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Einsatzgruppen were Schutzstaffel (SS) paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany that were responsible for mass murder, primarily by shooting, during World War II (1939–1945) in German-occupied Europe. The Einsatzgruppen had an integral role in the implementation of the so-called "Final Solution to the Jewish question" in territories conquered by Nazi Germany, and were involved in the murder of much of the intelligentsia and cultural elite of Poland, including members of the Catholic priesthood. Almost all of the people they murdered were civilians, beginning with the intelligentsia and swiftly progressing to Soviet political commissars, Jews, and Romani people, as well as actual or alleged partisans throughout Eastern Europe.
The June Uprising was a brief period in the history of Lithuania between the first Soviet occupation and the Nazi occupation in late June 1941. Approximately one year earlier, on June 15, 1940, the Red Army occupied Lithuania and the unpopular Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic was soon established. Political repression and terror were used to silence its critics and suppress any resistance. When Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, a diverse segment of the Lithuanian population rose up against the Soviet regime, declared renewed independence, and formed the short-lived Provisional Government. Two large Lithuanian cities, Kaunas and Vilnius, fell into the hands of the insurgents before the arrival of the Wehrmacht. Within a week, the German Army took control of the whole of Lithuania. The Lithuanians greeted the Germans as liberators from the repressive Soviet rule and hoped that the Germans would re-establish their independence or at least allow some degree of autonomy. No such support came from the Nazis, who steadily replaced Lithuanian institutions with their own administration. The Reichskommissariat Ostland was established at the end of July 1941. Deprived of any real power, the Provisional Government disbanded itself on August 5.
The Lithuanian Activist Front or LAF was a short-lived, Lithuanian underground resistance organization established in 1940 after Lithuania was occupied by the Soviet Union. The goal of the organization was to liberate Lithuania and re-establish its independence. It planned and executed the June Uprising and established the short-lived Provisional Government of Lithuania. The Government self-disbanded and LAF was banned by Nazi authorities in September 1941. LAF remains controversial due to its anti-Semitic and anti-Polish positions.
The Kovno Ghetto was a ghetto established by Nazi Germany to hold the Lithuanian Jews of Kaunas (Kovno) during the Holocaust. At its peak, the ghetto held 29,000 people, most of whom were later sent to concentration and extermination camps, or were shot at the Ninth Fort. About 500 Jews escaped from work details and directly from the ghetto, and joined Jewish and Soviet partisan forces in the distant forests of southeast Lithuania and Belarus.
The history of the Jews during World War II is almost synonymous with the persecution and murder of Jews which was committed on an unprecedented scale in Europe and European North Africa. The massive scale of the Holocaust which happened during World War II greatly affected the Jewish people and world public opinion, which only understood the dimensions of the Final Solution after the war. The genocide, known as HaShoah in Hebrew, aimed at the elimination of the Jewish people on the European continent. It was a broadly organized operation led by Nazi Germany, in which approximately six million Jews were murdered methodically and with horrifying cruelty. Although the Holocaust was organized by the highest levels of the Nazi German government, the vast majority of Jews murdered were not German, but were instead residents of countries invaded by the Nazis after 1938. Of the approximately 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis, approximately 160,000 to 180,000 were German Jews. During the Holocaust in occupied Poland, more than one million Jews were murdered in gas chambers of the Auschwitz concentration camp alone. The murder of the Jews of Europe affected Jewish communities in Albania, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Channel Islands, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Libya, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Moldova, the Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, and Ukraine.
The Schutzmannschaft, or Auxiliary Police was the collaborationist auxiliary police of native policemen serving in those areas of the Soviet Union and the Baltic states occupied by Nazi Germany during World War II. Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, established the Schutzmannschaft on 25 July 1941, and subordinated it to the Order Police. By the end of 1941, some 45,000 men served in Schutzmannschaft units, about half of them in the battalions. During 1942, Schutzmannschaften expanded to an estimated 300,000 men, with battalions accounting for about a third, or less than one half of the local force. Everywhere, local police far outnumbered the equivalent German personnel several times; in most places, the ratio of Germans to natives was about 1-to-10.
In World War II, many governments, organizations and individuals collaborated with the Axis powers, "out of conviction, desperation, or under coercion." Nationalists sometimes welcomed German or Italian troops they believed would liberate their countries from colonization. The Danish, Belgian and Vichy French governments attempted to appease and bargain with the invaders in hopes of mitigating harm to their citizens and economies.
The Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force or LTDF was a short-lived Lithuanian volunteer military unit created during the German occupation of Lithuania during World War II.
