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

[Grellber]

From Wikipedia re Luksa: Juozas Lukša who is also known by nickname Daumantas or Skirmantas, was born on August 10, 1921 in Juodbūdis village, Marijampolė district and was killed September 4, 1951. He was one of the most prominent post-World War II resistance leaders in Lithuania. During the first occupation by the Soviet Union in 1940-41, Lukša was a member of the LAF. Opposing the Soviets, he was caught and put in prison in Kaunas. After the war started in the Eastern Front and Nazi Germany invaded Lithuania, Lukša was released.

Soon he joined the anti-German resistance. From 1944, after the return of the Red Army, he engaged in the underground movement. At first he participated as a student, helping out with clandestine matters in Kaunas. In 1946 after the arrests of many activists, he left the city and joined the armed resistance in his home area. In 1947 he became a commander of Birutė brigade, in Tauras district that was active in Kaunas area.

In the end of 1947 he escaped through the Iron Curtain, as a messenger to the West in hopes to attract support for the fighters and to establish contacts with Lithuanians in exile. He first came to Sweden. Later he was engaged by the French intelligence and thereafter transferred to CIA, where he received training as an intelligence agent in West Germany. In Paris he met with Nijolė Bražėnaitė, fel in love and got married. During the stay in the western countries, wrote a book Fighters for Freedom about the real situation in the Soviet Union. He returned to Lithuania by parachute in 1950. For a year he was intensively searched for by the Soviet counterintelligence. Finally he was lured into a trap and killed in fall 1951.

[Lit.]

This is interesting. On the following site:
http://lithuanianjews.org.il/HTMLs/arti ... BSS6=13971
i found a totally different connection to the picture.
Would be really interesting to see if someone can straight this out.

Quote frome the link above:

Luksa Juozas – Kaunas (Pogroms+Forts)

Luksa Juozas; A cruel sadist. At the right: The murderer as "Hero" of the Massacre of 68 innocent people at the garage of "Lietukis" in Kaunas on June 27, 1941. At the left: Eight years later, after participating in the slaughter of thousands of Jews in Kaunas and elsewhere. Was killed in 1951.

This site that you are quoting is the typical antibaltistic propaganda fulfilled with the names of famous Lithuanian Freedom fighters, such as Juozas Luksa - "Daumantas" and many others that has nothing to do with such war crimes as murdering of 68 "innocent" NKVD and Communist regime officials in Lietukis garage.

[Grellber]

Well. I do tend to agree with you. Not very likely that the main character of that book would be the same person as "The death dealer" withou more people reacting. It is a great shame that so much crap-info exist on the net. Even amateurs like me sence that some info is incorrect and in the end one starts to question everything. Only one winner in that scenario -Extreme revisionists and neo-nazis.

[Grellber]

Hmmm...
The documents at the following link also deals with the Garage-incident:
http://lithuanianjews.org.il/media/uplo ... 20ACTS.doc
A quote from the document refers to both "the garage" and Luksa:
"
The pogroms which started in Slabodka spread to the "wealth" sections of Kaunas. On Vitiates Prospectus, groups of L.A.F. "partisans" broke onto the nearby Jewish homes, dragged the residents. Among them several Rabbis, out into the streets and pulled them into the nearby "Lietukis" garage. There were about 60 people brought in. after a significant number of Lithuanian spectators gathered, including mothers with their children, and surrounded the scene, the "partisans" began their bloody orgy. Several Rabbis were pushed and pulled by their beards along the garage floor the hair torn out together with the flesh from their blood-stained faces.

The decisive moment of the "show" approached. All the victims had to take off their shoes and were led barefooted to a light-haired, blue-eyed man standing nearby (Juozas Loksas). He held a big iron crow-bar in his hands. One by one, the victims had to approach his iron bar down on the victim's head who fell bleeding. After each blow the crowd applauded and shouted "valio" (hurray!). If a victim was not finished by the blow, the other "partisans" rushed to put a rubber hose in his mouth and sprayed water until his intestines burst. Then, another cheer from the crowd followed Limbs, severed fingers, and torn out tongues floated in pools of blood. After the massacre, the young man put aside the crow-bar, took up an accordion, stood on the bodies of the murdered people, and from his vantage point on a pile of corpses began to play the Lithuanian national anthem joined by the cheerful crowd.

