The Holocaust in Lithuania
You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Norwegian. (December 2023) Click [show] for important translation instructions.
|
Date | June–December 1941 |
---|---|
Target | Jews |
Organised by | Einsatzgruppen, Ypatingasis būrys |
Deaths | 190,000–195,000 |
The Holocaust in Lithuania resulted in the near total eradication of
The events in the western regions of the USSR occupied by Nazi Germany in the first weeks after the German invasion, including Lithuania, marked a sharp intensification of the Holocaust.[5][6][b]
The occupying Nazi German administration fanned antisemitism by blaming the Soviet regime's annexation of Lithuania in June 1940, on the Jewish community. One prevalent antisemitic trope at the time linked Bolsheviks and Jews.[7] There were other tropes, even more unpleasant. To a large extent the Nazis also relied on the physical preparation and execution of their orders by local Lithuanian collaborators.[3]
As of 2020, the topic of the Holocaust in Lithuania and the role played by Lithuanians in the genocide, including several notable Lithuanian nationalists, remained unsettled.[8]
Background
After the
Destruction of Jewry
Estimated number of victims
Before the German invasion, the Jewish population was estimated at about 210,000.
Some intervened to rescue Jews. From 16 July to 3 August 1940,
Holocaust events
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 before 1918. The city was semi-autonomous in the period of Lithuanian independence, under League of Nations supervision. Of the approximately 6,000 Jews who had lived in Memel, most had already fled when it was absorbed into the Reich on March 15, 1939. The remainder were expelled. Most fled into Lithuania proper, and most of these were killed after the Axis invasion in June 1941.
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.[14]
Most Lithuanian Jews perished in the first months of the occupation and before the end of 1941. The Axis invasion of the USSR began on June 22, 1941 and coincided with the June Uprising in Lithuania. During the days before the German occupation of Lithuania the Lithuanian Activist Front attacked Soviet forces,[citation needed] seized power in several cities, spread anti-Semitic propaganda and carried out massacres of Lithuanian Jews and Poles.[citation needed]
A notable massacre began on the night of 25–26 June, when
German Einsatzgruppen followed the advance of the German army units in June 1941 and immediately began organizing the murder of Jews in conquered territories.[6] The first recorded action of the Einsatzgruppen (Einsatzgruppe A) unit took place on June 22, 1941, in the border town of Gargždai (called Gorzdt in Yiddish and Garsden in German), one of the oldest Jewish settlements in the country and only 18 kilometres (11 mi) from Germany's recovered Memel. Approximately 201 Jews were shot that day, in what is known as the Garsden massacre. Some Lithuanian Communists were also among the victims.[17] About 80,000 Jews had been killed by October and about 175,000 by the end of the year.[1]
Most Jews in Lithuania were not required to live in
In the second phase, the Holocaust slowed, and Germans used Jews as
Two factors contributed to the speed of the destruction of Lithuanian Jewry. The first was significant support for the "de-Jewification" of Lithuania from the Lithuanian population.[12][19] The second was the German plan for early colonization of Lithuania – which shared a border with German East Prussia – in accordance with the Generalplan Ost; thus the high priority given to the extermination of the relatively small Lithuanian Jewish community.[19]
Participation of local collaborators
Dina Porat, the chief historian of Yad Vashem, writes that "The Lithuanians showed [the Einsatzgruppen] how to murder women and children, and perhaps made them accustomed to it...Indeed, at the onset of the invasion the German units killed mostly men, while the Lithuanians killed unselectively."[12]
The
On 24 June 1941, the
A combination of factors explains the participation of some Lithuanians in genocide against Jews.[12] Those 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.[12] Finally the Jews were seen as having supported the Soviet regime in Lithuania during 1940–1941.[d][3][12][19] During the period leading up to the German invasion, Jews were blamed by some for virtually every misfortune that had befallen Lithuania.[3][19]
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.[1][3][19]
Not all of the Lithuanian populace supported the killings,
Comprehension and remembrance
Following the Holocaust, Lithuania became part of the USSR, whose government tried to minimize the unique suffering of the Jews.[28] In Lithuania and throughout the Soviet Union, memorials did not mention Jews in particular; but instead were built to commemorate the suffering of "local inhabitants".[28] However, people guilty of Nazi collaboration and crimes against Jews were often deported or executed.[29]
Since Lithuania regained its 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 cooperated in the murder of Lithuanian Jewry.[30]
The genocide in Lithuania was one of the earliest large-scale implementations of the Final Solution, leading some to conclude 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,[31] or even earlier, on Kristallnacht in 1938,[32] or with Hitler's rise to power as Chancellor of Germany in 1933.
