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Prior to the outbreak of World War II, Lithuanian Jewry numbered approximately
160,000 Jews with the largest communities being in Kaunas,
Siauliai, and Panevezys. Shortly after the Soviet invasion
of Eastern Poland in September 1939, the city and district
of Vilna (Vilnius in Lithuanian; Wilno in Polish) were turned
over to Lithuania, thereby adding an additional 66,000 Jews
to the community which also absorbed approximately 14,000 Polish
Jewish refugees during the fall and winter of 1939. In June
1940 the Soviet Union invaded Lithuania and two months later
annexed the country, which became a Soviet republic. In June
1941, the Soviet authorities carried out large-scale deportations
of elements considered dangerous to the regime, in the course
of which approximately 7,000 Jews were sent to the Soviet interior. If we add the approximately 15,000 Jews who escaped
into the Soviet Union or were evacuated by the Communist authorities,
we can estimate that approximately 220,000 Jews were living
in Lithuania during the initial stages of the Nazi invasion. The history of the annihilation of Lithuanian Jewry can be divided into three
periods:
| 1. |
The
first period: June 22, 1941 – December 31, 1941
This time period, during
which eighty percent of Lithuanian Jewry were murdered,
is characterized by mass killings carried out all over
the country by the Nazi Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing
units) with the widespread and large scale active participation
of Lithuanian collaborators. It can be divided into
the following two stages:
| a) |
June
22 – July 5, 1941 (7-8,000 Jews murdered)
During this period numerous murders were initiated and carried
out primarily by Lithuanian Nazi collaborators, in many cases
with no German involvement. |
| b) |
July 5 – December 31, 1941 (173,000 Lithuanian and foreign Jews murdered)
Following the arrival
of the Einsatzgruppen, they assumed control of
the implementation of the mass murder of Lithuanian
Jewry which they carried out with the large scale
participation of Lithuanian Police units (police
battalions and local police units) and vigilantes
and the full cooperation of local Lithuanian municipal
officials. Among those murdered were 5,000 German
Jews deported to Kaunas in October 1941.
The only Jews still
alive at this point were incarcerated in four ghettos:
Vilnius (approximately 20,000), Kaunas (17,500),
Siauliai (5-5,500) and Svencionys (500). |
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| 2. |
The second period: January 1942 – March 1943
Due to the increased demands
of the German war industry from ghetto workshops and
factories, this period was relatively quiet, although
the murder of individual Jews in ghettos continued uninterrupted.
While the decisions to carry out limited murder operations
were made by the Nazi authorities, they were carried
out by Lithuanian police units. |
| 3. |
The third period: April 1943 – July 1944
This period began with the liquidation
of the last small ghettos in Eastern Lithuania (Svencionys,
Osmiany, Mikaliskes and Salos) and the murder of most
of their inhabitants at Paneriai. This was followed by
the murder of the Jews in labor camps near Vilnius and
Kaunas and eventually by the conversion of the last remaining
ghettos in Vilnius, Siauliai, and Kaunas into concentration
camps. These measures were accompanied by the mass murder
of many of the surviving inmates (and almost all the
surviving children) and the deportation of most of the
others to concentration camps in Estonia and Latvia or
to Nazi death camps in Poland.
Prior to their retreat from Lithuania,
the Nazis liquidated all the remaining camps murdering
some of their inmates and evacuating the others to Stutthof
and later to camps in Germany, where many were killed.
Of the thousands of Lithuanian Jews deported to Estonia
and Latvia in 1943, some were murdered prior to the Germans’ retreat while other were evacuated to Stutthof and other camps in Germany. |
Summary
Approximately 10,000 Lithuanian Jews survived the Holocaust.
Eight thousand of those evacuated on the eve of the German
retreat were alive when the camps were liberated and approximately
2,000, of whom 900 were partisans, survived in Lithuania, some
with the help of brave Lithuanian Righteous Among the Nations.
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