While the Holocaust in Lithuania is a
topic that has been covered extensively in the historical literature, one
related event that occurred as this tragedy unfolded, i.e., the attempted coup
against the Lithuanian Provisional Government (PG) in late July 1941, has
received comparatively little attention. For those scholars who have examined
the coup, the explanation for it has been that the Nazis sought to remove the
PG because of its persistent appeals for Lithuanian independence. However,
while this conflict with the Nazis was certainly a factor, there were ulterior
motives for the Nazi support of the coup, which are clarified through an
examination of the primary sources. In particular, while European Jews had been
subjected to increasing brutality for the first 21 months of the war, with the
invasion of the Soviet Union, Jews would be subjected to pre-planned mass
murder, beginning with communists and Jewish males of fighting age and
eventually culminating in a decision to commit Europe-wide genocide. With this
policy rapidly evolving, the Nazis attempted to overthrow the PG in late July
1941, not only to eliminate resistance to the incorporation of the Baltic
States into the Greater German Reich but also to expedite the Final Solution in
Lithuania. In doing so, the Nazis exploited the increasingly anti-Semitic
society of Lithuania under Soviet rule, characterized in part by the far right
led by followers of Augustinas Voldemaras. Upon occupying Lithuania, the Nazis
found the most enthusiastic participants in anti-Semitic violence could be
found among these followers, so they were the party that the Nazis backed in
the coup. Investigating events before, during, and after the attempted coup
clarifies the relationship of the Holocaust with the coup.
Historiographic
Challenges
There are essentially three trajectories
in the historiography of the Holocaust in Lithuania that characterize the
writing about the topic over the past seventy years: the slow but eventual transition
from intentionalism to functionalism; the increasing availability of archival
documents; and the issue of Lithuanian guilt. Our understanding of the
Holocaust is one that has been more shaped by functionalism than intentionalism
at least since the 1990s when, not coincidentally, archival materials from the
former Soviet Union first became broadly available. As a result, while Soviet
control of postwar Lithuania discouraged an honest discussion of the Holocaust
there, the last 25 years have been characterized by vociferous debate.
The intentionalist point of view,
expressing the idea that the Nazis came to power with the intention of
exterminating the Jews of Europe, was predominant in the historiography of the
Holocaust until 1961. The functionalist viewpoint, which states that extermination
was a decision reached gradually (in the summer of 1941 at the earliest), began
to emerge in the literature when Raul Hilberg published The Destruction of
the European Jews in 1961.[1]
Hilberg theorized that the far-flung bureaucracy of Nazi Germany and
competition among various ministries, the party, and the Schutzstaffel (SS)
resulted in a gradual movement toward genocide. Martin Broszat's Der Staat
Hitlers, published in 1969, while not limited to the Holocaust,
nevertheless argued that Nazi Germany, rather than being an autocratic state,
was a polycracy that pushed forward and concretized vague agendas, thus
obviating the need for a pre-existing plan or decisive order.[2]
The debate between historians who remained
committed to intentionalism and those supporting functionalism raged mostly
during the 1970s and 1980s, with the assumptions of moderate functionalists
beginning to receive confirmation with increased access to Soviet archives.
Daniel Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners, published in 1996, was
likely the final gasp of a radical intentionalism based on the notion of
inherent German evil. Goldhagen's thesis of an "eliminationist
anti-Semitism" lying at the heart of the National Socialist project, was
greeted mostly by derision.[3]
The prevailing functionalist viewpoint on the origins of the Holocaust is most
succinctly stated in Christopher Browning's The Origins of the Final
Solution, published in 2006. Browning sees key roles for independent
initiative and "cumulative radicalization" in the evolution of Nazi
genocide.[4]
As noted, the increasing availability of
sources was essential to the shift from intentionalism to functionalism. Some
of these documents became available before 1991 and the disintegration of the
USSR, including the Jäger Report, which describes in painstaking detail the
course of the Holocaust in Lithuania through December 1, 1941. The report was
provided to West German prosecutors by Soviet authorities in 1963 – four years
after Karl Jäger's suicide while awaiting trial. Given the extent to which the
document corroborates the notion of cumulative radicalization, it is not
surprising that Browning's theory could only be truly supported by documents
with access to Soviet archives.
In addition, Gerald Fleming's Hitler
and the Final Solution, published in 1984, was among the first works by a
western historian to incorporate Russian archival material. [5] Although
Fleming tended to take an intentionalist view of the Holocaust, his work
nevertheless presaged the watershed of Soviet documents that entered the
research a decade later. Fleming's own work was not focused specifically on
Lithuania but rather on Latvia. However, given the related policies implemented
in these bordering countries, Fleming's research boded well for the future
historiography of the Holocaust in the Baltic States.
There are numerous reasons for the desire
of the Soviets to limit access to archival documents relevant to the Holocaust
in Lithuania. First, there was a desire to suppress the specifically Jewish
nature of the majority of the victims of the Nazis in the Baltic States to
perpetuate a mythos of fascist aggression against all Soviet peoples. Second
and more important to this analysis, there was an impulse to suppress
nationalism across the Soviet Union. This impulse was especially great in the
Baltic States, whose incorporation into the USSR was highly contested by both
the countries themselves and the outside world.
