Growing up as a Lithuanian in California in the 1970s, I became aware of the Holocaust. In Lithuanian Saturday school I learned several myths about Lithuanian participation. We were taught that few Lithuanian participated, that they were the dregs of society, that they were forced to do so by the Germans, and that it all took a long time. Now I know that, unfortunately, it was quite the opposite. With the exception of a remnant in the Vilnius, Kaunas and Siauliai ghettos, a vast majority of Lithuania's Jews were killed by November 25, 1941, as documented by Karl Jaeger's in his report. This was before the Wansee conference of January, 1942 where the Germans planned for the Final Solution. Indeed, as historian Christopher Browning concludes that Adolf Hitler's decision to indiscriminately kill Jews was probably made in September 1941 and is known to have been made by December 1941. In March 1941 he simply instructed his generals that Communist commissars and Communist Jews would be killed. Whereas I am finding evidence that some Lithuanians planned mass violence against Jews, including genocide, at that date and prior to it. These Lithuanians were not dregs but rather impressive, even inspiring people, most notably air force pilots, the astronauts of their time.
In this thread I want to collect and share my findings and learn more with your help. I have benefited from the posts at Axis History Forum, especially research by Michael Mills, who I wish I could get in touch with. In this first post, I share a letter which I wrote to historian Christopher Browning, along with a summary of my findings on three groups of Lithuanians who conpired mass violence against Lithuania's Jews. I attach a diagram, too.
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Christopher Browning,
Thank you for your large and helpful book on "The Origins of the Final Solution". I'm writing you to share some findings from my own research into the origins of the indiscriminate killing of Jewish men, women and children in Lithuania.
I have collected quotes and facts from more than 100 sources, many of them in Lithuanian. I have gotten in touch with Lithuanian historians Arunas Bubnys, Saulius Suziedelis, Vygantas Vareikis, Liudas Truska, Petras Stankeras, Augustinas Idzelis and they are supportive of my work. (I share my letter with them as well). My information seems basically correct and it is perhaps time to consider that Lithuanian activists proposed the violence to the Germans rather than the other way around.
I have also developed a method of moral inquiry by which I have been able to collect these facts in just a few hundred hours. I have focused on those people who comprehensively dedicated themselves to the indiscriminate killing, in that they would take a stand, follow through and reflect, over and over again. The key people (Jonas Pyragius, Richard Schweizer, Vytautas Reivytis) were those who wished for the outcome, recruited others and justified it. I attach a diagram. Most participants were driven by other motives, such as advancing their careers, acquiring wealth, exacting revenge, indulging in sadism or simply going along with others.
A tipping point was the Voldemarininkai coup that replaced Jurgis Bobelis so that Jews would be killed. I think it is possible that without this coup the "pilot projects" by Stahlecker and others would have exhausted themselves. The fate of the Soviet Jews might then have been similar to those in Poland. Adolf Hitler seems to have had his heart in other things.
I welcome your feedback. If you are interested, then I could send you more information. Here is a sketch of an article I'm writing for http://www.defendinghistory.com, a historical timeline and some quotes and photos.
Please, do you know how I might seek sponsorship for related work? I hope a sponsor might pay me to assemble and translate into English the many sources I've found.
I write below about three groups of Lithuanians who planned mass violence against Lithuania's Jews.
Andrius
Andrius Kulikauskas
[email protected]
+370 607 27 665
Eiciunu km, Alytaus raj, Lithuania
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Three Lithuanian Conspiracies
I have collected evidence about three different groups which planned mass violence against Lithuania's Jews:
- Kazys Skirpa and the Berlin chapter of the Lithuanian Activist Front planned ethnic cleansing.
- Jonas Pyragius, Stasys Puodzius, Klemensas Brunius and other Voldemarininkai planned genocide.
- Pranas Germantas-Meškauskas attempted to organize a Lithuanian National Socialist Party and proposed that Nazi Germany fund pogroms.
