Introduction to the English Edition

Ponary (Paneriai in Lithuanian) is a district of Wilno (now Vilnius) - a city that is the present-day capital of Lithuania and was the pre-war seat of Poland's Wilno Voivodeship. Before the war Ponary was a small resort located some 12 kilometers from the city center. Prior to Germany's invasion of the USSR in June 1941, the Red Army had begun large excavations in Ponary, where it intended to establish a liquid fuel base. After the invasion, Ponary became a mass extermination site where the unfinished excavations served as burial pits for about 80,000 people shot by the Germans and their Lithuanian auxiliaries. The victims, mostly Polish Jews, also included members of the Polish resistance and intelligentsia from Wilno Voivodeship, Polish clergymen, Soviet prisoners of war, Lithuanians, and Romani.

The time frame for the events described in this book begins in June 1941 with Germany's assault on the Soviet Union and its occupation of Wilno Voivodeship, and ends in July 1944, when the Wehrmacht left the area along with members of the Lithuanian auxiliary units fleeing the approaching Red Army.

This topic is unique in many ways and poses some challenges for historians. Among other things, these have to do with the fact that the Germans never used the name 'Ponary' in documents connected with their activities at this location, and that archival sources on the subject are dispersed among academic institutions in the United States, Germany, Austria, Israel, Poland, Lithuania, and Russia.

The basic types of sources that are necessary to reconstruct the events that took place at the Ponary base are eyewitness testimonies and documents produced in 1941-1944. Witnesses can be divided into four groups: members of the Vilnius Special Unit who were members of the killing squad; people who were taken to the base, were shot but survived and later escaped under the cover of darkness; Jewish prisoners used as forced labor in the exhumation and burning of corpses; and residents of Ponary and Wilno. These witnesses can be further divided into perpetrators, victims and observers. The most detailed information about what happened between June 1941 and June 1944 in Ponary most certainly comes from members of the special unit and from individuals who managed to escape and return to their homes. Their recollections are indeed very distressing, as they contain much detail and carry a heavy emotional charge. The testimonies of the intended victims are definitely more reliable than those of the perpetrators. The statements of the accused or suspects were most often taken during questioning prior to prosecution or as part of other legal proceedings conducted in Germany, the USSR, Lithuania, Austria, and Poland. As they are only answers to specific questions asked by investigators, there are many gaps in these statements. Only very rarely did the person being interrogated report voluntarily facts unknown to the interrogator. Each of the defendants sought to avoid incriminating himself, so his answers were terse and weighed.

The second group, but the most important by far, were the direct witnesses to the crimes committed in Ponary. Unfortunately, of the thousands of people taken there to be executed, only a few individuals survived. Two Jewish persons - nineteen-year-old Ita Straż and Abraham Blazer (Isaak Kagan) - left telling testimonies with incredibly detailed descriptions of the executions as seen through the eyes of the intended victims.1 The picture of the dramatic events of those days is complemented by the testimony of the Jew Konstantin Potanino, who was, along with the above-mentioned Abraham Blazer, was part of the so-called 'corpse unit' (Leichenkommando) charged with excavating and burning the corpses of the victims from November 1943 on. One can only regret that the written testimonies taken down after the war by the Polish and Soviet authorities and during the Nuremberg trial are so laconic and leave so many questions unanswered. The accounts by residents of Ponary and Wilno and by several soldiers of the 96th German Infantry Division are a source of valuable information regarding the events their authors witnessed. One of the most important sources in this category include the diary written in Ponary from 11 July 1941 to 4 July 1944 by Kazimierz Sakowicz. The author placed successive pages of his written account into soda bottles and buried them near the veranda of his house in Ponary. They were discovered in 1952 by an unnamed person who was looking for gold at the site. Another part of the diary was discovered in 1957 and donated to the Museum of the Revolution, from which it was transferred to the Lithuanian National Museum in Wilno, where it has been kept ever since. Sakowicz's entries utilized in this book cover the period from 11 July 1941 to 6 November 1943 and give a vivid and harrowing picture of the Ponary massacres.2 The diary was first published in 1999 in Polish by the Bydgoszcz branch of the Society of Friends of the City and Region of Wilno. A second edition, also in Polish, edited by Maria Wardzyńska, was published by Poland's Institute of National Remembrance in 2014. It was also published in Hebrew in 2000, in German in 2003, and in English in 2005. In Lithuania, it saw publication in 2012.3 Also worthy of note is the diary of Herman Kruk, even if it focuses mostly on everyday life in the Wilno Ghetto.4

The information provided by Sakowicz and other witnesses are merely an interpretation of the events as they saw them. They had no direct insight into what took place beyond the gates of the Ponary base nor did they observe the extermination firsthand. The local population was cowed and only watched surreptitiously from their homes as columns of Jews were marched toward the base, or as truck and rail transports arrived. Polish train engineers who arrived at the Ponary rail station also left valuable accounts. They were eyewitnesses to the events that took place from the moment the trains were unloaded to when the victims were led to the fenced area of the base.

There are very few documents relating directly to the extermination at Ponary. They constitute, first and foremost, reports from police authorities and operational groups subject to the General District of Lithuania (Generalbezirk Litauen), drawn up for the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt, RSHA) in Berlin about the situation in the eastern territories and the extermination operations being carried out there, as well as the relatively well-preserved administrative documentation of Łukiszki Prison (Lukišk?s in Lithuanian, Lukischki in German) in Wilno. We have, however, a set of reports concerning exhumation work carried out by the Soviet Extraordinary State Commission to Investigate the Crimes of the German-Fascist Occupiers and Their Helpers in the LSSR (hereinafter the Extraordinary Commission). The commission was established to investigate and assess the losses suffered by civilians, soldiers and partisans in the Wilno region during the German occupation. Particularly noteworthy in this regard is the account by Prof. Stanisław Mahrburg as well as the protocols drawn up by Soviet military authorities after their arrival in Ponary in August 1944.5 Materials from court trials and other criminal proceedings conducted against the organizers and actual perpetrators of the Ponary shootings constitute a distinct category of documents.