The Soviet offensive against Lithuanian
nationalism was largely accomplished through the painting of all Lithuanian
nationalists as collaborators with the Nazis. For instance, while it presents a
collection of extremely important documents for understanding the Holocaust in
Lithuania, the volume Documents Accuse, published in 1970 under the
auspices of the government of the Lithuanian SSR, offers virtually no nuance in
distinguishing blameless elements of the Lithuanian nationalist movement from
those who committed war crimes.[6]
Conversely, the roughly contemporaneous book by the Lithuanian-American
historian Algirdas Budreckis, The Lithuanian National Revolt of 1941, published
in 1968, specifically treats the period during which spontaneous violence by
Lithuanians committed against Jews was most common. However, Budreckis glosses
over this violence in fewer than ten pages and essentially ascribes it to a few
bad apples.[7]
This
tension in the historiography was reflective of that between Lithuania and the
USSR itself. It is little wonder, therefore, that Lithuania was among the first
republics to declare its separation from the Soviet Union in 1991. While the
dissolution of the USSR resulted in an abundance of newly available documents,
this watershed of evidence has not abated the intensity of the debate over
Lithuanian collaboration. While many Lithuanian historians have undertaken
honest attempts to investigate the issue, others have espoused a theory of
"double genocide," which alleges that the Soviet occupations of
1940-41 and 1944-1991 were as bloody and genocidal as that of the Nazis.
Related to this dispute is the issue of
Jewish collaboration with the Soviet occupation in 1940-41, which remains
contentious due to its connection to anti-Semitic propaganda from the 1930s and
1940s. Perhaps the most controversial development regarding this aspect of the
debate was the suggestion that the Lithuanian-born Israeli Holocaust historian
Yitzhak Arad be prosecuted by the Lithuanian government for war crimes on the
basis of his membership in a Soviet partisan group during the war.[8] Also central
among the disputes today is the extent to which violence committed by
Lithuanians against Jews, particularly the street violence and pogroms of the
first few weeks of the Nazi occupation, was spontaneous or was directed behind
the scenes by the German occupation authorities. This dispute is similarly
unresolved.
Thus, the complexity of the historiography
of the Holocaust in Lithuania has not decreased with time. However, the key
factor complicating a fuller understanding of this difficult topic is the issue
of Lithuanian collaboration, which has erupted in the last quarter century
after being assumed during the Soviet period as universal by heavily biased court
historians. There is still much to learn about this subject, but the ferocity
of the current debate has at least generated an impressive amount of source
material, much of it from the Lithuanian national archives, aiding
significantly our attempts to attain a better understanding of this history.
Antecedents
to the Final Solution in Lithuania
Jews had lived in the territory of
Lithuania for centuries and had established Vilnius as a worldwide center of
Jewish religious learning. Lithuanian Jews had enjoyed long periods of
comparative tolerance, punctuated by outbursts of anti-Semitic repression. Such
repression became more common upon annexation in 1795 to the Russian Empire,
with its tradition of pogroms. These developments contributed both to the
emigration of large numbers of Lithuanian Jews to the United States and
elsewhere in the late 19th century and to the emergence of Lithuania as a major
European center of political Zionism.[9]
Lithuanian independence came with the end
of World War I, followed by several years of military conflicts with the Soviet
Union and neighboring Poland, the latter of which occupied and annexed Vilnius
in 1919. When the smoke cleared, the Lithuanian republic that was established
represented a solid Lithuanian majority of more than 80% but with significant
numbers of ethnic minorities and strong divisions based on these demographics.
Jews constituted the largest minority, numbering between 5% and 7% of the total
population. The political scientist Robert van Voren has characterized the
relationship between the Lithuanian and Jewish populations as separate with
"a sort of 'buffer'" between them, consisting before the war of the
"Tsarist bureaucracy" or "Polonized aristocracy" and
subsequently the war-time German occupation authorities. Van Voren writes,
"Both communities had their grudges against these three dominant
'external' powers, but now with them gone they had to deal with each other
directly."[10]
Still, he maintains, given the large percentage of rural Jews living in shtetls
with overwhelmingly Jewish populations, anti-Semitism was only active in the
cities, where Lithuanians sought to enter a Jewish-dominated bourgeoisie.[11]
Following the adoption of a Lithuanian
national constitution in 1922, elections were held for the national
legislature, the Seimas. Jews received full political rights and were
represented in the Seimas in a minorities bloc with Poles. This bloc held five
seats out of a total of 78. This political power grew in subsequent elections
in 1923 and 1926, in which an enlarged bloc that included Russian and German
ethnic minorities won approximately 15% of votes. The election of 1926 was
particularly controversial because, for the first time, the former ruling
party, the Lithuanian Christian Democratic Party, was excluded from the
government. The fears among right-wing Lithuanians of a "leftist"
government were confirmed in their minds when the government signed a
non-aggression pact with the USSR in September 1926.[12]
In response to the election, a coup was
staged in December 1926, led by the Lithuanian Nationalist Union, which had won
only three Seimas seats in the election, in concert with the Christian
Democrats. The coup installed Antanas Smetona, one of the signers of
Lithuania's independence declaration, as president and Augustinas Voldemaras, a
former prime minister and foreign minister, as prime minister. Ultimate power
rested with Smetona, who instituted an authoritarian regime by dissolving the
Seimas and ruling by decree.[13]
In some sense, the figures of Smetona and
Voldemaras represent two important positions within the Lithuanian right wing for
the country's Jewish population. Smetona enjoyed the support of the Jewish
population, who viewed him as a champion of Zionism and as their protector
against the growing anti-Semitic violence seen in neighboring countries such as
Poland. Nevertheless, as pointed out by Michael MacQueen, Smetona’s decision to
nationalize the Lithuanian economy and create and empower a Lithuanian middle
class resulted in increased anti-Semitism, egged
on by Lithuanian Businessman's Association. Smetona also oversaw the
elimination of the Ministry for Jewish Affairs, which had existed since
independence.[14]
In contrast to Smetona's relatively benign
authoritarianism and passive anti-Semitism, Voldemaras represented an
explicitly fascist and potentially violent position. Although he began his
political career as a mainstream figure, Voldemaras became increasingly
radicalized over the course of the 1920s. In 1927, an organization he helped
found, Gelezinis Vilkas (the Iron Wolf), emerged as a force in
Lithuanian civil society. The organization was ultranationalist and explicitly
anti-Semitic and answered largely to the personal whims of Voldemaras himself.