Kazys Skirpa was Lithuania's representative in Berlin and a leader in Lithuania's ambassadors' protests against the Soviet annexation of Lithuania. He was the leader of the Lithuanian Activist Front. It's Berlin chapter consisted of anti-Soviet refugees, and especially, Voldemarininkai. Kazys Skirpa planned for Lithuania to declare independence after Nazi Germany invaded Soviet-occupied Lithuania but before the German troops arrived. Nazi Germany did not approve of this and so he had to keep his strategy and tactics secret from them. He wrote a 20-page instruction dated March 24, 1941, which detailed that at this time it was also important to chase out all of Lithuania's Jews so that they would flee with the retreating Soviet army. His instructions include the creation of the TDA, Tautinio Darbo Apsaugos battalion, the "Defense of National Work" battalion, which is to say, defense of national socialism. Ethnic cleansing was the focus of most of the underground leaflets coming from LAF Berlin, which were authored by Bronys Raila. It was also acted upon in the first week of the war, as in the use of the password "TDA" and the creation of the TDA battalion. Philosopher Antanas Maceina coined the phrase "Catholic morality" I think to distinguish ethnic cleansing (scaring Jews away or keeping them in ghettos) from genocide (killing them). I think that Skirpa proposed this ethnic cleansing to Peter Kleist and Georg Leibbrandt at their meetings in June and July, 1940 when they worked together on a strategic report on Lithuania's role in an upcoming war. When war broke out a year later, Skirpa was kept under house-arrest in Berlin.
The Voldemarininkai were the followers of President Antanas Smetonas's former prime minister Augustinas Voldemaras. Many of them were air force pilots and as such were considered dashing, brave and patriotic. They had belonged to the "Iron Wolf", a semi-secret fascist organization of "storm troopers" which Smetona and Voldemaras organized in support of themselves, but which Smetona soon disbanded. The Voldemarininkai repeatedly and unsuccessfully tried to force the "passive" (idealist) autocrat Smetona, who kept Lithuania neutral, to reinstate his former colleague, the "active" (realpolitik) Voldemaras, who might align or even unite Lithuania with Germany. Voldemaras had limited contact with them and, unbeknownst to them, was arrested and deported by the Soviets when he surprisingly returned to Lithuania on June 19, 1940 after Smetona had fled the country. The first signs of some anti-semitic slogans appeared in December 1938 with the organizing in Klaipeda (Memel) of the Lithuanian Activist Union as a coalition of anti-Smetona groups which included the Voldemarininkai, the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats. Lithuania was losing its grip on Klaipeda and so they were able to publish their newspaper Zygis there. However, Smetona coopted the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats in a new government. The Voldemarininkai were very upset when Smetona declined Nazi Germany's invitation (sent by way of Peter Kleist to Kazys Skirpa) to seize Polish-occupied Vilnius in October, 1939. They plotted again so as to align or unite Lithuania with Germany. Smetona had key Voldemarininkai arrested in May 27, 1940 just before the Soviet occupation. Many Voldemarininkai took refuge in Nazi Germany. On August 23, 1940 these Voldemarininkai sent a letter from the Gleisgarben refugee camp to Kazys Skirpa as the only leader who might unite them in total commitment to Germany's upcoming "active struggle with bolshevism". Their letter made no mention of independence. It quite likely was intended as a "war on Jews". (This may have been explicit in the original as Skirpa published a presumably extirpated version). Klemensas Brunius and Stasys Puodzius were stationed in the Koenigsberg office of Abwehr. Stasys Puodzius recruited 20 Lithuanian agents for a two week course in March, 1941 where Lithuanian-German Schmidt taught them to organize underground cells in Lithuania that would be ready, among other tasks, to "kill all Jews". Some of the Voldemarininkai, led by anti-semite Jonas Pyragius, vigorously opposed Skirpa's plans for independence because they knew that this would upset the Nazis, and so they broke away in March or April 1941. It seems that these Voldemarininkai thought that if Lithuanians killed off their Jews, then this would prove to Hitler that Lithuanians were worthy of independence. They organized the Lithuanian Nationalist Party which promoted its own password "LNP". Key Voldemarininkai such as Stasys Puodzius and Klemensas Bronius stayed active in both the LAF and the LNP. Zenonas Blynas, the LNP's administrator, documented their world in his 600 page diary. It includes a document dated June 14 or 15, 1941, "Lithuania's National Socialist "Iron Wolf" Battle Front