" I
think what is happening in Lithuania
Efraim Zuroff
Simon Wiesenthal Centre
Simon Wiesenthal Centre
 |
| Locals greet German soldiers |
Ponary,
seven kilometers outsider Vilnius is famous as death camp, also the Kaunas
fortress that during World
War II, parts of the fortress complex were used by Nazi
Germany for detention,
interrogation, and execution. About 50,000 people were executed there,
including more than 30,000 victims of the
Holocaust
The June 24, 1941 , the
Lithuanian Security Police ( Lietuvos saugumo Policija ) was subordinated to
the German Security Police and the Criminal Police of Nazi Germany, which would
be involved in various actions against Jews and other enemies of the created
Commanders nazi.
Nazi regime presented reports claiming that
the Lithuanian police battalions overcome their " desire " .
The most famous Lithuanian unit that
participated in the Holocaust was the Lithuanian squad Sonderkommando (
Ypatingasis Burys ) area of Vilnius
Another organization involved
in the Holocaust was the Lithuanian Labour Guard ( Guard Labor Lithuanian ) .2
Many Lithuanians supporters of Nazi policies came from the organization Wolf
fascist Hierro.3 overall, the Lithuanian nationalist administration was
interested in the settlement of the Jews who were considered as potential
enemies and rivals of ethnic Lithuanians and , therefore , not only opposed the
Nazi policy burnt but actually adopted like propia.
The current government of Lithuania and the latest from the breakup of the
USSR
·
A member of a Party of Lithuania said that :
Bronius Bradauskas who said that state pensions to
Lithuanians who rescued Jews during the World War II should be paid by Israel , not Lithuania
During the Aktion ( Collective killing of Jews)[2]
of 24
October 1941 the Germans came to our home and ordered us to come with them I asked
if we should take anything. The robbers said that if we had any gold, it would
be probably useful in our new place.
Our whole family - my parents, my sister, and
my children-was taken with all the other residents in our buildding to the
Lukishki Prison. They made us undress to our underwear. Our clothes were quickly
taken away. They beat us with iron clubs. Weiss showed up at dawn and ordered
us to get dressed. We told him the guards had taken our clothing. He started screaming
:
“ Who dared ? You´ll have to go to work the
way you are! You´ll have to be taken in trucks…”.
The children and the men were separated
from us . Still undressed we were loaded into the trucks and taken somewhere. Once
in the truck, Weiss announced :
“ Know that I am your your father! I am taking you to the factory to work. What
sort of work it is you will soon find out."
He pulled a bag from his pocket and gave
each of us a piece of candy. Many began to trust Weiss, they stopped weeping
and started talking about their new work. Some were even smiling, As for me I
did not believe a single word. I knew I had come to the end of the line .I must
admit however, that I took the candy. I thought: "If it is poisoned, then
so much the better- they won´t torture me; if it isn't, I can suck on something
sweet in my last minutes."
When we reached
Ponary. They herded us into the ditch with whips.
“This is where you will work !” Weiss laughed at us
He ordered us to removed our undershirts and wait our turn. Weiss threatened to
gouge out the eyes of anyone who refused to obey the order. And Immediately he
carried out his treat on one woman.
About two hundred women were in the ditch. There
were also a few children. They had been separated from the women in the
prison, but several women somehow manage! their children, and now the little
ones were clinging to their mothers.
At first everyone
was sobbing and wailing, but they gradually grew quiet. Two hundred
aces away an execution was taking place. I saw them murder my father with my own
eyes .He was first stunned by a blow from a crowbar and then shot. Covered with
blood, covered with blood, he fell on top of a dead body.
My sister was lying down, resting next to
me. Her two-year-old little boy Moishele was sobbing at her breast. When the shooting had
died down a bit, I suddenly heard a singing something. She was rocking her
little boy to the tune of a familiar folk song
Tra-la-la, sweet little girl
Tra-la-la, sweet little bird,
I have lost my true love,
My sorrow
is oh so bitter.
