What really happened at the Lietukis garage, 25 June 1941?

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Michael,

You read Yiddish? Perhaps you are an expert! Sadly I do not and therefore haven't your apparent access to the New York Yiddish-language press of the 1920s.

Nevertheless, my point remains the same. Your discourse frequently reverts to racial generalisations about Jews when you mean specific subsets of Jews. Why, if you have the specifics to hand, do you not produce them without prompting?

I am neither as wholly ignorant on this subject nor as in disagreement with many of your specific points as you might imagine. My objection is to the sweeping generalisations you tend to make about "Jews" without applying the necessary qualifications.

Now, back towards the subject:

You write "Jews living in places like Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, could be just as nationalistic, just as prejudiced, just as bloody-minded, as the gentile populations of those countries. Only if you realise that will you be able to understand the conflict between Jews and non-Jews in a place like Lithuania, and why that conflict became so intense as to end in a huge massacre."

Are you, in effect, saying that Jewish nationalism, prejudice and bloodymindedness led to their mass slaughter? That, in effect, they brought the huge massacre on themselves collectively?

Cheers,

Sid.

[michael mills]

You read Yiddish? Perhaps you are an expert! Sadly I do not and therefore haven't your apparent access to the New York Yiddish-language press of the 1920s.

It is becoming increasingly obvious that you simply want to pick a fight, rather than discuss the issue sensibly.

I have not read the Yiddish-language press. But I have read books by historians, usually Jewish, which have analysed the Yiddish press in the United States, particularly in regard to how that press saw the situation in Russia (the homeland of so many Jews in the United States) and the overthrow of the Tsar. I have seen in those books the reproductions of cartoons in Yiddish satirical magazines such as "der groyser Kundes", in which Tsar Nicholas II is depicted as a grotesque monster (ironically, rather similar to the way Jews were depicted as grotesque monsters in some anti-Semitic publications).

Are you, in effect, saying that Jewish nationalism, prejudice and bloodymindedness led to their mass slaughter? That, in effect, they brought the huge massacre on themselves collectively?

Again you seem to be wanting to pick a fight by asking loaded questions.

No, it was not the sole factor that led to the mass slaughter of Jews. There was also the nationalism, prejudice and bloody-mindedness of Poles, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Hungarians, Romanians. Not to speak of the nationalism, prejudice and bloody-mindedness of Germans.

It was the clash between Jewish interests pushed by instransigent, nationally-minded Jews in eastern Europe, and the interests of the host peoples pushed by equally intransigent, nationally-minded members of those peoples, that led to the slaughter. When the clash had reached a boiling point, it was the Jews who lost out and were slaughtered because they were a smaller, weaker people than the peoples with which they were in conflict.

I think that is what Headlam-Morley had in mind in the comment he made to Lucien Wolff in 1919, at the Paris Peace Conference. He could see the conflict brewing between Polish nationalists and Jewish nationalists, and foresaw that if push came to shove, it was the Jews who would be murdered. But he could also see that it was the intransigence of Jewish leaders like Ussishkin that was helping to stoke that conflict.

I think what surprised most observers was that in the event, it was Germans who organised and provided the logistical support for the slaughter. That certainly was not evident in 1919; Headlam-Morley must have thought that if the Jews were eventually murdered, it would be Poles and other east European peoples who would do it.

But it is clear that the violent anti-Semitism of the German National Socialist movement, which ultimately created the situation in which Germans could organise the massacre, was an import from the Russian Empire, mediated by anti-Bolshevik exiles in Germany. And the central element in the anti-Semitic ideology transferred to Germany was the concept of Jewish Bolshevism, that it was Jews who had caused the overthrow of the Tsarist system in Russia and the liquidation of the ruling class there and imposed a reign of terror, which they threatened to export to other countries.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Michael,

I don't see the connection between the quote of mine you offer and your response. I got the impression from an earlier post of yours that you had access to the 1920s, New York, Yiddish-language press and were recommending that I should read it myself. Unfortunately I do not read Yiddish. You have now clarified that you don't either.

Not a loaded question, but one that arose from your earlier post. Your simple "No" was all it took to answer it. Your expansion on that "No" was a welcome explanation.