Program", which declared war within Lithuania's boundaries on the same enemies as the Nazis had in Germany and Europe, and which stated as it's first goal "A sovereign national socialist historically grounded Third Lithuania" and as its second goal "the deletion of Jews from life". The Voldemarininkai enthusiastically led the two companies of the TDA battalion which on July 4 and 6 executed 3,000 Jews held by LAF in Kaunas's 7th Fort, when ordered by the SS. Most importantly, Pyragius led them on July 23-24 in a midnight coup purportedly against Lithuania's Provisional Government, but actually, against Jurgis Bobelis, the Kaunas military commander in charge of the TDA who had stopped the killing of Jews. After the Voldemarininkai installed their own military commander, Stasys Kviecinskas, battalion chief Kazys Simkus and security police chief Vytautas Reivytis, the killing of Jews proceeded in the hundreds and thousands every day. Vytautas Reivytis ordered his network of local police to arrest all of the Jews, to beat and demean them into submission, to document that and report when they were passive. And so a total of 15 Germans SS with help from a few dozen members of the Lithuanian TDA were enough to kill all of the roughly 100,000 Jews in Lithuania's small towns, the shtetls. After the massive Rokiskis killings, Zenonas Blynas and others began to question not the killings themselves, but the fact that the Germans were using the Lithuanians, filming them but not themselves, letting them wear Lithuanian uniforms at these killings but not elsewhere, as if these killings were dishonorable. And they thought that the Lithuanians had already killed so many Jews that the LNP should be bold enough to want Germany to promise that Lithuania would be granted independence after the war. This position in the LNP won out, although others like Pyragius argued that killing all of Lithuania's Jews was a separate question, a good in its own right. On November 29, 1941, Kazys Simkus organized a great party for Karl Jaeger to celebrate the elimination of Lithuania's Jews, this "difficult but necessary work". On December 17, 1941, the LNP, the only legal party in Lithuania, was banned.
Pranas Germantas (originally Meskauskas) led a third group which helped forge links between Nazi leaders and these other two groups. He was a doctoral student of linguistics at Leipzig university where Jurgis Gerulis, the German Lithuanian linguist, was rector. Gerulis was an active Nazi and ultimately became an Abwehr major. Pranas Germantas was infatuated with "Mein Kampf" and wanted to organize a Lithuanian National Socialist Party. In 1938, back in Lithuania, he worked briefly for Lithuania's security police. He accompanied Heinz Gräfe, who was the head of gestapo in Tilsit (and later, in East Prussia), and who was responsible for intelligence in the Northeastern countries. It seems likely that Pranas Germantas was involved in the June, 1939 proposal, which Reinhard Heydrich and Germany's Foreign Affairs Ministry discussed and declined, that Nazi Germany provide 100,000 litas and weapons to finance a coup and pogroms in Lithuania. I imagine he was inspired by Kristallnacht and was aware that the Voldemarininkai were planning another coup. After taking refuge in Germany, he worked at an institute for Eastern Studies, including as a translator for Reinhard Heydrich and Heinrich Müller. Heinz Gräfe promoted him to Kazys Skirpa. But he did not find a place with either LAF nor with the Voldemarininkai, as he declined lesser roles and they all considered him a gestapo agent. Germantas tried to advance the leadership of Stasys Rastikis. Germantas's circle included Stasys Cenkus, who he wanted to head the Lithuanian SS, and agents Mykolas Žilinskas, dr.Mikalauskas (Mikonis), Vytautas Alantas. They were for complete union with Germany. Thus I presume they thought Jews should be treated as they were in Germany or Poland. Pranas Germantas was an associate of Martin Kurmies, the German Lithuanian from Klaipeda who was head of gestapo in Lithuania until October, 1941. I imagine that Pranas Germantas's main role in the Holocaust was linking up LAF and LNP with his fellow linguist Jurgis Gerulis who connected them with the Abwehr, where Schmidt led courses for agents, including to organize underground groups to kill all Jews.
Finally, a key connector was Lithuanian German Richard Schweizer. In 1940-1941, he worked for SD from Eitkunai (Eydtkau) where he knew Vytautas Reivytis. At the Pretszch training camp he was assigned to be Einsatzgruppe A commander's Franz Walter Stahlecker's translator and at the outbreak of the war helped him recruit the Voldemarininkai Kazys Simkus and Bronius Norkus. I think that Schweizer opened Stahlecker's eyes to the possibility of killing many more Jews than had been ordered. In Kaunas, Schweizer was an SD officer and had contact with Pyragius.