One woman took
out a piece of bread and started eating it. Others followed her example. Our
turn came toward the end of the day. We were led to the huge grave in groups of
ten. It was thirty to forty meters long. The ditch became deeper as it led
closer to the grave; where the two met it was about seven meters deep.
Our group was
last. Weiss came over and ordered us to line up. He was holding some sort of
cloth and tore it into ten pieces to blindfold us. I was the first in line. My
mother and sister were behind me.
"Hands on your hips!" Weiss
ordered as he led us forward. I stepped on bodies that were not yet cold.
Suddenly the order rang out:
"Fire!" Behind me my sister cried out, "God!"
I felt her fall. I fell beside her and
lost consciousness.
When I came to,
it was dawn. The dead were lying on top of me, covered with lime I recognized
my sister. Moishele looked as if he were dozing at her breast. I crawled out
from under the heavy pile of bodies and
went to the ditch to look for some clothes. I found a nightgown and put it on;
then I found an old shirt, and, wearing nothing else, I ran away, back to the
ghetto. There I spent a whole month in the hospital.
One
of many criminals Lithuanians :
Algimantas
Mykolas Dailidė (born 12 March 1921. died 2011 Germany
He was born in Lithuania Gulfport
, Florida
It has been proven that the Jews arrested by Dailide
Paneriari were executed in a wooded area near Vilnius
where 5,000 Jews during the war died or were sent to the ghetto in Vilnius
A federal court in Ohio (
in the central United States
withdrew U.S. citizenship in
1997 , having confirmed their participation in the arrest of Jews had come to America
His deportation to Lithuania Saxony , Germany
For seven years, the U.S.
Another
example among many.
The leader of Lithuania
The decision by
the Lithuanian government to rebury him (he died in America )
in Kaunas in 2012 attracted powerful criticism
from Jewish groups outside Lithuania
A group of the country's most distinguished liberal intellectuals have
issued a public statement (text
in Lithuanian) condemning the event. The signatories include Irena Veisaitė, a
Holocaust survivor who as a child was saved by Lithuanians at risk of their own
lives, Tomas Venclova, the country's best-known poet and Soviet-era dissident,
and Leonidas Donskis, a philosopher and member of the European Parliament. The
full text (not available elsewhere in English) is appended at the end of this
blog post. But the main point is this:
“…A government which consigned an entire class of its citizenry to
discrimination and persecution, and then subsequently failed to defend it from
mass killings conducted by an occupying power and those collaborating with it,
cannot properly claim to be defending freedom. The putative benefits of the
Provisional Government's unsuccessful attempts to reassert Lithuanian
sovereignty are vastly overshadowed and defiled by the inhumane words and deeds
to which it lent its authority. And what would be the value of sovereignty
bought at the price of the blood of the innocent?
……
·
- we deplore the persecution and
destruction of innocent Lithuanian citizens and others that took place during
the tenure of the Ambrazevicius-Brazaitis Provisional Government…”
United
States Ambassador to Lithuanian Anne E. Derse
cited the investigation by the International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes which states that the Provisional Government "made no specific public reference to the massacres of Jews which were taking place in Kaunas, on the government’s very doorstep," "made no discernible attempt to interfere with or, at the very least, disassociate themselves from the German takeover of the hastily formed units composed of former anti-Soviet partisans and Red Army deserters," and ultimately "failed in its responsibility to at least attempt to clearly state its opposition to the anti-Jewish violence beyond urging avoidance of “public massacres” of Jews."
http://vilnews.com/2012-05-juozas-ambrazevicius-brazaitis-is-no-hero
cited the investigation by the International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes which states that the Provisional Government "made no specific public reference to the massacres of Jews which were taking place in Kaunas, on the government’s very doorstep," "made no discernible attempt to interfere with or, at the very least, disassociate themselves from the German takeover of the hastily formed units composed of former anti-Soviet partisans and Red Army deserters," and ultimately "failed in its responsibility to at least attempt to clearly state its opposition to the anti-Jewish violence beyond urging avoidance of “public massacres” of Jews."
http://vilnews.com/2012-05-juozas-ambrazevicius-brazaitis-is-no-hero
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