I am somewhat confused by what you mean by "Jewish nationalists". Do you mean Zionists? If so, I don't see where their desire to go to Palestine would necessarily conflict with the territorial and ethnic nationalism of Eastern Europe. On the face of it, the two nationalisms should have dovetailed nicely.

Or, do you mean non-Zionist Jews who were trying to assert a right to national Jewish representation within Eastern European states? If so, what did they want that other minorities didn't?

Is it really "clear that the violent anti-Semitism of the German National Socialist movement, which ultimately created the situation in which Germans could organise the massacre, was an import from the Russian Empire, mediated by anti-Bolshevik exiles in Germany"? It is surely the case that anti-Semitism existed in Germany for decades (if not nearly a millenium) before WWII. Why do you think that ant-Bolshevik exiles in Germany were so influential on post-WWI National Socialism? Who were these influential Russian Imperial anti-Bolsheviks and how did they influence National Socialism?

I agree that the issue was more "the concept of Jewish Bolshevism", than its reality. Jews were undoubtedly disproportionately influential in early Bolshevism, probably as a result of their strong urban presence and their particular reraction to victimisation under late Imperial Russia. However, it was not their Jewish consciousness that was motivating them - Jewish Bolsheviks were atheists and not part of the mainstream Jewish community. Thus the identification of Judaism with Bolshevism in "Jewish Bolshevism" was false. It was a simplistic generalisation used as a lever by National Socialism to damn an entire people indiscrimately.

Finally, doesn't the phrase "it was Germans who organised and provided the logistical support for the slaughter" rather let the Germans off the hook? Didn't they take a hands-on part in its "execution" through the Einsatzgruppen? Wasn't the recruitment of local nationalists just a means of "force multiplication" for the Germans? They certainly didn't pursue the killing of Jews with the purpose of advancing the national interests of peoples they themselves intended to displace.

Cheers,

Sid.

[David Thompson]

Let's get back to the topic -- the Lietukis garage. If there is reader interest, I'll start a new thread on Nazi-sponsored anti-semitism in occupied Europe.

[michael mills]

Sid,

I'll address your questions in a private mail, if you wish, since the moderator wants to keep this thread strictly on topic.

[wisbechlad]

"For that reason, they were favourably disposed toward East European Jewry's coming under Soviet rule, preferably by mass migration into Soviet territory"

Interesting. As far as I know, there was economic mass migration to USA (but this was all East Europeans, not just Jewish ones - hence the large Catholic Polish communities in US) and political (zionist) demands for migration to Palaestine. I am not aware of any mass migration of Jews to USSR, or even support for it.

As for Lucien Wolf at the Paris Peace conference - there was no single "jewish" line. As one would expect, E European, American, and W European jewish delegates all had very different viewpoints.

Conflating judaism and communism is false. Heck, the communists in Germany got 13.2% of the vote in 1932, and 5,7% in 1949 - there were probably more German "aryan" communists than Jewish ones. Certainly the GDR was seen as one of the most "reliable" member of Warsaw Pact - does this mean Germans were also favourably disposed toward coming under Soviet rule?

[michael mills]

I am not aware of any mass migration of Jews to USSR, or even support for it.

Then you are simply ignorant on this issue.

No, there was no mass migration of Jews into the Soviet Union. But there certainly was support for that idea among influential Jewish leaders in the West.

(By the way, tell the truth. Had you even heard of Lucien Wolff before? He was not a nobody, he was the leader of Anglo-Jewry, an extremely influential man, who was consulted by the British Government during the First World War).

I dare say you did not know that in the mid 1930s, Stalin made an offer to resettle the entire jewish population of Poland on agricultural colonies in the Soviet Union. The offer was made to Agrojoint, an American Jewish organisatiuon that was organising the settlement of Soviet Jews on the land. The catch was that the project would have to be funded by Agrojoint and other Western Jewish groups, and eventually the offer was turned down as too costly. Bad mistake!