The organization's platform called for economic and political measures against
Lithuania's Jews, noting however that overt violence would be counterproductive
at that time.[15]
This position ultimately changed.
Lithuania
in Crisis
Conflicts between President Smetona and
Prime Minister Voldemaras culminated in the firing and internal exile of Voldemaras
in 1929. The Iron Wolf was banned the following year. After a failed coup
attempt in 1934, Voldemaras was imprisoned and subsequently exiled to France,
although he would continue to exert tremendous influence. For most of the
1930s, Lithuania resembled most of the other dictatorships of Europe in being
authoritarian but not particularly oppressive to minorities, with the obvious
exception of Nazi Germany. Lithuania increasingly saw itself as a small, weak
country situated between hostile, heavily armed neighbors. To the east, the
Soviet Union sought some reconstitution of the Russian Empire under Soviet
rule. To the west, the emergence of Nazi Germany was met in Lithuania with
worry that the Nazis would attempt to reclaim Memel (called Klaipeda in
Lithuanian), a formerly German city with a German ethnic majority that had been
awarded to Lithuania as its sole port following World War I.
This tense situation worsened with a rapid
series of geopolitical events beginning in 1938. In March of that year, Poland,
which still possessed Vilnius, issued an ultimatum to Lithuania to establish
diplomatic relations, which in essence forced Lithuania to acknowledge Polish
rule over the disputed city. Lithuania relented to avoid war with a stronger
neighbor. A year later, Germany issued an ultimatum over Memel, to which
Lithuania again acceded. Unsurprisingly, a large number of Jews living in that
region fled to the provisional capital, Kaunas, along with large numbers of
ethnic Lithuanians. According to political scientist Roger D. Petersen, the
annexation was a galvanizing moment in the history of Lithuanian nationalism,
resulting in calls for national unity in the face of territorial loss.[16]
The outbreak of war in September 1939 and
the consequent division of territory in Eastern Europe between the Soviet Union
and Nazi Germany brought the crisis to a head. Smetona wanted to keep Lithuania
neutral. However, the non-aggression pact between Hitler and Stalin had
ultimately apportioned Lithuania to the Soviet sphere of influence. The Soviets
first sought to force Soviet troops onto Lithuanian soil by posing yet another
ultimatum to the country to accept 20,000 Red Army troops on its territory. As an
enticement, the Soviets offered assistance in helping Lithuania to occupy
Vilnius and the territory around it, with Lithuanian troops marching into the
former capital on October 28. The event is particularly notable because it
marks the first outbreak during the war of anti-Semitic violence on Lithuanian
soil, although in this case, it seems to have been mainly violence committed by
Poles against Jews and was largely contained by the Lithuanian military and
police.
In June 1940, the Soviets forced Lithuania
to accept an additional unspecified number of troops, the election of a
"People's Seimas" from a list of candidates approved by the Soviets,
and finally the addition of Lithuania to the USSR as the Lithuanian Soviet
Socialist Republic. On July 21, 1940, independent Lithuania ceased to exist.
Virtually every historian writing about Lithuania during this period agrees that
the year of Soviet occupation was decisive in bringing largely dormant
anti-Semitic feelings to the surface.[17]
Although a full examination of the topic is beyond the scope of this study, the
core cause of this emergence was the perceived Jewish collaboration with the
Soviets via the Lithuanian Communist Party (LCP), emblematized by the greeting
by Lithuanian Jews in the streets of Red Army troops occupying Lithuania.
It suffices here to say that Jewish
membership in the LCP was factually based but exaggerated and that most Jews,
while not communists, nevertheless recognized that Soviet rule was preferable
to rule by the Nazis. On the former point, Alfred Erich Senn wrote that the
involvement of Lithuanian Jews in the LCP was largely a matter of the Soviets
aiming to undermine Lithuanian nationalists by recruiting ethnic minorities[18]; to this
end, the LCP had had such a large Jewish population that Lithuanian security
sources during the period of independence considered the LCP to be a
"Jewish party."[19]
On the latter point, Saulius Suziedelis writes, "Since most Lithuanians
had underestimated, and many even approved, the growing anti-Semitic atmosphere
of the 1930s, they tended to downplay the Jews' very real fears."[20] Conversely,
Suziedelis notes elsewhere that, because Jews could see Soviet rule as
preferable, "the politics and geopolitics of the war and occupation
precluded an alliance with anti-Soviet ethnic Lithuanians, who increasingly
perceived the struggle for independence as their exclusive affair."[21]
The
Beginnings of Collaboration
Formal collaboration between Lithuanian
nationalists and Nazi Germany began, as noted below, before the war, but it
crystallized with the founding on November 17, 1940, in Berlin of the
Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF). Led by Kazys Skirpa, the Lithuanian ambassador
to Germany who found himself stranded in Berlin with the Soviet occupation, the
LAF was, in the words of Tomasz Szarota, "formed of representatives of a
number of political parties or factions, but the truly powerful ones were the
followers of former President Smetona, on the one hand, and the adherents of
his rival, Augustinas Voldemaras, author of the failed fascist putsch of 7th
June 1934, on the other."[22]
As noted, the Smetona wing of the party
could be considered one of authoritarian nationalists. The fascist Voldemarist
wing, in contrast, had radicalized significantly since its founder's ouster.