This publication relies to a great degree on materials from the Lithuanian archives. The Lithuanian Central State Archives (Lietuvos Centrinis Valstyb?s Archyvas) contain documents concerning the functioning of the German and Lithuanian security police forces, as well as transport lists of the prisoners meant to be executed and being transferred to other prisons or camps. These archives contain material documenting the repressions and extermination of those considered enemies for ideological and racial reasons. From the research point of view, the most important documents are those that concern Wilno's prisons, detention centers, the forced labor camps operating in the Reich's Commissariat for the East (Reichskommissariat Ostland), prisoner of war camps and Jewish ghettos. I also found very important sources in The Resistance Movement during the Period of the Nazi Occupation of Lithuania 1941-1944 collection, which includes documents with information on various forms of organized resistance against the occupier, including diversion, assaults on German and Lithuanian officials, acts of sabotage, as well as "legalization" and other assistance provided to Polish and Soviet partisans by the local population.6

At the Lithuanian Special Archives in Wilno (Lietuvos Ypatingasis Archyvas) I made use mostly of NKVD-MVD-MGB documents of the LSSR containing files from the trials of Vilnius Special Unit members who were detained and prosecuted in the USSR.

I also used documents from German institutions such as the Federal Archive in Berlin (Bundesarchiv Berlin), the Military Archive in Freiburg (Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv Freiburg), the Central Land Justice Administration Office for Investigating National Socialist Crimes (Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen zur Aufklärung nationalsozialistischer Verbrechen), the Federal Archive in Ludwigsburg (Bundesarchiv Ludwigsburg), and the Office of the Federal Commissioner for Stasi Records in Berlin (Die Behörde des Bundesbeauftragten für die Stasi-Unterlagen Berlin). At the Berlin branch of the Federal Archive, I was able to consult collections containing information on the German occupation in the Reichskommissariat Ostland. My queries encompassed the files of the General Commissioner for White Ruthenia (Byelorussia, presently Belarus) in Minsk (Der Generalkommissar für Weissruthenien in Minsk); the Reich Commissioner for the East, the Field Commissariat in Wilno 1941-1942 (Der Reichskommissar für das Ostland, Feldkommendantur in Wilna 1941-1942); the Commander of the Order Police in Lithuania (Kommandeur der Ordnungspolizei Litauen); Personal Staff of the Reichsführer-SS (Persönlicher Stab Reichsführer-SS); Police stations in the occupied territories (Polizeidienststellen in den besetzten Gebieten); Police stations in the Soviet Union (Polizeidienststellen in der Sowjetunion); the Reich Ministry of Justice (Reichsjustizministerium); the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories (Reichsministerium für die besetzten Ostgebiete); and the Reich Main Security Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt). These files include orders from Alfred Rosenberg, the Reich Minister of the Occupied Eastern Territories, introducing civil administration in the Reichskommissariat Ostland, as well as orders on the treatment of Wilno Jews. The most valuable of these documents are the reports from operational groups and units (Einsatzgruppen and Einsatzkommandos) about the situation in the occupied areas. They state the number of Communists and Jews living there who were "treated in keeping with orders."

At the Military Archives in Freiburg, I consulted the files of the Head of the Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht - Conduct and Violations of International Law by the Soviet Union (Chef des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht - Verhalten und Völkerrechtsverletzungen der Sowjetunion), which holds 99 volumes of files from the Wehrmacht Legal Department (Wehrmacht-Rechtsabteilung). I examined documents from the investigation into the violation of international law by German soldiers on Soviet territory in 1941-1945 and found information on the treatment of prisoners of war captured in the general districts of Lithuania and White Ruthenia. In addition, I found the combat logs of the 3rd Panzer Group under the command of General Hermann Hath, as well as those of the 16th Army, the 4th Panzer Group, and the 7th Armored Division, which arrived in the Wilno region on 26 June 1941.

Research conducted in the archives of the Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic (Bundesbeauftragter für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik),7 made it possible to complete the personal data of the perpetrators of crimes, compile information about the criminal proceedings conducted against them in the GDR, and prepare the list of the victims of the massacre perpetrated on 3 June 1944 by members of the 9th and 10th company of the 3rd SS Police Regiment in Pirciupie (Pirčiupiai).

After many queries conducted in the resources of the Central Office of the State Justice Administrations for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes in Ludwigsburg, I was also able to find information on the criminal proceedings held against individual perpetrators of the Ponary Crime before the jury courts (Schwurgericht) of West German land courts (Landgericht). Among the most important documents made accessible to me by the Central Office of the State Justice Administrations for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes and the Federal Archive in Ludwigsburg are the files of a trial held from 25 January 1950 before the jury court of the Würzburg Land Court against Einsatzgruppen and Einsatzkommando members and Sicherheitsdienst (SD) officials. In the trial, two SD officers, Martin Weiss and August Hering, were accused of involvement in the mass killings in Ponary.8 The analysis of the Karl Jäger trial held in April 1959 before the Heidelberg Court contributed much to the understanding of the extermination methods used by Einsatzgruppen members during the first period of the Ponary massacres. Equally important were the files of a criminal case opened on 14 May 1962, before the jury court of the land court in Berlin against SS-Obersturmführer Albert Filbert, Gerhard Schneider, Generalkommissar Bodo Struck, Wilhelm Greiffenberg, Konrad Fiebig, Heinrich Tunnat and Albert Gilbert, who were charged with ordering the execution of Jews in Ponary.9

Very valuable material was also to be found in Polish archives. These include the documents of the Government Delegation for Poland (Delegatura Rządu Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej na Kraj) held at the Archives of Modern Records (Archiwum Akt Nowych, AAN) in Warsaw.10 The tasks of the Information and Press Department (Departament Informacji i Prasy) of the Government Delegation for Poland, especially of its Eastern Section, which published the paper Nasze Ziemie Wschodnie (Our eastern lands) and of the Internal Affairs Department (Departament Spraw Wewnętrznych) included informing the Government in Exile about the enemy's activities in the occupied territories, especially criminal acts. This information was drawn up in the form of briefs and reports. Several of them mention individual executions of Poles carried out in Ponary.