In the German "R" reports (5) Reinhard Heydrich, the chief of the German security police:
"…The attitude of the Lithuanian population is friendly towards the German soldiers, police officials, and other organizations already functioning in the area as much as possible. Their cooperation consists mainly in looking for and turning in Lithuanian Communists, unattached Red Army soldiers and Jews. After the retreat of the Red Army, the population of Kaunas killed about 2,500 Jews during a spontaneous uprising. In addition, a rather large number of Jews were shot by the Auxiliary Police Service…"

"…In Kaunas, up to now, 7,800 Jews have been liquidated, partly through pogroms and partly through shootings by the Lithuanian commandos. All the corpses were removed…"

Upon entering Lithuanians the animosity the Lithuanians expressed towards the local Jews and their urge to murder them. Their readiness to kill and the ease with which they carried Berlin Directives and served as a guide line in their planned actions concerning the "final solution".

Mass murderers like Impulevicius Norkus, Klimaitis, Simkus, Luksa Vitkauskas, Zemaitys-Vytautas, Misiunas and thousands of others, most of massacre Jews even before the Nazi "Einastzgruppen" entered Lithuania They continued their vicious actions on the whole Lithuanian Jewry. Most of these murderers also continued to murder myriads of Jews outside the borders of Lithuania".

So the document also mentiones Klimaitis who I also would like to learn more about.

[David Thompson]

viewtopic.php?p=551452#551452

[Lit.]

Hmmm...
The documents at the following link also deals with the Garage-incident:
http://lithuanianjews.org.il/media/uplo ... 20ACTS.doc
<...>
Mass murderers like Impulevicius Norkus, Klimaitis, Simkus, Luksa Vitkauskas, Zemaitys-Vytautas, Misiunas and thousands of others...

This so called "document" is a crap (invented I suppose by the members of KGB now living in Israel) or typical ANTIBALTICISM, which is not allowed I suppose also in this forum.

I have no time to discuss here all the lies that you are quoted from that dreadful ANTIBALTISTIC site here or insisting that the well known names of the "thousands of others'" of Lithuanian partisans are nothing to do with the incriminated crimes, but please take a look just on one name mentioned there:

"General JONAS ZEMAITIS - "VYTAUTAS" (1919 - 1953) Defence Forces Commander of MSFL

„Jonas Zemaitis - "Vytautas" was born on March 15, 1909 in Palanga. In 1929 he graduated from a Military School. In the period of 1936 -1938 he studied at the Artillery School in France. In 1938 he was promoted to the Captain's rank and was a Battery Commander of the 4th Artillery Regiment.
1944 - Commander of 310th Battalion of the Local Formation.
1945 - Chief of the Staff of the Zebenkstis ("Weasel") Partisan Formation.
1947 - Commander of "Kestutis" Partisan District.
1948 - Commander of the "Jura" ("Sea", Western Lithuania) Partisan Region.
1948 - Establishment of the Supreme Partisan Command.
He was a Signatory of the 16th February 1949 Declaration, Presidium Chairman of the Movement of the Struggle for Freedom of Lithuania.
1949 - promoted to the rank of a General.
February 1949 - January 1950 - Chairman of the Presidium of the Council of the Movement of the Struggle for Freedom of Lithuania and the Defence Forces Commander of MSFL in occupied Lithuania.
February 1953 - May 1953 - Chairman of the Presidium of the Council of the Movement of the Struggle for Freedom of Lithuania and the Defence Forces Commander of MSFL in occupied Lithuania.
After treason, on May 30, 1953 he was arrested by the NKVD. On November 26, 1954 he was shot-dead in the Butyrky prison in Moscow. The burial place is unknown.“

from: http://www.image.lt/junda/index.php?id=170&L=1

Here are the monuments to the 4th (underground) President of Lithuania Jonas Zemaitis - "Vytautas", which you quoting as "murderer":

In Palanga:

and in Vilnius, in front of the main headquarters of the Lithuanian Ministry of Defence:

[Grellber]

Duly noted. And Dear "Lit", I´m note here with the purpose of offending anybody, just trying to learn and understand more. As I assume you can read everything I myself find in Lithuanian language only when I search for answers, maybe you can contribute to my understanding.

[jmh8300]

The four photographs of the murder scene, posted by Mr. Thompson, are to my eye, all from the same event. Here is the nexus as I see it:

Pic 1. is of the "Death Dealer".
Pic 2. shows him wielding his staff on the far right of the image. Please note the powerfully built victim, wearing a "t-shirt" in the left foreground of this photograph. His left arm rests, bent back, on his outstretched right arm, as does his head.
Pic 3. contains the same victim, in the same pose on the left of the image, at the feet of two armed guards. Note the small, older man dressed in a dark jacket and trousers.
Pic 4. The older man in dark clothing is in the left centre of the image. The victim in the foreground of this image also seems to appear in Pic. 3.