For one thing, it had abandoned its earlier avoidance of anti-Semitic violence,
at least in theory, for a more proactive position. In this vein, and due to
shared ideological leanings, the Voldemarists had reached out the Nazis before
the war had even begun. On July 19, 1939, for instance, Ulrich Dörtenbach, a
legation councilor in the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, wrote to Reinhard
Heydrich, head of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) of the SS, reporting on
the financial relationship of the government with the Voldemarists in Lithuania
dating back a year and a half. Mentioning the plans of the Voldemarists, Dörtenbach
wrote, "With regard to the pogrom-plans of the 'Woldemaras Supporters' [sic]
it has to be said that for some time past the Lithuanian government has been
working successfully towards the elimination of Jewry from Lithuanian economy.
This has resulted in an ever-growing increasing emigration of Jews during the
last years."[23]
Although the German government elected not to supply weapons at that time and
expressed concern about how anti-Semitic violence might interfere with the German
policy at the time of forced emigration, the letter nevertheless substantiates
the awareness of the government, and more importantly of the RSHA, with the
Voldemarists.
Further, on July 29, Heydrich forwarded Dörtenbach’s
report to German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, with an addendum that
read, in part:
In the middle of
May it was decided to form a secret Lithuanian national socialist party. Its
leaders are the most trustworthy members of the "Woldemaras
Supporters". The direction of the work within the Officer's Corps is said
to be in the hands of old members of the "Woldemaras Supporters".
Besides that, they are said to have one assistant who is on the personal staff
of President Smetana [sic]. In order to make full use of antisemitic
feeling in Lithuania it is intended to stage pogroms against the Jews.[24]
Heydrich's
note continues to make the same point as Dörtenbach's, i.e., that weapons
should not be supplied to the Iron Wolf because the flight of Jewish capital
could be bad for the economy.
These
contacts are supported by Lithuanian documents as well. For example, a bulletin
from the Lithuanian State Security Department (Saugumas) dated April 15,
1939, stated, "There exist certain links between the Activists [i.e.,
those operating in Kaunas] and the German circles,"[25] speaking
specifically of LAF members collaborating with pro-Nazi ethnic Germans from the
Memel region. This information corroborates other Lithuanian documents cited by
Budreckis, who states that cross-border infiltration between Lithuania and Nazi
Germany in both directions on behalf of the LAF occurred throughout 1940.[26] Although
Budreckis's work should be approached with extreme caution due to his obvious
goal of exculpating the LAF from charges of anti-Semitic violence, there is
little reason why he would allege cross-border collaboration if it had not
occurred.
Barbarossa
and the Start of the Holocaust in Lithuania
Skirpa had wanted to accompany German
troops into Lithuania on June 22, 1941, but was detained by the Nazis in Berlin
and in fact remained there until 1944. At that time, he was sent into the
concentration camp system, where he remained until liberation. Although Skirpa
remained behind, the LAF in Kaunas was given advanced notice of the invasion
and set immediately into action. They proclaimed a national uprising against
the Soviets and violence erupted throughout the country, aimed at Red Army
troops and real or perceived communists. However, the geography of the country
and the plans of the invasion dictated that German troops would take two days
to arrive in Kaunas, which still acted as the country's capital. The city, and
thus the country at large, was engulfed in an enormous vacuum of power.
In Kaunas, violence against Jews exploded
onto the streets in an orgy of murder, rape, and looting. Numerous bystanders
and survivors have commented over the decades on the widespread violence.
Remarking on the outrages seven years later, survivor Yosef Gar wrote, "To
curry favor with the Germans, the Lithuanian pro-Hitler element then began
their anti-Jewish atrocities, hopeful through such deeds to convince the Nazis
that, with regard to the killing of Jews, they could rely on the Lithuanians
and they could fully trust them."[27]
Among the historical controversies that persist regarding this period of two
days is the extent to which this violence was directed by any forces at all.
Szarota writes that these "partisans," as they called themselves,
were unorganized and did not recognize the LAF's authority.[28] Although it
has been suggested that the Iron Wolf organized the street violence on these
days, either with or without covert German support, absent compelling evidence
to substantiate this theory, Szarota's assessment seems the most likely.
Meanwhile, a group of LAF members in
Kaunas met on July 23 and proclaimed a provisional government. Skirpa was
recognized as prime minister, but in his absence, the education minister,
Juozas Ambrazevicius, was elevated to the top position. Stasys Rastikis, a
general and former commander of the Lithuanian Army, was named defense
minister, although he was also in Berlin and would not arrive in Kaunas until
July 27. Although they were all members of the LAF, none of the ministers in
the PG were associated with the Voldemaras wing. Two days later, Heydrich
commented on the Voldemarists in Operational Situation Report (OSR) 14, which
he compiled in Berlin on July 6, 1941, on the basis of Einsatzgruppen reports
sent from occupied territory. He wrote, "They reject Rastikis in principle
because he is close to Christian-democratic circles."[29]
When German troops entered Kaunas on June
24 and took control of one of the partisan bands roaming the city, the man who
was put in charge was Algirdas Klimaitis, who was a Voldemarist. Although
Szarota notes that he suspects contacts between Klimaitis and the RSHA occurred
before the war, no evidence has yet emerged to substantiate this suspicion.[30] Klimaitis is
particularly important because, in contrast to the street violence in Kaunas
before the arrival of the Germans, he directed the first violent episodes in
Kaunas with a clear leadership. On the night of June 25 and 26, Algirdas led a
band of armed "partisans" to Vilijampole, a suburb of Kaunas with a
large Jewish population, and conducted a mass pogrom. The significance of this
pogrom, as noted by Suziedelis, writing with Christoph Dieckmann, is that,
unlike the street violence of the previous days, in which it is likely that
Jews were being attacked for putatively being communists, the attack on Vilijampole
was an attack on Jews for being Jews.[31]
Notably, the same day, Franz Stahlecker,
head of Einsatzgruppe A, one of the four mobile commando units that
followed the Wehrmacht into the Soviet Union, Poland, and Baltic States in June
1941 and were deployed against political enemies and eventually Jews, arrived
in Kaunas. Thus, whether as organized a pogrom against the Jews in Kaunas could
have been organized without the SS remains an open question. For instance, in a
Lithuanian article, Alfonasas Eidintas alleged that Stahlecker organized the
pogrom directly, citing the testimony of Jonas Dainauskas, then leading the
Saugumas, who claimed that the native security forces refused to participate.