German policy in the Wilno region can also be seen in the materials from the trials of Vilnius Special Unit members held before Polish courts and documents stored in the archives of the Institute of National Remembrance in Warsaw, Gdańsk, Bydgoszcz, Lublin, Poznań, Bialystok and Wrocław. In this book I made use of records from the trials of persons convicted by Polish courts pursuant to the Decree on the Punishment of Fascist-Hitlerite Criminals Guilty of Murdering and Abusing the Civilian Population and Prisoners of War, and on the Punishment of Traitors to the Polish Nation (also known as the August Decree) issued by the Polish Committee of National Liberation (known by its Polish acronym PKWN) on 31 August 1944.11 Among other material I made use of are the records of the trial of three members of the Vilnius Special Unit - Władysław Butkun a.k.a. Vladas Butk?nas, Józef Miakisz a.k.a. Juozas Mekišius, Jan Borkowski a.k.a. Jonas Barkauskas - accused before the Voivodeship Court in Warsaw of participating in the massacres of Ponary.12 I also used the records from a trial, held before the District Court in Olsztyn, of Wiktor (Witold) Gilwiński a.k.a. Viktoras Galvanauskas, a member of the Vilnius Special Unit, whom the court found guilty of participating in the Ponary mMassacres.13 Court documents - mainly protocols of depositions made by the accused and by witnesses to the crimes - constitute a very important source illustrating the mechanism of the Ponary Crime.

The methods of terror used by the Germans can be seen by examining the reports drawn up by the Operational Groups of the Security Police and SD (Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD) and their constituent Operational Units (Einsatzkommandos) active in the Reichskommisariat Ostland. These materials, kept at the AAN and the IPN Archives, among other places, make it possible to appreciate the scale to which Lithuanians were involved in the policies of the German occupier. Individual briefs issued by operational groups were part of the systematic reporting to the Reich's Security Main Office in Berlin. These briefs were published in 1965 by Heinz Boberach.14 The second portion of this publication includes reports from the activities of individual operational groups and describes, among other things, the elimination of Soviet political commissars and Jews, the fight against partisans, the general situation in the eastern territories, the mood of local inhabitants, and their reaction to the enforcement of German orders.

The Latvian State Historical Archives (Latvijas Valsts V?stures Arh?vs) in Riga holds the Einsatzgruppe A report on the treatment of Jews in the Baltic States, general ordinances about the establishment of the German occupation regime in the eastern territories and guidelines from Wehrmacht Headquarters about the behavior to adopt towards the local civilian population and Soviet prisoners of war in the occupied eastern territories. In Riga I found a communiqué of the Extraordinary Commission.15 This document contains a description of the exterminations conducted in Ponary between 1941 and 1944 as well as the minutes of interrogation of witnesses drawn up by the operational attorneys of the Extraordinary Commission.

At the Jewish Historical Institute (Żydowski Instytut Historyczny, ŻIH) in Warsaw I examined all the accounts concerning the persecution of Jews in the Wilno region. The collection and preservation of these testimonies was entrusted to the Central Historical Commission of the Central Committee of Polish Jews (Centralny Komitet Żydów w Polsce, CKŻP), established in Lublin in 1944. The testimonies were drawn up in Polish, Yiddish, Hebrew, German and Russian and were often used as evidence in trials against war criminals.

Analyzing digital copies of archival materials from the Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum in London and from the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC was also very productive. I also made use of copies of documents (without act call numbers) provided to me by an historian from the State Archive of the Russian Federation in Moscow (Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Rossiyskoi Federatsyi), mainly the documents of the Extraordinary Commission, which functioned from August 1944 onwards. I also made use of the collections of the Polish Underground Movement Study Trust (Studium Polski Podziemnej - Archiwum AK - Londyn) and the collection of documents published on the Yad Vashem Archives website.

It is also worth mentioning the research value of other source publications, such as the six-volume collection of Home Army documents published in London;16 transcripts from the trial held before the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, published in London between 1946-1951; and Stanisław Mahrburg's report on the exhumations conducted in Ponary in 1944.17 Certainly, one of the most important publications on the subject is the recent work done by Lithuanian historians.18 The most abundant information about the situation of the Polish population living in the General District of Lithuania during the German occupation is to be found in the works of Jarosław Wołkonowski, Longin Tomaszewski, Maria Wardzyńska, and Piotr Łossowski.19

Also worth noting are the more than a dozen works, mostly in German, which deal with the massacres in Ponary and, at the same time, give a clear picture of the functioning of the German security police and operational groups in the General District of Lithuania. Such works include a book published in Helsinki in 1973 by Seppo Myllyniemi, and the works of Christoph Dieckmann.20

Questions related to the activities of the Lithuanian police and administrative structures have been examined by the Lithuanian historian Ar?nas Bubys.21

The extermination of the Jewish population of the Wilno region was described by Yitzhak Arad,22 and also by Mendel Balberyszski, who was a direct witness to the liquidation of the Wilno Ghetto.23

In the chapter on the persecution of the Polish population living in the Wilno region during the German occupation, I referred to the work of Witold Staniewicz,24 as well as to the works of Maria Wardzyńska and Longin Tomaszewski, the memoirs of Konrad Górski, and Lata nadziei (17 września 1939-5 lipca 1945) by Stanisław Cat Mackiewicz.25 On the subject of the persecution of the Polish clergy of the Archdiocese of Wilno, the numerous publications by Fr. Tadeusz Krahel and the work of Cyprian Wilanowski on the clergy's activities in the underground of the Wilno region were most helpful.26

Judgments related to the Ponary Crime were pronounced by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg by US military tribunals, and by Soviet, German, Austrian and Polish courts. An analysis of those judgments shows that in the legal systems of the aforementioned countries, in both substantive and procedural law, there are differences in the definition of a criminal act, in the applicable criminal procedures, in the types of penalties imposed, and in other legal measures used to determine guilt and criminal responsibility.