The Lithuanian Security Police (LSP), also known as Saugumas, was a local police force that operated in German-occupied Lithuania from 1941 to 1944, in collaboration with the occupational authorities. Collaborating with the Nazi Sipo and SD, the unit was directly subordinate to the German Kripo. The LSP took part in perpetrating the Holocaust in Lithuania, persecuting Polish resistance and communist underground.
During World War II, Lithuania was occupied by the Soviet Union (1940–1941), Nazi Germany (1941–1944), and the Soviet Union again in 1944. Resistance during this period took many forms. Significant parts of the resistance were formed by Polish and Soviet forces, some of which fought with Lithuanian collaborators. This article presents a summary of the organizations, persons and actions involved. Lithuania was de facto independent from June 24, 1941, until June 30, 1941, when Nazi Germany took full control of the area.
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Ukrainian collaboration with Nazi Germany took place during the occupation of Poland and the Ukrainian SSR, USSR, by Nazi Germany during the Second World War.
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The Holocaust in Lithuania resulted in the near total destruction of Lithuanian (Litvaks) and Polish Jews, living in Generalbezirk Litauen of Reichskommissariat Ostland within the Nazi-controlled Lithuanian SSR. Out of approximately 208,000–210,000 Jews, an estimated 190,000–195,000 were murdered before the end of World War II, most of them between June and December 1941. More than 95% of Lithuania's Jewish population was massacred over the three-year German occupation – a more complete destruction than befell any other country affected by the Holocaust. Historians attribute this to the massive collaboration in the genocide by the non-Jewish local paramilitaries, though the reasons for this collaboration are still debated. The Holocaust resulted in the largest-ever loss of life in so short a period of time in the history of Lithuania.
The Belarusian Auxiliary Police was a German force established in July 1941 in occupied Belarus, staffed by local inhabitants, considered collaborationist. In western Belarus, auxiliary police were formed in the form of Schutzmanchaften units, while in the east they were formed in the form of Ordnungsdienst.
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RollkommandoHamann was a small mobile unit that committed mass murders of Lithuanian Jews in the countryside in July–October 1941, with an estimated death toll of at least 60,000 Jews. The unit was also responsible for many murders in Latvia from July through August 1941. At the end of 1941 the destruction of Lithuanian Jewry was effectively accomplished by Hamann's unit in the countryside, by the Ypatingasis būrys in the Ponary massacre, and by the Tautinio Darbo Apsaugos Batalionas (TDA) in the Ninth Fort in Kaunas. In about six months an estimated 80% of all Lithuanian Jews were killed. The remaining few were spared for use as a labor force and concentrated in urban ghettos, mainly the Vilna and Kaunas Ghettos.
The Lithuanian Auxiliary Police was a Schutzmannschaft formation formed during the German occupation of Lithuania between 1941 and 1944, with the first battalions originating from the most reliable freedom fighters that were disbanded following the anti-Soviet Lithuanian June Uprising in 1941. Lithuanian activists hoped that these units would be the basis of the reestablished Lithuanian Army and commanded by the Lithuanian Provisional Government. Instead, these units were placed under the orders of the SS- und Polizeiführer in Lithuania.
The Police Battalion 322 was a formation of the German Order Police during the Nazi era. During Operation Barbarossa, it was subordinated to the SS and deployed in German-occupied areas, specifically the Army Group Centre Rear Area, of the Soviet Union, as part of Police Regiment Centre.
Wartime collaboration occurred in every country occupied by Nazi Germany during the Second World War, including the Baltic states. The three Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, first invaded and occupied by the Soviet Union in summer 1940, were later occupied by Germany in summer 1941 and incorporated, together with parts of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic of the U.S.S.R., into Reichskommissariat Ostland. Collaborators with Germany participated in the Eastern Front against the Soviet Union, as well as in the Holocaust, both in and outside of the Baltic States. This collaboration was done through formal Waffen-SS divisions and police battalions, as well as through spontaneous acts during the opening of the war.
References
- ↑ "The Jager Report". A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust. Florida Center for Instructional Technology. 2005. Retrieved 2009-03-14.
- ↑ Ganor, Solly (2003). Light One Candle: A Survivor's Tale from Lithuania to Jerusalem. Kodansha America. p. 351. ISBN 1-56836-352-4.
- ↑ Arad, Yitzhak (2004). "The Murder of the Jews in German-Occupied Lithuanian (1941–1944)". The Vanished World of Lithuanian Jews. Rodopi. p. 187. ISBN 90-420-0850-4.
- ↑ Bubnys, Arūnas. "Lithuanian Police Battalions and the Holocaust" (PDF). The International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania. pp. 12–13. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-07-22. Retrieved 2009-03-14.
- ↑ Piotrowski, Tadeusz (1997). Poland's Holocaust. McFarland & Company. p. 164. ISBN 0-7864-0371-3.
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