However, Dieckmann and Suziedelis write, "It is not unlikely that such
talks did indeed take place. Yet, it remains unclear, what was exactly
discussed, and what was the outcome of those talks."[32] At the very
least, we know that the Einsatzgruppe leader was aware of Klimaitis, because he
reported it to his superiors. In OSR 12, Heydrich wrote that one of two
partisan groups that existed in Kaunas was led by Klimaitis and numbered 600
men "in the main office of civilian workers."[33]
Writing about the pogrom years later,
Avraham Tory, who ultimately served as a member of the Jewish Council (Jüdenrat)
once a ghetto was established in Kaunas, asserted that the Voldemarists led the
pogrom:
Toward evening,
suspicious Lithuanian characters appeared in the midst of the nervous crowds
filling the streets, serving blows to Jewish passers-by. These Lithuanian thugs
voice threats against the Jews: 'Hitler will be here before long and will finish
you off.' That these attacks on the Jews were not accidental is attested by the
fact that they took place simultaneously in different parts of town. In fact,
it later became clear that the attackers were members of Lithuanian 'partisan'
gangs, acting on the instructions of the fifth column of the indigenous local
Nazis.[34]
Although
it might be tempting to dismiss Tory's ability to taxonomize elements of
Lithuania's far right, he was personally acquainted with members of the PG and
was aware of the range of opinions on solutions to the "Jewish
question" among these groups.
On June 27, perhaps the most notorious
instance of the first week of the occupation occurred -- an open massacre of 60
Jewish men by Lithuanian civilians in broad daylight on the property of the
Lietukis Garage. Gar wrote, "As eyewitnesses from adjoining houses
reported, dozens of Jews were killed by the murderers were car wrenches, spades
and picks."[35]
Other witnesses reported water torture and beatings with iron bars. In any
case, they all agree that the killing was public and that, while German troops
looked on, they did not participate. Like the violence of the first two days,
it remains unclear who directed the events at the Lietukis garage, although the
likeliest explanation is unorganized violence committed by men recently
released from a nearby prison run by the Soviet People's Commissariat for
Internal Affairs.
Reactions to the violence at the Lietukis
Garage from the PG ran the gamut from denunciation and discomfort to statements
of ideological support. Dieckmann and Suziedelis, citing Lithuanian documents,
refer to government disgust at the events but also to Jews being held responsible
for communist crimes.[36]
They note further than the garage was only 200 meters from where the German
16th Army was then headquartered, so clearly the military could have chosen to
stop the violence.[37]
Dieckmann and Suziedelis took note of claims by individual soldiers who were
present that Lithuanian mothers raised their children over their heads so the
children could more easily watch the killing. Evaluating these accounts, they
write, "This statement is likely to be the attempts of the German soldiers
to mark the entire Lithuanian nation as brutal anti-Semitists, and, thereby, to
make a more advantageous depiction that the killings executed by the Germans
were far more ordered."[38]
There is a note of truth in this last
statement -- if it is true that the killings of the first two days and those at
the Lietukis Garage were mostly unorganized, then the pogrom in Vilijampole was
certainly more ordered. In OSR 8, Heydrich wrote, "Lithuanian partisan
groups had already in the last three days [before June 28, the date of the
report from Einsatzkommando 1b in Kaunas] shot several thousand
Jews," providing a rough estimate of the number of Jews killed in
Vilijampole and Kaunas proper in the first six days of Barbarossa -- the vast
majority of these victims must have been from the pogrom.[39] If nothing
else, Klimaitis's leadership during the pogrom had indicated that at least one
Iron Wolf member was a reliable collaborator in anti-Jewish violence.
The massacre at the Lietukis Garage was
essentially the last instance of public violence against Jews in Kaunas during
the German occupation. In his book, Budreckis claims that it was the LAF that
actually stopped the violence in the streets of Kaunas. Referring specifically
to pogrom in Vilijampole, he writes, "A Communist band attacking in
Vilijampole on the night of June 26-27, murdered twenty children ... before it
was liquidated by the LAF."[40]
Both because of Budreckis's political agenda and because he does not indicate
whether these children were Jewish, it is unclear whether he has confused the
alleged communists with Klimaitis's men or whether he has deliberately misled
his readers. It is clear, however, that communist bands killing children in
Vilijampole on the same night as the pogrom is highly unlikely.
Greater
Organization and Speed
Regardless of why the public violence
stopped, the next series of events indicates why the majority of Lithuanian
Jews were still alive in the summer of 1941, but most had been murdered at the
end of the year. On July 2, Einsatzkommando (EK) 3 arrived in Kaunas, led by
Karl Jäger, who would go on to write the famous report of December 1, 1941, in
which he claimed the Final Solution had been fully implemented in Lithuania.
