietuvoje, Vol. 1, p. 247–248.
(27) List of prisoners dated 20 July 1944, archive of Stutthof Museum (Archiwum Muzeum Stuthof), Sygn. I–II B–10, S. 169–189.
(28) Ibid., Sygn. I–II C–3, S. 43–67.
(29) “Kowno”, Enzyklopedie des Holocaust..., Bd. 2, S. 806.
(30) G. Parizer’s Examination Record, April 17, 1945, LSA, f. K–1, ap. 46, b. 1228, l. 1–2.
(31) Masinės žudynės Lietuvoje, Vol. 1, p. 342; Notes about H.Schlöf’s activities (Feb. 4, 1972), LSA, f. K–1, ap. 46, b. 1228, l. 1–2; Дневник А. Ерушалми ,Черная книга, Вильнюс, 1993, c. 279.
(32) L. Peleckienė, “Mournful “Requiem” at the gate of the Šiauliai Ghetto, Lietuvos rytas, 26 July 1994, p. 12; E. Gens’ Examination Record, Jan. 21, 1948, LSA, f. K–1, ap. 58, b. 42809/3, l. 12–13.
The period of stability, during which no mass killings of the Jews were carried out. The Nazis concentrated on the exploitation of the Jewish workforce in the German military economy. Almost every able man and woman was working various labours in the workshops of the ghetto, different factories, companies and special Jewish labour camps. January 1943 report of the commander of the German security police and SD in Lithuania says that each day about 9,600 Jews from the Kaunas ghetto worked in 140 places. 1,400 men and women worked in the ghetto workshops. Most of the Jewish workers worked for Wehrmacht and filled military orders. Due to hard work, malnutrition and poor healthcare, about 50 people would die every week in the ghetto. (15)
Leaders of the ghettos believed that the ghettos would not be liquidated as long as they were economically viable to the Nazis. Therefore the administrations of the ghettos sought to employ as many Jewish workers as they could and to increase their productivity. For example, in the summer of 1943, about 14,000 of the Vilnius Ghetto Jews (two thirds of the entire ghetto population) were working in various companies and Jewish labour camps. (16)
In April 1943, the commander of the German security police and SD in Lithuania informed the RSHA, that 44,584 Jews were remaining in the General Area of Lithuania: 23,950 in the Vilnius Ghetto, 15,875 in the Kaunas Ghetto and 4,759 in the Šiauliai Ghetto. About 30,000 Jews were working for the German military.(17)
April 1943 – July 1944
The peaceful period ended in spring of 1943. In February 1943, the Nazi administration decided to begin liquidating the ghettos. It was first done in the districts of Svyriai and Ašmena, which were attached to the General Region of Lithuania. During this period, the Soviet partisan movement gained a lot of strength in the Eastern part of the Vilnius District. A portion of the Jews that had run away from ghettos joined the Soviet partisan forces. This encouraged the Nazi administration to begin liquidating the ghettos and labour camps in the district of Vilnius. First, the ghettos in Švenčionys, Mikailiškiai, Ašmena and Salos were liquidated in March 1943. About 3,000 prisoners of these ghettos were moved to the Vilnius Ghetto while the rest were told they would be taken to the Kaunas Ghetto. 5 April 1943, a train with the Jews from the East Lithuania towns halted in Paneriai. Here the Jews were detrained and shot in Paneriai forest. Lithuanian policemen also participated in the shooting of the Jews. A total of about 4,000–5,000 Jews were killed. Only a few managed to escape and return to the Vilnius Ghetto. (18)
In the beginning of July 1943, labour camps subject to the Vilnius Ghetto and found in Kena and Bezdonys were liquidated. Around 500–600 Jews working in these camps were shot by German Gestapo officers and Lithuanian policemen. Around 600–700 Jews from the labour camps in Baltoji Vokė and Riešė were transferred to the Vilnius Ghetto or escaped. (19)
On 21 June 1943, Heinrich Himmler issued an order to liquidate all the ghettos in the territory of Ostland. The Jews that were capable of working were to be transferred to concentration camps run by the SS. The Kaunas and Šiauliai ghettos were turned into concentration camps and it was decided that the Vilnius Ghetto would be liquidated. (20)
On 23 September 1943, the Vilnius Ghetto was liquidated. All residents of the ghetto (about 11,000) were divided into two groups: able men and women were sent to Estonian and Latvian concentration camps, while elderly men and women, and children (about 5 000) were taken to concentration camps in Poland and annihilated. After the Vilnius Ghetto was liquidated, around 1,200 people were left to work in the “Kailis” factory in Vilnius and around the same number at the military automobile repair works in Subačiaus street. (21) According to the documents of the German security police and SD, 24,108 Jews were imprisoned in the Vilnius region before the liquidation of the Vilnius Ghetto. 14,000 Jews were taken to work in Estonia (Vaivara), 2,382 Jews were left in Vilnius and another 1,720 Jews in villages (22). Only 2,000–3,000 of the 60,000 Vilnius Jewish population survived the Nazi occupation. About one third of the survivors were fugitives from the ghetto. Most of them joined the Soviet partisans. (23)