The post-Soviet Lithuanian government has on a number of occasions commemorated the Holocaust, made attempts to combat antisemitism, and brought some Nazi-era war criminals to justice.
Controversy and criticism
Parts of this article (those related to did the law pass?) need to be updated.(December 2023) |
Historically Lithuanians have denied national participation in the Holocaust or said that Lithuanian participants in the genocide were fringe or extreme elements.
Since the 1990s there has been criticism of the Lithuanian government's efforts to accurately depict the history of the Holocaust, the continued praise for Lithuanian nationalists who allegedly collaborated with the Nazis in murdering hundreds of thousands of Lithuanian Jews and the government's aversion to accepting culpability for the Holocaust in Lithuania.[vague] In the 2010s Lithuanian society was characterized by Holocaust dismissal and a surge in anti-Semitic sentiment.[36]
In 2001 the
In 2010 a Klaipėda court ruled that swastikas could be displayed publicly and were symbols of "Lithuania's historical heritage."[39]
In January 2020 Lithuanian Prime Minister
Vilnius Street renaming and memorial controversy
In 2019 the issue gained national political attention when Vilnius' liberal
See also
- Chiune Sugihara
- Collaboration during World War II
- History of the Jews in Lithuania
- Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force (1944)
- Lithuanian collaboration during World War II
- Timeline of Jewish history in Lithuania
- The Holocaust in Estonia
- The Holocaust in Latvia
Notes
a
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
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][33]
References
- ^ a b c d e f g
Porat, Dina (2002). "The Holocaust in Lithuania: Some Unique Aspects". In David Cesarani (ed.). The Final Solution: Origins and Implementation. Routledge. pp. 161–162. ISBN 978-0-415-15232-7.
- ^ Reich, Aaron (23 September 2021). "On This Day: Nazis liquidate Vilnius Ghetto, slaughter Lithuanian Jews". The Jerusalem Post | JPost.com. Retrieved 2023-08-19.
- ^ ISSN 8756-6583.
- ^ ISBN 978-90-420-0850-2.
- ^
Matthäus, Jürgen (2007). "Operation Barbarossa and the onset of the Holocaust". In Christopher R. Browning (ed.). The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939–March 1942. ISBN 978-0-8032-5979-9.
- ^ a b c d e f g
Porat, Dina (2002). "The Holocaust in Lithuania: Some Unique Aspects". In David Cesarani (ed.). The Final Solution: Origins and Implementation. Routledge. p. 159. ISBN 978-0-415-15232-7.
- ^ a b c
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. ISSN 8756-6583.
- ^ Stanislovas Stasiulis (2020). "The Holocaust in Lithuania: The Key Characteristics of Its History, and the Key Issues in Historiography and Cultural Memory". East European Politics and Societies. 34 (1): 261–279. . Retrieved January 4, 2024.
- ^ Miniotaite, Grazina (1999). "The Security Policy of Lithuania and the 'Integration Dilemma'" (PDF). NATO Academic Forum. p. 21.
- ^
Thomas Remeikis (1975). "The decision of the Lithuanian government to accept the Soviet ultimatum of 14 June 1940". Lituanus. 21 (4 – Winter 1975). Archived from the original on 17 December 2010 – via Internet Archive.
{{cite journal}}
: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) - ^ a b c d
ISBN 978-0-7864-0371-4.
AK
- ^ ISBN 978-0-415-15232-7.
- ^ "Japan's Abe seeks Baltic support against North Korea". AFP. 14 January 2018. Archived from the original on 29 July 2019. Retrieved 14 January 2018.
- ^ a b
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 978-90-420-0850-2.