The important event on July 2 was the announcement by the PG of the format of
military battalions called the National Labor Guard (Tautinio Darbo Apsaugos;
TDA). Over the course of the previous week, calls had gone out for volunteers
to join this force, and thousands responded. At the head of the TDA battalions was
Jurgis Bobelis, a lieutenant colonel from the Lithuanian Army, who had been
directly appointed by the PG. Szarota writes that Bobelis had been instrumental
in disarming the “partisans” conducting street violence in Kaunas, some of whom
undoubtedly enlisted in the TDA.[41]
According to Dieckmann and Suziedelis, approximately 40% of the TDA men were
enlisted men who deserted from the Red Army.[42]
These men populated the lower ranks in the TDA. The officer corps was heavily
populated by Voldemarists.[43]
Once formed, the TDA battalions rounded up
thousands of Jews from the streets of Kaunas, driving them to the old Russian
Seventh Fort on the outskirts of the city, where the PG was considering
establishing a concentration camp. Jäger’s arrival portended something much
more sinister. In two “actions” on July 4 and 6, these Jews were shot by two of
the TDA battalions, with no German security police actually participating. While
battalions authorized by the non-Voldemarist PG might seem contradictory,
Suziedelis writes that Bobelis had only nominal control over the Seventh Fort
and that Jäger organized the shootings.[44]
The two battalions were led by Bronius Norkus and Kazys Simkus, both
Voldemarists. Moreover, the chief of police in Kaunas, Vytautas Reivytis, was a
Voldemarist as well. Norkus and Reivytis would ultimately be subordinated by
Jäger to Joachim Hamann, a member of EK3 who led a mobile commando unit (Rollkommando
Hamann) that played the key role in the extermination of Jews in the
countryside.
While the death toll from these two days
at the Seventh Fort is uncertain, Tory wrote that 1,800 were shot on July 6 alone.[45] In OSR 19,
dated July 11, Heydrich wrote that 7,800 Jews had been killed in Kaunas through
that date, “partly through pogroms and partly through shooting by Lithuanian
commandos.” He added, “Further mass shootings are no longer possible” and
referred to plans to erect a ghetto in Vilijampole.[46] This
ghettoization plan was announced on July 7. Regarding Heydrich’s assertion that
mass shootings could no longer be performed, Dieckmann and Suziedelis report
that the shootings had caused the Wehrmacht and Jäger’s EK, which seems likely.[47] Until the
“Great Action” at the Ninth Fort in November, mass shootings of Jews in Kaunas were
over, but the EK in Lithuania had learned on whom it could most rely.
The
Voldemarist Coup
As ghettoization moved forward and the
military occupation authorities ultimately moved on, a civilian administered
was established by the Nazis. Reichskommissariat Ostland (RKO), to have its
capital in Riga, Latvia, encompassed all of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania and
much of Soviet Belarus. Hinrich Lohse was named as Reichskommissar. These facts
were announced to the PG, which had repeatedly asserted its desire for
independence, in mid-July. The PG did not hide its disappointment. In an
extended commentary on the political situation in the Baltic States appended to
OSR 40, Heydrich commented on the failed collaboration with the PG and wrote,
"Meanwhile, all the old political organizations, for example, the Christian
Democrats and the Popular Socialists, and the Voldemaras supporters are trying
to gather their old members. Unconditional agreement with every political form
arranged by Germany is to be expected only from Voldemarist circles and from the
apolitical rural and small-town populations."[48]
Commenting on Lohse’s assessment of the
political landscape in Lithuania, Heydrich wrote in OSR 54, "To give the
political situation a certain balance and to weaken the Activist forces, which
are mainly recruited from former Christian Democrat circles, the
Reichskommissar has thought of drawing the Voldemaras supporters more strongly
into cooperation."[49]
Remarking on these developments, Szarota writes, “as time went on, the position
of Voldemaras’s followers was growing in the Germans’ perception, particularly
in military and police circles. Among the underlying factors was the group’s
radically anti-Semitic ideology, close to the National-Socialist one.”[50]
Ultimately, the decision was made to form
the Voldemarists into an independent party. It is unclear precisely when this
occurred. As noted above, Heydrich wrote to von Ribbentrop that such a party
had been formed in May 1939; however, it is unsure whether that same party
still existed more than two years later. Budreckis writes that the Nazis
enlisted the help of Pranas Germantas-Meskauskas, a former government minister and
confidante of Skirpa whom the Nazis had brought to Lithuania from exile in Germany
in June, to organize the Lithuanian Nationalist Party (LNP).[51] In contrast,
Karlis Kangeris writes that the LNP actually approached the Reichskommissar for
his support, citing a Lithuanian document from Adrian von Renteln, the
Generalkommissar of the Lithuanian district, that reads, “With the aim of
uniting all of the National Socialist forces in Lithuania into an organized and
disciplined party, the LNP is striving to transform Lithuania toward an Axis
ideology or to remodel it on the basis of National Socialism and fascism.”[52]
In either case, it is clear that the
Gestapo and the LNP were cooperating by the time the LNP attempted its coup on
the night of July 23. Budreckis and Dieckmann offer the most complete accounts
of the coup in the non-Lithuanian literature. Budreckis, who relies on postwar
Lithuanian sources, including General Rastikis, writes that the Voldemarist
leadership occupied the Kaunas police headquarters and deposed Bobelis,
replacing him with Simkus. The LNP arrested two PG ministers, and the PG,
learning of the incidents, prepared for armed conflict. At the behest of the
Gestapo, the LNP did not attack the government’s position. Instead, it moved
against a command post where a battalion led by Rastikis was stationed,
depending Rastikis’s resignation as well. He refused and asked the German
general Robert von Pohl to intervene. Budreckis’s account ends with the LNP
standing down after some mediation, although they continued to hold the command
post.[53]
Dieckmann’s version, based in part on