The first of the trials I examined was that of the Soviet judicial authorities in the case of Bronislavas Želvys, who was sentenced to death on 27 September 1944 by the War Tribunal of the 3rd Byelorussian Front for "betrayal of the fatherland," pursuant to part 1 of the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR from 19 April 1943. As a member of the Vilnius Special Unit, Želvys took part in the Ponary shootings. I also examined material from the last Ponary-related trial, which was held before the Olsztyn Voivodeship Court in 1976. The defendant, Witold Gilwiński a.k.a. Viktoras Galvanauskas, participated in mass murders in Ponary and personally shot at least 300 persons, and was sentenced pursuant to Article 1, part 1 of the August Decree.27

The trial materials from which documentation was drawn concerning exhumation work and the criminal trials of the perpetrators before Soviet, Polish, Austrian and German courts came from archives located in Poland (AIPN), Lithuania (LYA), the USA (USHMM) and from Ludwigsburg. I have drawn upon information about the Nuremberg Trials mainly from source publications like those of Tadeusz Cyprian and Jerzy Sawicki.28 In turn the work of Szymon Datner et al., was very helpful in describing the trials of members of the operational groups and also trials of lawyers before American military tribunals.29

In recent years, the state of research into these topics has grown considerably. This is largely due to Lithuanian historians who published the The Traces of Crimes do Not Disappear - Mass Killings in the Paneriai Forest 1941--1944 (see footnote 3). Among Polish works in this area, the popularizing works by Helena Pasierbska are worth mentioning. These include two titles which are devoted to Polish pro-independence activists murdered in Ponary and which contain the biographies of about 200 such persons. In a third work, Pasierbska included memoirs from inmates at Wilno's Łukiszki Prison.30

The first edition of the present book on the Ponary Crime was published in 2008, and my book on Łukiszki Prison was published in 2018.31

The book by Ar?nas Bubnys, director of the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania (Lietuvos gyventoj? genocido ir rezistencijos tyrimo centras), published in 2019, is also worth mentioning. In it, biographical notes of 17 officers of the Vilnius Special Unit and 84 of their subordinates were made public for the first time.32 It should be noted that the results of the international Edward Blank YIVO Vilna Online Collections project still have not been made fully public; more than 170,000 pages of previously unknown documents were just recently discovered in Wilno in May 2017. The analysis of these documents could have a considerable impact on further research into the situation in the Wilno region during the Second World War.33

The present volume is divided into five chapters and its structure is based on chronology and subject matter. The first chapter presents the internal structure and functioning of the justice administration apparatus of the German occupation authorities and of the Reich's Security Police and Security Service (Sicherheitspolizei und Sicherheitsdienst), institutions established in the occupied Wilno region in the summer and autumn of 1941. I have shown the role of the Einsatzgruppen, which entered the occupied territories just behind the Wehrmacht and which gave birth to the Vilnius Special Unit - these were the units which carried out the executions in Ponary and other localities. Moreover, I described the participation of Lithuanians in the activities of the occupation and police authorities. Of particular note here is the structure of the Lithuanian security service, which was reconstituted on these territories immediately after the German troops arrived, and which participated in the extermination activities of the German occupation authorities.

The second chapter describes the process of the extermination of the Jewish population of the Wilno region, and also the fate of persons arrested and detained in Wilno prisons in 1941-1944. In the later part of the chapter, I discuss the terror policy the occupation authorities inflicted on the Polish population and the persecution of the Polish clergy.

The third chapter reconstructs the transport of prisoners to their place of execution in Ponary and the shootings themselves. In that chapter I also attempted to estimate the number of persons murdered in Ponary, including Poles. This turned out to be very difficult given that most of the corpses had been burned by the Germans in an attempt to cover up the killings and that much of the documentation was destroyed. I especially sought to establish the identity of Polish victims, not only because I am Polish, but also because of my involvement in the investigation conducted by the Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation, Branch in Gdańsk concerning the murder in Ponary of Polish citizens, both Poles and Jews. I have been seeking to determine the names of the victims for 22 years. In the first edition of this book, in 2008, I gave the names of 353 victims. The current revised and supplemented edition contains 53 new names of Polish citizens of Polish ethnicity murdered in Ponary. Thus, we know the identity of 406 Polish victims. I have not included the names of victims from other groups in the present edition of this book, because research is still being conducted in this area. I am thinking here principally of Jewish victims who were Polish citizens. I hope that I will be able to supplement the list of victims known by name in the coming years.

The fourth chapter is devoted to German efforts to cover up the traces of the executions in Ponary. This they did between December 1943 to June 1944 under the direction of Special Unit no. 1005 commanded by Paul Blobel, who made use of Jewish prisoners and Soviet prisoners of war to dig out and burn the corpses. In this chapter I also describe the exhumation work conducted in August 1944 in Ponary by the Soviet commissions that were made up of specialists in forensic medicine, physicians and Wilno's university specialists. I also made use of the latest research conducted by Lithuanian historians, who determined that the area of the Ponary base was different during the Soviet period (when it covered 27 ha) and the German period (about 61 ha). According to the findings of the Extraordinary Commission, the fenced-in grounds where the extermination proper took place covered an area of 4.8 ha, but recent archaeological research has shown that it was an area of about 6.9 ha.

The fifth chapter is devoted to the presentation of chosen trials, in which amongst the accused are administrators, commanders, and members of the Vilnius Special Unit.

The entire volume is supplemented with 26 appendixes arranged chronologically in keeping with the subject matter of the chapters. Documents drawn up in Lithuanian were translated by Helena Pilecka - sworn translator of Lithuanian at the District Court in Gdańsk; from Russian by Halina Drużyłowska; and from German by Kazimierz Hefka and Marian Malinowski - sworn translators of German at the District Court in Gdańsk - and by me.

It is also worthwhile noting the spelling of names, surnames and place names in this book. In most cases, names and surnames are given in their original form. However, as the names of Polish victims were often Lithuanized by the Lithuanian administration I have reverted such names to their original Polish spelling, but only in cases that did not give rise to any doubt for a sworn translator of the Lithuanian language. The Polish names of localities that were within the official borders of the Republic of Poland (the Second Polish Republic) are retained with the name of localities presently in Lithuanian or Belarus included in the first usage. For the reader's convenience, I have included a list of the more important place names from the General District of Lithuania in Lithuanian, Polish, German, Byelorussian, and Russian in Table 3 of the Appendix.