- ISBN 0-253-33359-8.
- ^
ISSN 1392-3463. Retrieved 2006-06-09.
- ^ "The first mass execution of the Jews of Gargždai". Holocaust Atlas of Lithuania. Retrieved 2023-12-11.
- ^ a b "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.
- ^ ISBN 978-90-420-0850-2.
- ^ ISSN 1392-3463.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-253-33359-9.
- ^ Michalski, Czesław (Winter 2000–2001). "Ponary – Golgota Wileńszczyzny". Konspekt (in Polish). 5. Archived from the original on 2007-02-07.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-7864-0371-4.
- ^ "Names of Righteous by Country". 2017.
- ^ "Righteous Among the Nations - per Country & Ethnic Origin". Yad Vashem. January 1, 2008. Archived from the original on October 15, 2009. Retrieved 2009-03-15.
- ^ a b c d e "NCSJ Country Report: Lithuania". Advocates on Behalf of Jews in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic States & Eurasia. 2003. Archived from the original on 30 April 2002. Retrieved 13 March 2007.
- ISSN 1392-3463.
- ^ ISBN 978-965-308-084-3.
- ISBN 978-609-01-2208-2.
- ^
Walkowitz, Daniel J.; Lisa Maya Knauer (2004). Memory and the Impact of Political Transformation in Public Space. Duke University Press. p. 188. ISBN 978-0-8223-3364-7.
- ^
Mineau, André (1999). The Making of the Holocaust: Ideology and Ethics in the Systems. Rodopi. p. 117. ISBN 978-90-420-0705-5.
- ^
Freeman, Joseph (1996). Job: The Story of a Holocaust Survivor. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-275-95586-1.
- ^ a b c d e f g
Sužiedėlis, Saulius (Winter 2001). "The Burden of 1941". Lituanus. 4 (47). ISSN 0024-5089.
- ^ MacQueen, Michael (2005-07-03). "Lithuanian Collaboration in the "Final Solution": Motivations and Case Studies" (PDF). Lithuania and the Jews: The Holocaust Chapter. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. pp. 1–16. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2006-05-15.
- ^ a b
Senn, Alfred E. (Winter 2001). "Reflections on the Holocaust in Lithuania: A new Book by Alfonsas Eidintas". Lituanus. 4 (47). ISSN 0024-5089.
- ISBN 9781472522955.
- ^ Zuroff, Efraim (August 28, 2001). "Can Lithuania face its Holocaust past?". Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel. Archived from the original on October 5, 2013. Retrieved 2009-03-15.
- ^ "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. Archived from the original on 2012-02-29. Retrieved 2009-03-15.
- ^ Holocaust Legacy in Post-Soviet Lithuania: People, Places and Objects, p. 205, 2014, by Shivaun Woolfson, Bloomsbury Publishing
- ^ "Following Poland's lead, Lithuania proposes controversial Holocaust law". The Times of Israel.
- ^ "Holocaust still haunts Lithuania – DW – 08/14/2019". dw.com. Retrieved 2023-08-02.
- ^ a b "Landsbergis about Jewish community leader: she has no clue what she's doing". Delfi EN (in Lithuanian). Retrieved 2023-08-02.
- ^ "Lithuanian president retreats from idea of proposing stricter regulation on plaques". www.baltictimes.com. Retrieved 2023-08-02.
- ^ Miller-Korpi, Katy (May 1998). "The Holocaust in the Baltics". Encyclopedia of Baltic History. University of Washington. Archived from the original on 7 March 2008. Retrieved 13 March 2008.
Further reading
- Bubnys, A. (2005). The Holocaust in Lithuania between 1941 and 1944. Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania.
- Cassedy, E. (2012). We Are Here: Memories of the Lithuanian Holocaust (Illustrated ed.). University of Nebraska Press.
- Vesna Drapac; Gareth Pritchard (2017). Resistance and Collaboration in Hitler's Empire. Palgrave, MacMillan Education. ISBN 9781137385345.
- Eidintas, A. (2003). Jews, Lithuanians and the Holocaust, Versus Aureus.