And I do not think anybody has claimed that all Communists were Jews, or even a majority of them. What I said was that substantial numbers of Jews in Eastern Europe preferred Soviet rule to some other alternatives; they certainly preferred it to rule by Germany, and to a lesser extent to rule by some East European governments which tended to be quite Jew-unfriendly. That preference for Soviet rule was not necessarily an approval of the ideology and practice of Communism, but in most cases was simply the choice of the lesser of two evils.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Michael,

You write: "But there certainly was support for that idea (mass migration of Jews into the Soviet Union) among influential Jewish leaders in the West." However, you offer no support for this proposition. What Jewish leaders in the West and, if they were so influential, why is it that "there was no mass migration of Jews into the Soviet Union"?

Your "Agrojoint" anecdote doesn't exactly support this proposition. Stalin took the initiative in it and Western Jews rejected it.

I don't think that it is any revelation that some "Jews in Eastern Europe preferred Soviet rule to some other alternatives". Some Communists in virtually any national group did. But you use the formula "substantial numbers". What do you mean by "substantial numbers" and how have you assessed this?

Cheers,

Sid.

[michael mills]

why is it that "there was no mass migration of Jews into the Soviet Union"?

For the same reason that there was no mass migration of Jews to Palestine at that time, ie it was too expensive and there were logistical difficulties.

The concept of a mass migration of Eastern European Jews into the Soviet Union was not rejected by Western Jews in principle, but for logistical reasons. Stalin's offer to take all the Jews of Poland (ie the majority of all Eastern Jews outside the Soviet Union) was considered by Agrojoint, but declined by them on the basis of cost. As I stated, Stalin expected Jewish organisations to bear the cost of the movement and resettlement of the Jews, and it was beyond their means to do so.

An alternative proposal for a mass migration of the Jews of Poland to Palestine, floated by the right-wing Zionist leader, Jabotinsky, and discussed by him with the Polish Government, likewise came to nothing because of logisitical difficulties.

For the Anglo-Jewish leader Lucien Wolff, the proposal for a mass movement of East European Jews into the Soviet Union was not an approval of Bolshevik ideology, but simply a recognition that of all countries in Eastern Europe the Soviet Union offered the best conditions of life for Jews, and was also geographically close. Furthermore, Russia was a more developed and civilised place than Palestine was at that time.

[wisbechlad]

Yes, I was aware of Lucien Wolf (please note the spelling - his family name was Wolf) Though I would be wary of seeing him as "the leader of anglo-jewry". There were many Jewish communities in England. Do you mean the leader of the anglicised jews, or all jews? With the increase in immigration 1880-1914, there was a split between "alien" jews (mostly E European) and anglo-jews, who at times resented the rise in anti-semitism that the new immigrants brought

I was not aware of Agrojoint - so, yes, I was ignorant of that. Though it appears to have been more a US/JDC thing, not sponsored by Wolf? I am now trying to read up on it.

Irony is, the Nazi's would have deported & killed them anyway, if they had migrated to Ukraine or Crimea, so Agrojoint would also have been a bad mistake.

[michael mills]

Lucien Wolf was the leader of the major organisation representing the Jews of Britain. To be sure, the leading members of the organisation were drawn from the anglicised Jewish bourgeoisie, they were not recent Yiddish-speaking proletarian immigrants from Russia.

But Wolf was an important and influential man, and had the ear of the British Government, which regarded him as the spokesperson for Anglo-Jewry.

For example, in 1915 the British Government sought his advice on ways of influencing the Jews of the United States to cease their support for Germany against Russia (a support that was so strong that the British Government feared that it would stop the United States from coming into the war on the side of the Entente; indeed, the British Ambassador in Washington suggested in a despatch back to London that a warning be given to the leaders of Nglo-Jewry that if Britain lost the war as a result of the opposition of American Jewry to US participation on Britain's side, then there would be serious consequences for the Jews of Britain).

In his discussions with the British Government, Wolf suggested that it promise to give Palestine to the Jews once it had been taken from the Ottoman Empire. That was an idea originally suggested by a French Jewish leader, and communicated to Wolf.

In the event, the Asquith Government did not take up Wolf's suggestion, but when it was replaced by the Lloyd-George government at the end of 1916, the suggestion was revived and it led to the Balfour Declaration in November 1917.

It is hard to know what would have happened if all the Jews of Poland had been transferred to the Soviet Union in an organised migration. One can only speculate how long such a movement would have taken ,and whether it would have been completed by the time war brike out (assuming that the German-Polish war did occur as actually happened).