In the present edition of this book, I have also included three maps and eighteen photographs which have not been published before. The photos come from the AIPN, the Lithuanian Special Archive in Vilnius, the Gaon National Jewish Museum in Wilno and from my own archive. I revised and supplemented appendixes 22 and 23, which contain annotations in the Lithuanian documentation relating to repressed persons. I also added the list of inhabitants of the locality of Olkieniki (Valkininkai) murdered on the banks of the Gilužiai River (16 persons) and on the banks of the Merczanka (Merkys) River, near the tar kiln in the village of Zaprzekopy (Užuperkasis) (5 persons) on 25 May 1942.

It should be noted that most of the sources under discussion have not been made public before. Taken together, the accounts of the members of the Wilno Sonderkomando, who were the executioners, the testimonies of the survivors of the executions in Ponary, who were the direct witnesses, and the accounts of the indirect witnesses in terms of those who saw the transports and those who were the observers of the area of the base, provide a full portrayal of the extermination process from the viewpoint of its participants and witnesses.

Endnotes

Introduction to the English Edition

1 See Balzer's testimony at https://collections.yadvashem.org/en/documents/3714356

2 Only part of Sakowicz's diary was discovered after the war, which explains the discrepancy between the dates.

3 K. Sakowicz, Dziennik 1941-1943, ed. M. Wardzyńska. Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2014; Die geheime Notizen des K. Sakowicz Dokumenten zur Judenvernichtung in Ponary, eds. R. Margolis and J.G. Tobias, Nürnberg: Antogo Verlag, 2003; K. Sakowicz, Ponary Diary, 1941-1943: A Bystander's Account of a Mass Murder, ed. Y. Arad, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005; K. Sakowicz, Paneri? dienoraštis 1941-1943 m., Vilnius: Lietuvos gyventoj? genocido ir rezistencijos tyrimo centras, 2012; see also: S. Sarcevičius et al., The Traces of Crimes do Not Disappear: Mass Killings in the Paneriai Forest 1941-1944, Vilnius: Lietuvos istorijos institutas, 2021, p. 24.

4 H. Kruk, The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania: Chronicles from the Vilna Ghetto and the Camps, 1939-1944, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.

5 Archiwum Akt Nowych (The Archives of Modern Records, hereinafter AAN), Government Delegation for Poland, 202/II-8, Prof. Stanisław Mahrburg, Obóz śmierci w Ponarach pod Wilnem, see throughout.

6 In war-time Poland, the term "legalization" was used in the Polish resistance movement to describe the production by the Polish clandestine state of false documents, food ration cards, passports, employment cards, and seals.

7 Hereafter referred to as the Stasi Records Agency.

8 Central Office of the State Justice Administrations for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes, Federal Archives, Ludwigsburg Branch (hereinafter ZstL/Ba-AstL), SbLW, Ks 15/49, Sentence in the case of Martin Weiss and August Hering, 3 February 1950.

9 ZstL/Ba-AstL, SbLB, Ks 1.62 (23.61), Sentence in the case of Albert Filbert and others, 22 June 1962, p. 5; ibid., B 162/2503, questioning of the accused, Karl Jäger, 11 April 1959, pp. 124-125.

10 The Government Delegation for Poland answered to the Polish Government-in-Exile in London and was the highest authority of the Polish underground state during the occupation.

11 Journal of Laws, no. 4 of 13 September 1944, item 16.

12 Voivodeship Court in Warsaw (hereinafter SWWW), IV K 130/73, passim, Criminal case against Józef Miakisz, Władysław Butkun, and Jan Borkowski.

13 Voivodeship Court in Olsztyn (hereinafter SWO), II K 59/76, passim, Sentence of the Voivodeship Court in Olsztyn in the case against Witold Gilwiński.

14 H. Boberach, ed., Meldungen aus dem Reich, Auswahl aus den geheimen Lageberichten des Sicherheitsdienstes der SS 1939-1944, Munich: Luchterhand, 1965.

15 Latvian State Historical Archive (hereinafter LVVA), P. 132, T. 30, Apr. 48, k. 2, 3, 9, 11, 13, 14-19, 30.

16 Armia Krajowa w dokumentach 1939-1945, vol. 1-6, London: Studium Polski Podziemnej ,1973-1989.

17 S. Mahrburg, "Karty z okresu terroru hitlerowskiego w Wilnie," Przegląd Lekarski, (1) (1965), pp. 86-90.

18 S. Sarcevičius et al., Crimes do Not Disappear - Mass Killings in the Paneriai Forest.

19 J. Wołkonowski, Okręg Wileński Związku Walki Zbrojnej Armii Krajowej w latach 1939-1945, Warsaw: Adiutor, 1996; L. Tomaszewski; Wileńszczyzna lat wojny i okupacji 1939-1945, Warsaw: Rytm, 1999; M. Wardzyńska, Sytuacja ludności polskiej w Generalnym Komisariacie Litwy, czerwiec 1941 - lipiec 1944, Warsaw: Mako, 1993; and P. Łossowski, Litwa a sprawy polskie 1939-1940, Warsaw: PWN, 1985.

20 S. Myllyniemi, Die Neuordnung der Baltischen Länder 1941-1944, Helsinki: Vammala, 1973; C. Dieckmann Deutsche Besatzungspolitik in Litauen 1941-1944, Göttingen: Wallstein 2011; and "The Murder of Soviet Prisoners of War in Lithuania," in The Crimes of the Totalitarian Regimes in Lithuania, Vilnius: Margi raštai, 2005.

21 A. Bubnys, Lietuvi? policijos batalionai 1941-1945 m., Vilnius: LGGRTC, 2017; A. Bubnys, "Massacre of Vilnius Jews and Vilnius Ghetto 1941-1944," Genocidas ir rezistencija 2 (14) (2003); A. Bubnys, Vokieči? okupuota Lietuva 1941-1944, Vilnius: Lietuvos tautinis kult?ros fondas, 1998; A. Bubnys, Vokieči? saugumo policijos ir SD Vilniaus ypatingasis b?rys, Vilnius: LGGRTC, 2019.