- Eidintas, A. A "Jew-Communist" Stereotype in Lithuania, 1940–1941 Archived 2018-02-26 at the Wayback Machine. Lithuanian Political Science Yearbook (01/2000), 1–36.
- Gordon, H. (2000). The Shadow of Death: The Holocaust in Lithuania, University Press of Kentucky.
- Greenbaum, M. (2018). The Jews of Lithuania: A History of a Remarkable Community 1316–1945. Gefen Publishing House.
- Issrof, S. (2002). The Holocaust in Lithuania, 1941–1945: A Book of Remembrance (3 vols.). (R. L. Cohen, Ed.). Gefen Books.
- Koniuchowsky, Leyb (2020). The Lithuanian slaughter of its Jews: the testimonies of 121 Jewish survivors of the Holocaust in Lithuania, recorded by Leyb Koniuchowsky, in Displaced Persons' Camps (1946-48). Translated by Boyarin, Jonathan. David Solly Sandler. OCLC 1223277746.
- Levin, D. (1993). Lithuanian Attitudes toward the Jewish Minority in the Aftermath of the Holocaust: The Lithuanian Press, 1991–1992, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 7(2), 247–262.
- Levin, D. (1990). On the Relations between the Baltic Peoples and their Jewish Neighbors before, during and after World War II, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 5(1), 53–56.
- Senn, A. E. (2007). Lithuania 1940: Revolution from Above. Rodopi.
- Sepetys, R. (2011). Between Shades of Gray (Illustrated edition). Philomel Books.
- Stasiulis, S. (2020). The Holocaust in Lithuania: The Key Characteristics of Its History, and the Key Issues in Historiography and Cultural Memory. East European Politics and Societies, 34(1), 261–279.
- Tumasonis, R., & Levinson, J. (2006). The Shoah (Holocaust) in Lithuania. VAGA Publishers.
- Vanagaite, Ruta, Zuroff, Efraim. (2020). Our People: Discovering Lithuania's Hidden Holocaust. Rowman & Littlefield.
- Weeks, T. R. (2015). Vilnius between Nations, 1795–2000. Northern Illinois University Press.
External links
- Lithuanian Holocaust Atlas – Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum, Lithuania
- 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. Archived 2020-07-27 at the Wayback Machine in Lithuanus/Lithuanian Quarterly Journal of Arts and Sciences, vol. 47, 4.
- Kulikauskas, Andrius. (2015), How did Lithuanians wrong Litvaks?
- Holocaust In The Baltics Information and updates on the ongoing debate, edited by Dovid Katz
- The Holocaust in Lithuania Archived 2018-10-30 at the Wayback Machine
- German soldiers and Lithuanians watch a "partisan" murder Jewish men at the Lietukis garage, Kovno, June 27, 1941.
- Chronicles of the Vilna Ghetto Archived 2015-06-15 at the Wayback Machine
- Lietukis Garage Massacre in Kaunas (27 June 1941)
- Lithuanian militiamen in Kovno round up Jews during an early pogrom. Kovno, Lithuania, June 25–July 8, 1941.
- Kovno, Lithuania, Jews who were murdered by Lithuanian nationalists...
- District of Kaunas / Kovno
- Lithuanian Testimonies’ Project Archived 2012-04-22 at the Wayback Machine
- Jewish children on the streets of the Kovno ghetto. Lithuania, 1941–1943
- Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel
- Как литовцы евреев убивали
- Центр исследования геноцида и резистенции жителей Литвы
- Double Genocide: Lithuania wants to erase its ugly history of Nazi collaboration
- The Holocaust in Lithuania, and Its Obfuscation, in Lithuanian Sources
- Kulikauskas, Andrius. Documents Which Argue for Ethnic Cleansing (by Kazys Škirpa, Stasys Raštikis, Stasys Lozoraitis and Petras Klimas in 1940–1941 and by Birutė Teresė Burauskaitė in 2015)
- [Vytautas Tininis. The concept of "collaboration" in the context of Lithuanian history http://www.genocid.lt/Leidyba/9/vytautas.htm]; Lietuvos gyventojų genocido ir rezistencijos tyrimo centras.