Additionally the position of the brick wall in photographs 3 & 4 seems to match that of the top background of pic 2.

It would seem therefore given the differences in the number of bodies on the ground between Picture 2 and 3 & 4, that 3 & 4 were taken at the beginning of the massacre and that the crowds arrived after some time. Given the location of the victim in the "t-shirt" it would also seem that he was one of the early victims, and that the murders moved out from his point.

[Ahf]

This so called "document" is a crap (invented I suppose by the members of KGB now living in Israel) or typical ANTIBALTICISM, which is not allowed I suppose also in this forum.

And what are the names of these alleged members of the KGB now living in Israel and what is your source for your information?

[michael mills]

And what are the names of these alleged members of the KGB now living in Israel and what is your source for your information?

A bit of a diversion.

The crucial issue is that certain members of this Forum have posted material material from an organisation called "Lithuanian Jews", in which allegations are made, in very intemperate language, against named persons who were active in the wartime and post-war Lithuanian resistance to Soviet domination.

I think it is time that we saw some hard evidence for the allegations made by the "Lithuanian Jews" against the named Lithuanians.

It appears to me that what we are dealing with here is an ethnic conflict between Lithuanians and Lithuanian Jews, rather similar to the ethnic conflict that existed between Hindus and Muslims in British India.

Partisans of either side accuse the other side of atrocity, and react in a knee-jerk fashion to accusations of atrocity made against their own side.

The historical reality is that both ethnic Lithuanians and ethnic Jews living in Lithuania were at different times both perpetrators and victims, within the context of the conflict between National Socialist Germany and the Soviet Union.

This thread is about photos showing a group of men being battered to death by mobs in Kaunas in June 1941. But who were the men being battered to death?

Partisans of the Jewish side claim that they were innocent Jews, victims of anti-Semitic Lithuanian criminals.

Partisans of the Jewish side claim that they were NKVD agents and other collaborators with the Soviet occupation being punished by Lithuanians whose relatives had been deported.

The historical truth may contain elements from the claims of both sides. The men being killed may have collaborators with the Soviet occupation, and some or all of them may well have been Jewish.

Similar scenes were recorded during the anti-Soviet uprising in Budapest in October 1956, when members of the Hungarian security police were lynched in the streets by insurgent mobs. Some of the lynched men may have been Jewish, given the high participation rate of Jews in the post-war Communist security organs in Hungary. If that was the case, their jewishness has not been stressed in historical accounts, unlike the situation in Kaunas in June 1941.

It is noteworthy that the material on the "Lithuanian Jews" site is written in very intemperate language, and appears to aim at discrediting Lithuanians who fought against the Soviet rule over their country.

That does not necessarily indicate that the "Lithuanian Jews" have some sort of Soviet connection. I suspect that their motivation is ethnic rather than political. Lithuanian Jews tended to be pro-Soviet, not primarily because of a political partiality for Communism, but rather because they saw the Soviet Union as their main defence against an anti-Semitic Germany.

For that reason, Lithuanian Jews are opposed to anti-Soviet Lithuanian partisans, because the latter were anti-Soviet and de facto pro-German because Germany was the enemy of the Soviet Union. Lithuanian Jews interpret the actions of anti-Soviet Lithuanians purely as anti-Jewish, failing to see the origin of those actions in the experience of Soviet oppression.

[Jonathan Harrison]

The men being killed may have collaborators with the Soviet occupation, and some or all of them may well have been Jewish.

3,800 were killed in pogroms in Kovno alone, according to Stahlecker. That's an awful lot of 'collaborators'. Can Michael explain why the Soviets would have needed so many and how the lynchers were able to distinguish these collaborators from the other Jews, whom they presumably left alone?

[michael mills]

If Jonathan Harrison cares to look carefully, he will see that my reference was specifically to the men killed in the Lietukis garage.

Probably most of the Jews killed in pogroms in Kaunas were not collaborators, simply victims of mob violence. A comparison may be made to similar mob violence in India in recent years, where Hindu mobs have lynched Muslims at random, and vice versa.