documents only available since 1991, seems more accurate. In his account, the
standoff is mediated by Martin Kurmis, a German SS captain and Sicherheitsdienst
agent of Lithuanian descent who played a key role in planning the invasion, and
the LNP is appeased by the PG yielding the “top positions” in the
administration to the LNP. Moreover, he writes, “The outcome of the coup meant
increased willingness of the Lithuanian military and Lithuanian police to
cooperate with the German side. The takeover of Lithuanian armed units by
right-wing extremist forces certainly facilitated the mass murders that began
soon afterward, especially of the Jewish population.”[54]
The
Aftermath
Lohse visited Kaunas on July 25, the day
after the coup, as noted by Heydrich in OSR 35.[55] With the RKO
firmly established by the end of the month, there was little point for the PG
to continue. It met on August 5, drafted a resolution expressing its continued
desire for full independence, and dissolved itself. Ghettoization of Kaunas’s
Jews continued apace, and the ghetto was finally sealed on August 15. Around
the same time, the Rollkommando Hamann, manned by Voldemarists, began its
onslaught against Jews in the Lithuanian countryside, transforming the country
into what Eric Haberer has called the “flashpoint of genocide.”[56] The LAF was
almost immediately banned by the Nazi occupation forces and it rapidly
transitioned its purposes toward resistance. The LNP itself was outlawed only a
few months later, indicating that its primary purpose, beyond providing a
possible alternative to the PG, was to be deployed against the Jews of
Lithuania. Writing seven months later, Jonas Fledzinksas, the Lithuanian Agriculture
Minister in the PG, summarized the Voldemarists thus: “The Lithuanian
Nationalist Party, which was in fact merely the name of a small group of young
and naïve political amateurs, realized that unconditional collaboration with
Germany in certain circumstances would be a betrayal.”[57]
The damage, however, was done. In his
famous aforementioned report, Jäger wrote, “I can state today that the goal of
solving the Jewish problem for Lithuania has been achieved by Einsatzkommando
3. In Lithuania, there are no more Jews, other than the Work Jews, including
their families.”[58]
These “Work Jews” numbered 34,500 in three cities out of an original population
of the nearly 200,000 who had lived in Lithuania less than two years earlier.
The destructiveness of the Holocaust in Lithuania as a percentage of the
original population killed was higher in that country than in any other country
in Europe. Haberer writes, "While encouraged and utilized by the Germans,
[violence against Jews] was, as such, not a creation of Nazi propaganda and
ingenious organization. The eruption of mass violence as witnessed in Lithuania
could not have been invented by fiat […] These were elemental destructive
social forces that had been in the making for decades.”[59] Haberer
might be overstating the culpability of the native populations of Eastern
Europe, but there is little question that the LNP and the collaborators that it
donated to the Nazi effort were instrumental in the costliness of the Final
Solution in Lithuania.
Conclusion
In
conclusion, the evidence strongly indicates that the Nazis chose to back the
supporters of Augustinas Voldemaras in the coup against the Lithuanian PG on
July 23, 1941, in part to expedite the Final Solution in Lithuania. The desire
of the Voldemarists to commit pogroms against Lithuanian Jews had been
expressed years before the German occupation. Once the occupation began,
through figures such as Klimaitis and Norkus, the Voldemarists had established
themselves as the most reliable among native Lithuanians to commit acts of
violence against Lithuanian Jews. Therefore, the Voldemarists would have been
seen by the Nazis as the most fitting party to receive Gestapo support. This
strategy of the Nazis clearly paid off: in terms of the percentage of Jewish
lives lost; Lithuania had the highest death toll of any country during the
Holocaust. Controversy might persist over the exact role of Lithuanian
collaborators in this cataclysmic series of events, the thorough destruction of
Lithuania’s Jews is indisputable.
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[1] Raul Hilberg, The
Destruction of the European Jews (New Haven, Conn.: Yale UP, 1961).
[2] Martin Broszat, Der
Staat Hitlers: Grundlegung und Entwicklung seiner inneren Verfassung
(Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch, 1969).
[3] Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing
Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York: Knopf, 1996).
[4] Christopher
Browning, The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish
Policy, September 1939-March 1942 (Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska
Press, 2006).
[5] Gerald Fleming, Hitler
and the Final Solution (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press,
1984).
[6] Documents
Accuse, edited by B. Baranauskas, K. Ruksenas, and E. Rozauskas (Vilnius:
Gintaras, 1970).
[7] Algirdas Martin
Budreckis, The Lithuanian National Revolt of 1941 (Boston: Lithuanian
Encyclopedia Press, 1968).
[8] See “Yitzhak
Arad: Lithuania Wants to Grill Top Israeli Historian Over War Crimes,” History
News Network, http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/42750, accessed May 15,
2017.
[9] YIVO
Encyclopedia, s.v. “Lithuania,” accessed June 14, 2017, http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/
article.aspx/Lithuania
article.aspx/Lithuania
[10] Robert van
Voren, Undigested Past: The Holocaust in Lithuania (Amsterdam: Rodopi,
2011), 49.
[11] Ibid, 45, 57.
[12] Van Voren,
ibid, 18-19.
[13] Ibid, 19.
[14] Michael
MacQueen, “The Context of Mass Destruction: Agents and Prerequisites of the
Holocaust in Lithuania,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 12, no. 1
(Spring 1998): 29-30; Saulius Suziedelis, "The Historical Sources for
Antisemitism in Lithuania and Jewish-Lithuanian Relations During the
1930," in The Vanished World of Lithuanian Jews, edited by Alvydas
Nikzentaitis, Stefan Schreiner, and Darius Staliunas (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004),
125-26.
[15] Suziedelis,
ibid, 131.
[16] Roger Dale
Petersen, Resistance and Rebellion: Lessons from Eastern Europe
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 86.