Presumably the Jewish population of a German-occupied Poland would have been a lot less than it actually was, and hence far less of a problem for the German occupiers. There would have been the constant irritation of what to do with over one million Jews on German-occupied territory.

Assuming under this counter-factual scenario that Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 as it did in reality, the latter country would have had a Jewish population at least one million greater than it actually did. But the question would be where those Jews had been settled; it is likely that a substantial number would have been settled further to the east, in areas that did not fall under german occupation.

Remember that of the total number of Soviet Jews killed after the German invasion, the greater part were Jews living in the areas annexed by the Soviet Union from 1939 onward. Over a million of the Jews in those annexed territories lived in the eastern provinces of Poland. If the mass migration suggested by Stalin had actually taken place, then probably most of those million Jews would have been situated a lot further to the east than they actually were in 1941, so may well have eluded the reach of the German occupier.

Furthermore, there would not have been a large Jewish population in occupied Poland to be killed.

As for the Jews of the eastern provinces of Poland annexed by the Soviet Union in 1939, a substantial number, at least 600,000, incuding refugees from German-occupied West Poland, was in historical reality evacuated to the east by the Soviet authorities just prior to or immediately after the German invasion, and thereby escaped extermination at german hands. If most of those Jews had already been shifted east and settled in agricultural colonies within the pre-1939 borders of the Soviet Union, then there would have been fewer for the Soviet Government to evacuate eastwards in 1941, and probably if could have concentrated on evacuating the Jews from Ukraine, with the result that far more Jews would have got away to the east than actually did, and thereby would not have been killed by the German occupiers.

It is for the above reasons that I say that the failure to implement the migration plan offered by Stalin was a bad mistake, from the point of view of the Jews of Poland.

[Grellber]

More on the subject of dates

I just read The Complete Black Book of Russian Jewry by Ehrenburh/Grossman, 2009 edition. A rather odd experience and I guess a mix of true and exegerated statements (feel free to correct me here).

In several sections there is info about the early events in Lithuania.

Part 4 Lithuania, page 314: "On the night of 25-26 June in the Kovno suburb of Viliampole approximately one thousand jews were mudered" 71)

Note 71: A report filed by Einsatzgruppe A on 15 October 1941 states: It is important for the sake of the future to have proof that the liberated population, on its own initiative, took active and energetic measures against the enemy -the Bolsheviks and the Jews- so that the German authorities did not have to expose themselves... During the first progrom, on the night of 25-26 June, Lithuanian partisans killed more than 1,500 Jews: they burned and destroyed several synagogues and completely burned down more than 60 buildings in the Jewisk quarter. On the following night approximately 2,300 Jews were killed.

Page 337: From the Diary of Doctor Elina Buividaite-Kutorgene, page 337: ...On 25 June at 6:00 AM the Kovno radio... They say all the counter-rrevolutionary officers have been released from prison... The radio issued a warning that Jews are firing submachine guns from the windows and that for every German wounded one hundred Jews would be shot...

25 June. A bright, clear, hot day. The Germans are in the city. It has begun...

Page 343: 29 June. A hot, wondrous day... Patients came today and told about how Jews were being forced to carry excrements with their bare hands, dig pits with hand spades, and drink water from the canal; about how they were forced to lie down in rows and were randomly beaten with crowbars; about how they were beaten over the head with boards (this was in the garage on Vitovt Avenue behind the cemetery); about how the ones who were killed were thrown into a truck and hauled off somewhere to be buried.

[Grellber]

About potential individuals for the title "death-dealer". (Paskevicius -Previously mentioned in this thread)


Source: http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/sptimes/acc ... dies+at+92

Mike Pasker, a St. Petersburg Beach resident who was suspected of being a Nazi war criminal, died on Friday at the age of 92.

Pasker, a Lithuanian also known as Mecys Paskevicius, came under scrutiny in the late 1970s and early 1980s by the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigation, the arm of the government dedicated to prosecuting Nazi war criminals living in the United States. The OSI accused Pasker of helping the Nazis slaughter hundreds of Jews while he served as a Lithuanian policeman during World War II.

