The Holocaust in Lithuania: Difference between revisions - Wikipedia

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===The Holocaust events===

The Lithuanian port city of [[Klaipėda|Klaipėda (Memel in German)]] had historically been a member of the German Hanseatic League, and had belonged to Germany and East Prussia prior to 1918. The city was semi-autonomous during the period of Lithuanian independence, and under League of Nations supervision. Approximately 8,000 Jews lived in Memel when it was absorbed into the Reich on March 15, 1939. Its Jewish residents were expelled, and most fled into Lithuania proper. Inwhere 1941,most Germanwould killingbe squads,killed the [[Einsatzgruppen]], followedafter the advanceAxis ofinvasion thein GermanJune, army units and immediately began organizing the murder of Jews1941.<ref name="Porat159"/>▼

Chronologically, the genocide in Lithuania can be divided into three phases: phase 1. summer to the end of 1941; phase 2. December 1941 – March 1943; phase 3. April 1943 – mid-July 1944.<ref name="Bubnys_vanished205-206">{{cite book|first=Arūnas |last=Bubnys |chapter=Holocaust in Lithuania: An Outline of the Major Stages and Their Results |title=The Vanished World of Lithuanian Jews |publisher=Rodopi |year=2004| isbn=978-90-420-0850-2 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mdXRKbcyi5oC&pg=PA205 |pages=205–206}}</ref>

▲The Lithuanian port city of [[Klaipėda|Klaipėda (Memel in German)]] had historically been a member of the German Hanseatic League, and had belonged to Germany and East Prussia prior to 1918. The city was semi-autonomous during the period of Lithuanian independence, and under League of Nations supervision. Approximately 8,000 Jews lived in Memel when it was absorbed into the Reich on March 15, 1939. Its Jewish residents were expelled, and most fled into Lithuania proper. In 1941, German killing squads, the [[Einsatzgruppen]], followed the advance of the German army units and immediately began organizing the murder of Jews.<ref name="Porat159"/>

[[File:Massacre of Jews in Lietūkis garage.jpeg|thumb|Massacre of Jews by Lithuanians at Lietūkis garage on 27 June 1941 during the [[Kaunas pogrom]]]]

[[File:9thFort.jpg|thumb|left|200px|Kaunas Ninth Fort]]

Most Lithuanian Jews perished in the first phase during the first months of the occupation and before the end of 1941. The [[Operation Barbarossa|Axis invasion of the USSR]] began on June 22, 1941 and coincided with the [[June Uprising in Lithuania]]. During the days prior to the German occupation of Lithuania the [[Lithuanian Activist Front]] attacked Soviet forces, seized power in several cities, spread anti-Semitic propaganda and carried out massacres of Lithuanian Jews and Poles. One notable massacre began on the night of 25–26 June when [[Algirdas Klimaitis]] ordered his 800 Lithuanian troops to begin the [[Kaunas pogrom]]. [[Franz Walter Stahlecker]], the [[SS]] commanding officer of [[Einsatzgruppe A]] claimed that by 28 June 1941 3,800 people had been killed in Kaunas and a further 1,200 in surrounding towns in the region.<ref name=Gitelman>{{cite book | first=Zvi |last=Gitelman |authorlink =Zvi Gitelman | title =Bitter Legacy: Confronting the Holocaust in the USSR | year =1998 | publisher =Indiana University Press | isbn =0-253-33359-8| url =https://books.google.com/books?id=USW9-xQ85FwC&pg=PA97 | pages =97, 102}}</ref> Klimaitis' men destroyed several synagogues and about sixty Jewish houses. In the 1990s the number of victims claimed by Stahlecker were questioned and thought to have been probably exaggerated.<ref name=Bubnys>{{cite journal | first=Arūnas |last=Bubnys |authorlink =Arūnas Bubnys | title =Vokiečių ir lietuvių saugumo policija (1941–1944) (German and Lithuanian security police: 1941–1944) | year=1997 |volume=I | journal =Genocidas ir rezistencija |issn=1392-3463 | url =http://www.genocid.lt/Leidyba/1/arunas1.htm | accessdate =2006-06-09 |language=lt}}</ref>

MostGerman Lithuanian[[death Jewssquads]], perished[[''Einsatzgruppen'']], infollowed the firstadvance phase duringof the firstGerman monthsarmy ofunits thein occupationJune 1941 and beforeimmediately began organizing the endmurder of 1941Jews.<ref name="Porat159"/> The first recorded action of the Einsatzgruppen (Einsatzgruppe A) unit took place on June 22, 1941, in the border town of Gargzdai (called Gorzdt in Yiddish and Garsden in German), which was one of the oldest Jewish settlements in the country and only 18 kilometres (11&nbsp;mi) from Germany's recovered Memel. Approximately 800 Jews were shot that day in what is known as the [[Garsden Massacre]]. Approximately 100 non-Jewish Lithuanians were also executed, many for trying to aid the Jews.<ref name="Porat161"/><ref name="MacQueen_context"/> About&nbsp;80,000 Jews were killed by October and about&nbsp;175,000 by the end of the year.<ref name="Porat161"/> The majority of Jews in Lithuania were not required to live in [[ghetto]]s{{Ref label|c|c|none}} nor sent to the [[Nazi concentration camps]] which at that time were just in the preliminary stages of operation. Instead they were shot in pits near their places of residence with the most infamous mass murders taking place in the [[Ninth Fort]] near Kaunas and the [[Ponary Forest]] near [[Vilnius]].<ref name="Porat159"/><ref name="IPN-Ponary"/><ref name="WSP-Ponary"/> By 1942 about 45,000&nbsp;Jews survived, largely those who had been sent to ghettos and camps.{{Ref label|c|c|none}} In the second phase, the Holocaust slowed, as Germans decided to use the Jews as [[forced labor in Nazi Germany|forced labor]] to fuel the [[economy of Nazi Germany|German war economy]].<ref name="Bubnys_vanished214"/> In the third phase, the destruction of Jews was again given a high priority; it was in that phase that the remaining ghettos and camps were liquidated.

Two factors contributed to the rapid destruction of Lithuanian Jewry. The first was the significant support for the "de-Jewification" of Lithuania coming from the Lithuanian populace.<ref name="Porat166"/><ref name="Bubnys_vanished214"/> The second was the German plan for early colonization of Lithuania – which shared a border with German [[East Prussia]] – in accordance with their [[Generalplan Ost]]; hence the high priority given to the extermination of the relatively small Lithuanian Jewish community.<ref name="Bubnys_vanished214"/>