I would guess that most of the Jewish victims of the pogroms in Kaunas were picked out at random. But the reason for the strong animus against them on the part of sections of the Lithuanian population, particularly that part which had suffered most under the Soviet regime, was the high incidence of collaboration with that regime by Lithuanian Jews, or the perception of such collaboration.

This was probably a case of the innocent suffering along with the guilty, a common occurrence in human history.

[Lit.]

This so called "document" is a crap (invented I suppose by the members of KGB now living in Israel) or typical ANTIBALTICISM, which is not allowed I suppose also in this forum.

And what are the names of these alleged members of the KGB now living in Israel and what is your source for your information?

Here is one name (at least was such a name, because now he is hiding in Israel with other name) - war criminal Nachmanas Dusanskis or Noachim Dusanski , or Nachman Dushansky, or whatever new one:

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?p=681088#681088

Quote:
EXTRADITION OF WAR CRIMINALS TO LITHUANIA DEMANDED. The public Baltic
Unity Organization (BVO) demanded on 22 July that war criminals Petras
Raslanas and be extradited from Russia and Israel,
respectively, to Lithuania, BNS reported the next day. They are accused
of participating in the NKVD -organized murder of 74 people in the
Rainiai forest in 1941. Noting that the Simon Wiesenthal Center had
successfully prosecuted a number of people involved in the killing of
Jews in Nazi-occupied countries, BVO Chairman Vytautas Nezgada said that
the center could aid in extraditing the two war criminals and clarifying
crimes committed against other nationalities. At the end of June, 10
Seimas opposition deputies circulated a statement urging President
Algirdas Brazauskas to demand the extradition of Raslanas and Dusanski.
-- Saulius Girnius
http://www.friends-partners.org/friends/news/omri/1996/07/960724II.html(opt,mozilla,unix,english,,new)

Quote:
The center's researchers also provide evidence about the atrocities perpetrated by the many communist and Nazi war criminals who escaped justice. Two such men have recently been identified. One, Petras Raslanas, is now a resident of Russia. In 1941 he and his henchmen tortured several dozen Lithuanian patriots in the Rainiai forest. Many of the eyeless, castrated, skinned-alive corpses were unidentifiable, even by their families.

The other, Nachmanas Dusanskis, lives in Israel. In 1941 he helped the Soviets exile Lithuanian Jews to the gulag. His signature, for example, appears on the deportation order that sent the Volpert family to their Siberian graves. Unconscionably, given the compelling evidence of wrongdoing by these two men, both countries have refused to extradite them to stand trial in Lithuania.
http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/1999/189915.shtml

Here is the video also about 1941 June crimes of N. Dushansky and P. Raslanas:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=lSnBVnn61fk

[Jonathan Harrison]

A comparison may be made to similar mob violence in India in recent years, where Hindu mobs have lynched Muslims at random, and vice versa.

It would be a bogus comparison for three reasons:

1. It would fail to explain why Jews died in higher numbers than non-Jews after the Nazi invasion

2. It would fail to explain why the Nazis were recording these deaths but doing nothing to stop them

3. It would fail to explain Stahlecker's comment, "To our surprise it was not easy at first to set any large-scale anti-Jewish pogrom in motion there."

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jso ... ports.html

[Jonathan Harrison]

This is the full extract from the Einsatzgruppen A report of 15 October 1941 which shows Michael's comparison to be crass:

In Lithuania this was achieved for the first time by activating the partisans** in Kovno. To our surprise it was not easy at first to set any large-scale anti-Jewish pogrom in motion there. Klimatis, the leader of the partisan group referred to above, who was the first to be recruited for this purpose, succeeded in starting a pogrom with the aid of instructions given him by a small advance detachment operating in Kovno, in such a way that no German orders or instructions could be observed by outsiders. In the course of the first pogrom during the night of June 25/26, the Lithuanian partisans eliminated more than 1,500 Jews, set fire to several synagogues or destroyed them by other means, and burned down an area consisting of about sixty houses inhabited by Jews. During the nights that followed, 2,300 Jews were eliminated in the same way. In other parts of Lithuania similar Aktionen followed the example set in Kovno, but on a smaller scale, and including some Communists who had been left behind.

These self-cleansing Aktionen ran smoothly because the Wehrmacht authorities who had been informed showed understanding for this procedure. At the same time it was obvious from the beginning that only the first days after the Occupation would offer the opportunity for carrying out pogroms. After the disarmament of the partisans the self-cleansing Aktionen necessarily ceased.

Document: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jso ... altic.html