22 Y. Arad, Ghetto in Flames: the Struggle and Destruction of the Jews in Vilna in the Holocaust, New York: Holocaust Library, 1982.

23 M. Balberyszski, Likwidacja getta wileńskiego, Warsaw - Łódź - Cracow: Zakłady Graficzne WINW, 1946.

24 W. Staniewicz, Wilno w latach drugiej wojny światowej 1939-1945, Poznań: copy of typescript in the author's possession, 1946.

25 K. Górski, Divide et impera, Białystok: Towarzystwo Literackie imienia Adama Mickiewicza, Uniwersytet Warszawski, Biblioteka Jagiellońska, 1995; S. (Cat) Mackiewicz, Lata nadziei (17 września 1939-5 lipca 1945), Warsaw: Universitas, 1990.

26 C. Wilanowski, Konspiracyjna działalność duchowieństwa katolickiego na Wileńszczyźnie w latach 1939-1944, Warsaw: Instytut Wydawniczy PAX, 2000.

27 The Decree on the Punishment of Fascist-Hitlerite Criminals Guilty of Murdering and Abusing the Civilian Population and Prisoners of War, and on the Punishment of Traitors to the Polish Nation (Dekret o wymiarze kary dla faszystowsko-hitlerowskich zbrodniarzy winnych zabójstw i znęcania się nad ludnością cywilną i jeńcami oraz dla zdrajców Narodu Polskiego), was proclaimed by the Polish Committee of National Liberation on 31 August 1944. It was modeled on the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR from 19 April 1943.

28 The trial of German major war criminals: proceedings of the International Military Tribunal sitting at Nuremberg, London: International Military Tribunal, 1947; Materiały norymberskie. Umowa, statut, akt oskarżenia, wyrok, radzieckie votum, eds. T. Cyprian and J. Sawicki, Warsaw: Biblioteka Zrzeszenia Prawników Demokratów, 1948.

29 "Einsatzgruppen. Wyrok i uzasadnienie," eds. S. Datner, J. Gumkowski, and K. Leszczyński, Biuletyn Głównej Komisji Badania Zbrodni Hitlerowskich w Polsce 14 (1963), pp. 7-48.

30 H. Pasierbska, Wileńskie Ponary, Gdańsk: self-published, 1996; Ponary i inne miejsca męczeństwa Polaków z Wileńszczyzny w latach 1941-1944, Łowicz: Poligrafia, 2005; and Wileńskie Łukiszki, Gdańsk: self-published, 2003.

31 M. Tomkiewicz, Zbrodnia w Ponarach 1941-1944, Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2008; M. Tomkiewicz, Więzienie na Łukiszkach w Wilnie 1939-1953, Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2018.

32 A. Bubnys, Vokieči? saugumo policijos.

33 https://vilnacollections-yivo-org.

1The Establishment of the German Occupation

Ethnic and Social Relations in Wilno Voivodeship from 1920 to 1940

The year 1918 brought about the rebirth of both the Polish and Lithuanian states within boundaries corresponding essentially to the territory of Polish and Lithuanian ethnic settlement. The rebirth of the Polish state fueled hopes among the Poles living further east - in a historical region referred to in Polish as the Borderlands (Kresy) - that this region would be attached to the emerging Polish state. In late November 1918, the Committee for the Defense of the Borderlands was established in Warsaw. It called for a real union between the Lithuanian-Byelorussian lands and Poland and for the formation of armed forces prepared to occupy Lithuania and Byelorussia (now Belarus). The Polish government's support for the aspirations of Borderland activists was reflected in the establishment of the Eastern Department in the foreign ministry's political section for Lithuanian-Byelorussian affairs, headed by Ludwik Kolankowski. In the following year, the Civil Administration of the Eastern Territories was established, with Kolankowski as its first commissar general.

In reality, Wilno became free only when German forces left, in the early days of January 1919. The freedom for which the city's inhabitants had waited upon for more than a century lasted only a few days, as Red Army units arrived in the wake of the retreating Germans. The Wilno Poles embarked on a futile struggle against the Bolsheviks pressing in from the East. Józef Piłsudski's efforts to secure Wilno as soon as the Germans retreated (from 1 January to 5 January 1919, Wilno was defended by the local self-defense units) and before the Red Army arrived, were unsuccessful. In February 1919, at the Peace Conference in Paris, Poland's representative, Roman Dmowski, demanded that all of Lithuania be included in the boundaries of the Polish state. This was met with vehement objections by the Lithuanians, who demanded 125,000 sq. km of territory for Lithuania, including Wilno, Suwałki, and Białystok. It was then that Poland's chief of state, Józef Piłsudski, organized a successful expedition to secure Wilno. The expedition (which lasted from 19 April to 21 April 1919) and the seizure of Wilno was met with strong opposition from the Entente and Lithuania. In order to cool Polish zeal, the Entente drew the so-called Foch Line, to separate Polish and Lithuanian zones of influence.

It should be noted that, in late 1919 and early 1920, the foundations of the young Lithuanian state, like those of Poland, were already firmly established - the Republic of Lithuania was recognized by England, France, and other countries. After the loss of the Wilno region, Lithuania extended over an area of 52,822 sq. km. Following the incorporation of Klaip?da (Mamel) this increased to 55,670 sq. km. A population census conducted on 17 September 1923 revealed Lithuania's ethnic structure. The country had 2,028,971 inhabitants, without Klaip?da. The average population density of Lithuania was about 39 inhabitants per sq. km. The most densely populated region - Kaunas - had more than 60 inhabitants per sq. km, while the central region had about 33 inhabitants per sq. km.