On 26 March 1943, killing actions in the Kaunas Ghetto were renewal. A cruel action supervised by the head of the Lithuanian concentration camps SS-Obersturmbannführer Wilhelm Göcke, Oberführer Wilhelm Fuchs and Oberscharführer Bruno Kittel, took place that day, during which families were deprived of their children. SS officers and Ukrainian policemen raided the ghetto and searched the houses taking children from their mothers and putting them on buses. Women who tried to resist were beaten with rifle stocks and hounded. About 1,700 children and old people were taken from the ghetto in two days transported to Auschwitz for annihilation. 130 ghetto policemen were also arrested. The next day (27 March 1944) 34 Jewish policemen were shot and killed in the 9th Fort. (24)
As the front drew nearer to Kaunas, the Nazis decided to finalise the liquidation of Jewish concentration camps. The liquidation of the Kaunas Ghetto began on 8 July 1944, when around 1,200 people were floated away on barges, and another 900 were taken away by train on July 10. On July 12, Gestapo officers started setting the ghetto houses on fire. Those who tried to escape the houses were shot. Almost all ghetto houses and the ghetto workshops were burnt down. Hundreds of people died in flames or were shot. A total of 6,000–7,000 people were transported from the Kaunas Ghetto, around 1,000 were killed in the liquidation process and around 300-400 Jews survived. (25)
The men from the ghetto in Kaunas were taken to the concentration camp of Dachau, while the women were sent to Stutthof. The Kaunas Jews who went to Dachau worked in the construction of an underground aviation factory and did other work. Prisoners died from exhaustion on a daily basis. An especially large number died in October and November of 1944. (26) The Chairman of the Council of Elders of the Kaunas Ghetto, Elchanan Elkes, also died in Dachau. At the end of the war, the prisoners at the Dachau concentration camp were liberated by the American army. Around a thousand Lithuanian Jews survived Dachau to this moment. Around 100 of them came back to Lithuania, the rest stayed in the West.
The women and children of the Kaunas Ghetto were first taken to Stutthof. On 19 July 1944, 1,208 women and children were brought to this concentration camp. (27) On 26 July 1944, 1,893 Jews from the ghettos of Kaunas and Šiauliai (801 women, 546 girls and 546 boys) were brought from Stutthof concentration camp to Auschwitz. (28) Very few survived and were liberated. There is information that only around 8 % (around 2,400 people) of the 30,000 Jews from the Kaunas Ghetto saw the end of the war. (29)
Until October 1943, the Šiauliai Ghetto was under the command of Gebietskommissar Hans Gewecke, but starting 1 October 1943, the command was taken over by the SS. (30) The ghetto became a concentration camp. SS-Oberscharführer Herman Schlöf was put in command. After the mass killings of Jews that took place in the summer and autumn of 1941, the Šiauliai Ghetto had a relatively peaceful period. 5 November 1943, a selection of children and invalid Jews in the Šiauliai Ghetto was carried out. The action was supervised by the SS-Hauptsturmführer Förster. 570 children and 260 elderly people were taken to concentration camp (supposedly Auschwitz) by SS and ROA officers that had come from Kaunas on that day. The Judenrat members Ber Kartun, Aharon Katz and paediatrician Uriah Razovski, unable to leave the children alone in such a terrible journey, joined them and left together. (31)
15 July 1944, the liquidation of the Šiauliai Ghetto began. About 7,000 Šiauliai Jews as well as Jews brought to the Šiauliai Ghetto from Vilnius, Kaunas and Smurgainys labour camps were transported to Stutthof concentration camp in four stages. From there, men were taken to Dachau concentration camp, while women and children were taken to Auschwitz. Able women were left in Stutthof. Some of the Šiauliai Jews were liberated from Dachau by the American forces on 2 May 1945. Only 350-500 Šiauliai Jews survived the war. (32)
A total of 200,000 Lithuanian Jews were killed during the Nazi occupation. The genocide of Lithuanian Jews was the worst tragedy in Lithuanian history. Never in Lithuanian history were so many people murdered in such a short period of time (three years). The whole ethnic group of Lithuanian Jews (Litvaks) was eradicated together with its people, history, traditions, economic system and rich culture.
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(1) H. Krausnick, Hitlers Einsatzgruppen: Die Truppe des Weltanschaaungskrieges 1938–1942, Frankfurt am Main, 1985, S. 124-125.
(2) R. Hilberg, Die Vernichtung der europäischen Juden, Frankfurt am Main, Bd. 2, 1990, S. 303.
(3) H. Krausnick, Hitlers Einsatzgruppen..., S.151–152.
(4) Reports from USSR, No. 14, Bundesarchivabteilungen Posdam, S. 82; H. Krausnick, Hitlers Einsatzgruppen..., S. 142.
(5) H.Krausnick, Hitlers Einsatzgruppen..., S. 142; Masinės žudynės Lietuvoje (Mass Murders in Lithuania) 1941–1944, collection of documents, V., 1973, Vol. 2, p. 26.
(6) Masinės žudynės Lietuvoje 1941–1944, collection of documents, V., 1965, Vol. 1, p. 131.