[17] Ibid, 92-94.
[18] Alfred Erich
Senn, Lithuania 1940: Revolution From Above (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007),
197.
[19] Alfonasas
Eidintas, "A 'Jew-Communist' Stereotype in Lithuania, 1940-1941," Lithuanian
Political Science Yearbook, January 2000, 3.
[20] Saulius
Suziedelis, "Lithuanian Collaboration during the Second World War: Past
Realities, Present Perceptions," in "Kollaboration" in
Nordosteuropa: Erscheinungsformen und Deutungen im 20. Jahrhundert, edited
by Joachim Tauber (Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz, 2006), 145.
[21] Saulius
Suziedelis, “Foreign Saviors, Native Disciples: Perspectives on Collaboration
in Lithuania, 1940-1945,” in Collaboration and Resistance during the
Holocaust: Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, edited by David Gaunt, Paul
A. Levine, and Laura Palosuo, (Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang, 2004), 334.
[22] Tomasz Szarota,
On the Threshold of the Holocaust: Anti-Jewish Riots and Pogroms in Occupied
Europe: Warsaw, Paris, the Hague, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Kaunas, translated by
Tristan Korecki (New York: Peter Lang, 2015), 161-62.
[23] Ulrich
Dörtenbach, Memorandum to Reinhard Heydrich, memorandum, July 19, 1939,
Nuremberg Document 2592-PS, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Volume V, Library
of Congress, Washington, DC, 655-56.
[24] Reinhard
Heydrich, Memorandum to Joachim von Ribbentrop, memorandum, July 29, 1939, Nuremberg
Document 2953-PS, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Volume V, Library of
Congress, Washington, DC, 657-58.
[25] Bulletin No. 92
from the Lithuanian State Security Department, bulletin, April 15, 1939, in Documents
Accuse, edited by B. Baranauskas, K. Ruksenas, and E. Rozauskas (Vilnius:
Gintaras, 1970), 62.
[26] Budreckis,
ibid, 31-32, 46.
[27] Yosef Gar, Umkum
fun der Yidisher Kovne (Munich: Farband fun Litvishe Yidn in der Amerikaner
Zone in Daytschland, 1948), 34, translation mine.
[28] Szarota, ibid,
177-78.
[29] Reinhard
Heydrich, "Ereignismeldung UdSSR (EM) 14," July 6, 1941, Record Group
14, 101M.0082, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, 3.
[30] Szarota, ibid, 183
note 34.
[31] Christoph
Dieckmann and Saulius Suziedelis, Okupacija Ir Aneksija: Pirmoji Sovietine
Okupacija, 1940-1941 = Occupation and Annexation : the First Soviet Occupation.
Totalitariniu rezimu nusikaltimai Lietuvoje (Vilnius: Margi Rastai, 2006),
37.
[32] Ibid, 42 note
134.
[33] Reinhard
Heydrich, "EM 12," July 4, 1941, Record Group 14, 101M.0082, United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, 3.
[34] Avraham Tory,
Martin Gilbert, and Dina Porat, Surviving the Holocaust: The Kovno Ghetto
Diary (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), 4.
[35] Gar, ibid, 39,
translation provided by Christoph Dieckmann.
[36] Dieckmann and
Suziedelis, ibid, 41.
[37] Ibid, 34.
[38] Ibid, 35.
[39] Reinhard
Heydrich, "EMR 8," June 30, 1941, Record Group 14, 101M.0082, United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, 2.
[40] Budreckis,
ibid, 75.
[41] Szarota, ibid,
205-06.
[42] Dieckmann &
Suziedelis, ibid, 30-31.
[43] Suziedelis,
“Lithuanian Collaborators,” ibid, 157.
[44] Suziedelis,
“Lithuanian Collaborators,” ibid, 156.
[45] Tory, ibid, 11.
[46] Reinhard
Heydrich, EM 19." July 11, 1941. Record Group 14, 101M.0082. United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, 4.
[47] Dieckmann &
Suziedelis, ibid, 58.
[50] Szarota, ibid,
162.
[51] Budreckis,
ibid, 96-97.
[52] Quoted in
Karlis Kangeris, "Kollaboration vor der Kollaboration? Die baltischen
Emigranten und ihre 'Befreiungskomitees' in Deutschland 1940/41," in Okkupation
Und Kollaboration (1938-1945): Beiträge Zu Konzepten Und Praxis der
Kollaboration in der Deutschen Okkupationspolitik, edited by Werner Röhr
(Berlin: Hüthig Verlagsgemeinschaft, 1994), 184, translation mine.
[55] Reinhard
Heydrich, "EM 35." July 11, 1941. Record Group 14, 101M.0082. United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, 2.
[56] Eric Haberer,
"Intention and Feasibility: Reflections on Collaboration and the Final
Solution," East European Jewish Affairs 31, no. 2 (2001): 65.
[57] Jonas Fledzinskis, "Report of the Director
General of the Lithuanian Economics Ministry, J. Fledzinkis [sic], regarding
the occupation of Lithuania and statistical data regarding Jews in Lithuania,
Germany and Vienna, 1941-1942." February 2, 1942. Record Group O.82, File
Number 4. Baltic Countries Collection. Yad Vashem Digital Archive, Jerusalem,
46, translation mine (original in German).
[58] Karl Jager,
"Gesamtaufstellung der im Bereich des EK.3 bis zum 1. Dez. 1941
durchgeführten Exekutionen," December 1, 1941, accessed May 1, 2017,
http://phdn.org/archives/holocaust-history.org/works/jaeger-report/htm/img001.htm.en.html,
translation by Gord McFee
[59]
Haberer, ibid, 74-75.