Fellow Lithuanians living in St. Petersburg Beach, and Pasker's attorney, Nyjola Grybauskas, proclaimed Pasker's innocence and charged that he was the victim of a government "witch hunt" against former Nazis and Nazi sympathizers.

Deportation hearings were never held.

By the time he moved to St. Petersburg Beach in 1979, Pasker already was in poor health. He had suffered several strokes and had other health problems. In November 1979, a Pinellas County Circuit judge ruled Pasker legally incompetent.

The OSI case against Pasker never was formally dropped, Grybauskas said, but the government never actively pursued the case after the incompetency ruling.

"Quite obviously the man was incompetent and you cannot proceed against an incompetent," Grybauskas said.

Pasker had cancer, Alzheimer's disease and a "multitude" of other health problems, Grybauskas said. He was hospitalized in recent weeks and was placed in Pasadena Manor a few weeks ago when it became clear his health was not improving, she said.

Pasker first came under scrutiny while living under his real name - Paskevicius - in Chicago, where he worked as an electrician. In 1959, a Lithuanian-language newspaper published an article about his alleged war crimes. Then in the 1960s, the Soviet news agency TASS broadcast a radio story about him, which prompted an article in the Chicago Tribune.

Pasker retired to Santa Monica, Calif., in the early 1970s.

In 1979, a federal judge in Los Angeles stripped Pasker of his citizenship after Pasker admitted that he concealed his background from immigration authorities. In May 1980, federal officials tried to serve a notice on Pasker to require him to appear in court and show why he should not be deported, but they were unable to find him until they tracked him to St. Petersburg Beach.

During World War II, Pasker was a sergeant in the Lithuanian police. The U.S. government accused him of helping to shoot and hang 1,100 Jews in July 1941 and of persecuting others. Pasker claimed he was a civilian police officer who never worked for the Germans and never participated in the killing of any prisoner.

Grybauskas, Pasker's attorney since he had lived in Florida, on Sunday reiterated her belief that Pasker was the victim of an overzealous OSI. In 1980 when the government was seeking deportation hearings against Pasker, the OSI was in the midst of a stepped-up effort to hunt down alleged Nazi war criminals living in the United States.

Grybauskas said that much of the information used against Pasker and other accused war criminals came from the Soviet Union and as such, was suspect. She charged that the Soviet Union fed information to the United States in retribution against people suspected of working against the Soviet Union.

"If they couldn't get their hands on them directly, they would use the United States government," she said.

Information uncovered since the collapse of the Soviet Union was used to overturn the conviction of John Demjanjuk in a recent highly publicized case. The Israeli Supreme Court cited evidence found in Soviet archives earlier this year when it overturned Demjanjuk's 1988 conviction on charges he was Ivan the Terrible, a notorious gas chamber guard at the Treblinka death camp, where 850,000 Jews were killed during World War II.

A similar case of mistaken identity could have occurred with Pasker, Grybauskas said. "If I felt that he was not innocent, I would not have represented him," she said, "especially since I am Jewish."

[Nevermore]

Hi Michael

I'm a spanish illustrator who is gathering information about the Lietukis garage killings to make a graphic story out of it. It won't be an easy task as I'm only an amateur on these historic events, although I'm reading and getting informed as much as I can about it all (Kovno's ghettos, Einsatzgruppen, Operation Barbarossa, etc...)

I've been reading many of your posts here on this subject but there are some things I still don't understand. So I would be very grateful if you, or any other member of this forum, could give me a detailed and reliable (nor lithuanian nor jude slanted version) description of what REALLY happened there. It won't be a historic graphic novel about Lietukis killing itself, it will have more to do with personal stories of people who lived in that same place (Kovno) so I don't need a large, too exhaustive or too much political version. All I need is to know the real facts in order to make a good research job to and get a reliable and professional comic story. I would also need photos, anecdotes, testimonies, and, above all, visual information I could use to translate it all to images (place details, clothes, uniforms, architecture...) All you could offer will be welcome.

Thanks to all in advance

By the way. As an artist I'm very good at physiognomy too and I would bet my head that the blonde man who appears on the famous picture at the killing place is not Pavalkis.

[PF]

Postscript
Pictures of the Massacre Link {Warning graphic}
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: ... E_1941.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: ... E_1942.jpg

memorial
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: ... %C5%B3.JPG