Lithuanians represented about 84 percent of the country's population; national minorities amounted to 16 percent. The most numerous of these were Jews (153,743), followed by Russians (50,460), Germans (29,231), Latvians (14,883), and others. According to the Lithuanian census of 1923, only 65,599 Poles lived in Lithuania. The figures provided by Lithuanian census takers were deliberately understated and did not include Central Lithuania, which was part of Poland by then (see below). The electoral lists for the Polish parliamentary elections of 1922 and 1923 - in which 54,000 and 64,000 Lithuanian Poles voted, respectively - show that there were about 150,000 Poles in Lithuania at the time, not counting children and young people, who did not vote.1

Table 1 Ethnic Breakdown of Wilno's Population in 1920-1939 (in thousands)2

Year

Poles

Jews

Lithuanians

Russians

Byelorussians

Tatars

Others

Total

1920

72.0

46.5

2.9

4.0

1.8

1.2

128.4

1923

100.8

56.2

1.4

4.7

3.9

0.3

0.4

167.7

1929

104.0

67.0

2.5

11.0

1.0

0.2

1.3

187.0

1931

128.6

54.6

1.6

7.4

1.7

1.1

195.0

1939

128.4

53.5

1.4

7.2

1.5

0.1

2.5

* 194.6

Source: V. Stravinskien?, "Ethnic-Demographic Changes in the Data of the Statistical Sources of the City of Wilno (1920-1939)," Lithuanian Historical Studies 17 (2012), p. 143; V. Stravinskien?, Migruojantis Vilnius. 1915-1994 metai, Vilnius: Lietuvos istorijos institutas, 2023, pp. 82, 89. * Not including the armed forces.

In 1920, the Polish-Lithuanian conflict over Wilno flared up anew. In its dispute with Poland, Lithuania found support from Soviet Russia. Under the peace treaty concluded between Lithuania and Soviet Russia in Moscow on 12 July 1920, Lithuania was to receive Wilno, Grodno and Lida, which were under Soviet control at the time. Poland's reaction was swift. Beginning on 9 October 1920, Wilno and the surrounding territory was seized by allegedly rebellious Polish troops under Gen. Lucjan Żeligowski. These events led to the emergence of Central Lithuania, where Gen. Żeligowski exercised formal power while the Provisional Governing Commission, composed solely of Poles and headed by Witold Abramowicz, exercised executive power. Central Lithuania was never recognized by Lithuania, which remained in a state of war with Poland. The formal incorporation of Central Lithuania into Poland was sanctioned on 8 January 1922, by means of elections to the Wilno Parliament. Only 64 percent of eligible voters took part, and they voted only for Polish lists - the other ethnic groups boycotted the elections. During a sitting on 20 February 1922, the newly established Wilno Parliament promptly passed a resolution to incorporate the Wilno region into Poland. On 3 March 1922, the Act of Unification of the Wilno region with the Republic of Poland was signed in Warsaw and ratified by the Polish Parliament on 24 March 1922. The Wilno region was now subject to the authority of Poland's Parliament, its chief of state and its ministers. The incorporation of the Wilno region into Poland quashed all hopes of a Polish-Lithuanian understanding, since Lithuania considered itself at war with Poland.3

Poland's possession of the Wilno region was sanctioned by the Council of Ambassadors on 15 March 1923. This decision brought to a close the process of establishing the state borders of the Second Polish Republic, a process which had begun at the end of 1918. The Act of 22 December 1925 established Wilno Voivodeship, which covered about 29,000 sq. km and was divided into nine districts (hereinafter poviats): Brasław (Braslav), Dzisna (Dzhisna), Mołodeczno (Maladzyechna), Oszmiana (Oshmyany), Postawy (Pastavy), Święciany (Švenčionys), Wilejka (Vileyka), Wilno-Troki (Vilnius-Trakai) and the city of Wilno (Vilnius). The area of the newly created Wilno Voivodeship was then referred to by the term "Wilno Region" or "Wilno Lands."

The first population census conducted in December 1919 by the Polish authorities on lands administered by the Civil Administration of the Eastern Territories confirmed the Polish character of these territories. In this census, the Wilno region extended beyond Wilno Poviat proper, and included the poviats of Nowogródek (Navahrudak), Grodno (Hrodna), and the municipal poviat of Grodno. The total Polish population of Wilno and the Wilno region amounted to 1,749,512 inhabitants.4 The largest concentrations of Poles were found in Wilno Poviat and in the region's larger towns - Wilno, Lida, and Oszmiana. The lowest number of Poles was in Grodno (Hrodna) and the poviat of Nowogródek (Navahrudak).

Table 2 The Ethnic Make-up of the Wilno Region According to the Census Held on the Territories Administered by the Civil Administration of the Eastern Territories, December 1919

District

Total

Poles

Byelorussians

Lithuanians

Jews

"Locals"*

Others

Brasław

82,513

43,335

12,622

12,367

3,254

no data

10,935

Dzisna

193,263

74,612

46,381

1,885

5,280

no data

65,105

Grodno

99,087

53,549

33,160

1,546

10,534

no data

298

Lida

186,060

141,479

27,804

4,203

6,329

no data

6,254

Nowogródek

95,907

13,833

72,398

1

6,974

no data

2,701

Oszmiana

189,390

129,165

11,195

54

10,639

33,300

5,037

Święciany

139,692

61,854

18,727

38,529

6,524

2,888

11,170

Troki

92,831

49,947

242

36,748

3,805

899

1,184

Wilejka

213,424

64,549

123,332

122

9,453

2

15,966

Wilno

184,218

160,762

626

13,864

6,665

no data

2,301

City of Grodno

28,165

9,255

2,123

23

16,587

no data

177

City of Wilno

128,954

72,416

1,781

2,920

46,559

no data

5,278

TOTAL

1,633,504

874,756

350,391

112,262

132,603

37,089

126,406

Source: J. Wołkonowski, Stosunki polsko-żydowskie w Wilnie i na Wileńszczyźnie 1919-1939 roku, Białystok: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu w Białymstoku, 2004, p. 37.

* "Locals" refer to persons who in censuses, instead of nationality, described themselves as "people from here" or "locals."