(7) Masinės žudynės Lietuvoje, Vol. 1, p. 135.
(8) Masinės žudynės Lietuvoje, Vol. 1, p. 138.
(9) Order of Kaunas Commandant No. 15 dated 10 July 1941, Lithuanian Central State Archive, f. R-1444, ap.1, b. 8, l. 40.
(10) “Kowno”, Enzyklopedie des Holocaust: die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden, München–Zürich, 1995, Bd. 2, S. 804
(11) History of Jewish Police of the Kaunas Ghetto (in Russian), Lithuanian Special Archives, f. K-1, inventory of files of unidentified ownership, b. 345, l. 11–13.
(12) I. Guzenberg, “The Vilnius Ghetto and the Population Census of 1942”, Vilnius Ghetto: Lists of Prisoners, V., 1996, part 1, p. 13; G. Šuras, Sketches: Chronicle of the Vilnius Ghetto 1941-1944, V., 1997, p. 37;
(13) “Wilna”, Enzyklopedie des Holocaust..., Bd. 3, S. 1601.
(14) Paper “Shoah: Annihilation of Lithuanian Jews” read by Prof. I. Arad in the international conference “Lithuanian Jewish community from 19th century to 1941” which took place in Telšiai 19-24 September 2001, p. 13.
(15) Masinės žudynės Lietuvoje (Mass Murders in Lithuania) 1941–1944, collection of documents, V., 1965, Vol. 1, p. 243.
(16) „Wilna“, Enzyklopedie des Holocaust: die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden, München–Zürich, 1995, Bd. 3, S. 1601.
(17) Report of the head of German Security Police and SD in Lithuania dated April 1943, Lithuanian Central State Archive, f. R-1399, ap. 1, b. 26, l. 55–56.
(18) Masinės žudynės Lietuvoje (Mass Murders in Lithuania) 1941–1944, collection of documents, V., 1965, Vol. 1, p. 172; Record of interrogation of J. Oželis-Kozlovskis dated 16 December 1944, Lithuanian Special Archive (hereinafter referred to as LSA), f. K-1, ap. 58, b. 27968/3, l. 12–48; G. Šuras, Sketches: Chronicle of the Vilnius Ghetto 1941-1944, V., 1997, p. 106–109; K. Sakowicz, Dziennik pisany w Ponarach od 11 lipca 1941 r. do 6 listopada 1943 r., Bydgoscz, 1999, p. 79–84.
(19) Record of interrogation of A. Rindziunskis dated 21 December 1943, archive of former Latvian SSR KGB, b. arch. Nr. N-18313, t. 3, ap. 164; I. Guzenberg, “The 1942 General Population Census in Lithuania: The Labour Camps of Vilnius Ghetto”, Vilnius Ghetto: Lists of Prisoners, V., 1998, part 2, p. 14–15.
(20) I. Arad, Holocaust: Katastrofa evropejskogo evrejstva (1933-1945), Erusalim, 1990, s. 88.
(21) Masinės žudynės Lietuvoje, Vol. 1, p. 172; Paper “Shoah: Anihilation of Lithuanian Jews” read by Prof. I. Arad in the international conference “Lithuanian Jewish community from 19th century to 1941” which took place in Telšiai 19-24 September 2001, p. 24.
(22) Report of the Vilnius Department of German Security Police and SD dated 11 November 1943, Lithuanian Central State Archive, f. R-1399, ap.1, b. 33, l. 4.
(23) “Wilna”, Die Enzyklopedie des Holocaust: die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden, München–Zürich, 1995, Bd. 3, S. 1603.
(24) Report of LSSR KGB dated 8 August 1944 on the murders of Jews carried out by Nazi occupants in Kaunas, LSA, f. K-1, ap. 10, b. 16, l. 94.
(25) LSA, f. K-1, ap. 10, b. 102, l. 217; Evidence of Ch. Gordon dated 12 August 1944, Department of Manuscripts of the Library of Academy of Sciences, f. 159–25, l. 5 a. p.
(26) Masinės žudynės Lietuvoje, Vol. 1, p. 247–248.
(27) List of prisoners dated 20 July 1944, archive of Stutthof Museum (Archiwum Muzeum Stuthof), Sygn. I–II B–10, S. 169–189.
(28) Ibid., Sygn. I–II C–3, S. 43–67.
(29) “Kowno”, Enzyklopedie des Holocaust..., Bd. 2, S. 806.
(30) G. Parizer’s Examination Record, April 17, 1945, LSA, f. K–1, ap. 46, b. 1228, l. 1–2.
(31) Masinės žudynės Lietuvoje, Vol. 1, p. 342; Notes about H.Schlöf’s activities (Feb. 4, 1972), LSA, f. K–1, ap. 46, b. 1228, l. 1–2; Дневник А. Ерушалми ,Черная книга, Вильнюс, 1993, c. 279.
(32) L. Peleckienė, “Mournful “Requiem” at the gate of the Šiauliai Ghetto, Lietuvos rytas, 26 July 1994, p. 12; E. Gens’ Examination Record, Jan. 21, 1948, LSA, f. K–1, ap. 58, b. 42809/3, l. 12–13.