The census conducted in the reconstituted Polish state in 1921 did not include Wilno, as the city was then part of Central Lithuania following Gen. Żeligowski's "rebellion" in October 1920. Only the census conducted by the Polish police on 3 March 1923 has survived from this period. The largest group in the city were Poles (100,830, 60.21 percent), followed by Jews (56,168, 33.54 percent), Russians (4,669, 2.8 percent), Byelorussians (3,907, 2.33 percent), and Lithuanians (1,445, 0.86 percent).5

The second population census conducted in the Wilno region, in 1931, took the inhabitants' native language into account. The size of the population in the voivodeship was estimated at 1,060,863 inhabitants, among whom those speaking Polish as a native language accounted for 58.6 percent, Byelorussian about 27 percent, Hebrew and Yiddish 5 percent, Lithuanian 6 percent, other languages 3.4 percent.6 The largest number of Poles lived in the poviats of Brasław (Braslav), Oszmiana (Oshmyany), Postawy (Pastavy), Święciany (Švenčionys), Wilno-Troki (Vilnius-Trakai) and in the city of Wilno. In none of these poviats did Lithuanians constitute a majority. The largest number of Lithuanians lived in Święciany (32 percent), in Wilno-Troki (7.9 percent), and in Brasław (2.4 percent). There were very few Lithuanians in the city of Wilno. Of its 195,071 residents, only 1,579 (0.8 percent) spoke Lithuanian, whereas 128,628 (66 percent) spoke Polish.

The Polish-Lithuanian dispute entered a whole new phase following the incorporation of the Wilno region into Poland. Both states' territorial status was ultimately settled at the Conference of Ambassadors (the organ of the Principal Allied and Associated Powers) on 15 March 1923. The Wilno question was no longer an issue on the international stage. The fact that two members of the League of Nations - Poland and Lithuania - remained in a formal state of war was a problem, however. Such a situation was incompatible with the principles of the League's Covenant and the idea of peaceful and amicable cooperation between all its members. The Lithuanians continued to raise the matter of the Wilno region at every opportunity. While they persistently sought allies in this matter among the Russians, Germans, Ukrainians, and Byelorussians, they failed to significantly reinforce their position. The Polish side, in turn, sought to integrate Wilno and the Wilno region with Poland as quickly as possible. An opportunity to bring this about arose in 1925 with the Concordat between the Polish government and the Holy See. It established the Wilno ecclesiastical province, "made up of the archbishopric of Wilno, the diocese of Łomża and the diocese of Pińsk."7 This outcome significantly reduced Lithuania's chances in its struggle to regain Wilno.

Talks held between Piłsudski and the Lithuanian politician Augustinas Voldemaras on 10 December 1927, at a League of Nations meeting in Geneva, marked the beginning of a new phase in Polish-Lithuanian negotiations. An important Polish concession granted cultural autonomy to the Lithuanian population of the Wilno region. In March 1938, a crisis broke out following the shooting of a Polish soldier on the Lithuanian border. This set off an anti-Lithuanian vilification campaign in Poland, with Polish troops amassing on the border. On 17 March 1938, the Polish government issued an ultimatum to Lithuania demanding the establishment of diplomatic relations by 31 March 1938. The Lithuanian government gave in during a special session held on 19 March, and the Lithuanian Parliament accepted the ultimatum on the same day. The two governments exchanged diplomatic notes and established their representatives in Warsaw and Kaunas. According to Poland, Lithuania had relinquished its rights to Wilno.

After the German invasion of Poland, the Lithuanian government, although encouraged by the Germans to go to war against Poland, declared its neutrality on 2 September 1939. Following Poland's defeat in the September campaign, 14,000 Polish officers and soldiers seeking to avoid German captivity crossed into Lithuania. So did some 2,500 policemen who had come from Latvia, which broke diplomatic relations with Poland on 18 September 1939. The first group of Polish soldiers crossed the Lithuanian border on 19 September. Having surrendered their arms, they were interned at the 5th and 6th forts in Kaunas. Other internment camps were set up in Kalwaria (Kalvarija), Olita (Alytus), Rakiszki (Rokiškis), Połąga (Palanga), Kołotowo (Kulautuva), Jakiszki (Jakiškiai), Birsztany (Birštonas), and Wiłkomierz (Ukmerg?). A Lithuanian general, A. Barzdas, became commander in chief of the internment camps. Soldiers originating from the Wilno region were placed in the camp at Kalwaria and required to sign a declaration of loyalty to the Lithuanian state. These documents were later treated by the Lithuanian authorities as applications for Lithuanian citizenship. By June 1940, only 1,600 Polish servicemen remained in Lithuanian internment. They were later to be detained by the Soviet authorities. The remaining Polish servicemen succeeded in leaving Lithuania.8 As a result of the war operations in Poland, refugees from other parts of Poland came to the Wilno region. According to the Lithuanian Red Cross, in early December 1939 there were 18,300 of them (of which 42 percent were Poles, 37.5 percent Jews, and 20 percent Lithuanians). By February 1940 the number of such refugees had risen to 36,000 people.9

Initially, the attitude of the Lithuanian government toward the refugees was positive. Civilians were allowed to choose any place of residence except for Kaunas. The Lithuanian authorities did not allow the Poles to set up their own refugee assistance committee. They did, however, allow the Dobroczynność charity, already functioning in Lithuania, to register Polish homes that were willing to take in refugee families.10

During the night of 17-18 September 1939, Red Army troops entered Wilno and the first Soviet occupation of the Wilno region began. In just 20 days, Soviet security officials arrested some 800 people and imprisoned them in Wilno and Nowa Wilejka (Naujoji Vilnia). The prisoners included senior officials of the Wilno city administration, professors of Wilno's Stefan Batory University (also known by its Polish acronym USB), several hundred volunteers who had defended Warsaw and were arrested at the Wilno train station, servicemen, railroad workers, doctors, and lawyers. Only some were released; most were deported deep into the USSR.11

On 10 October 1939, the Soviet authorities signed a mutual assistance agreement with Lithuania. The agreement called for the transfer to Lithuania of part of the Wilno region, representing a quarter of the territory that had been granted to Lithuania under the Lithuanian-Soviet treaty of 1920 and which had been part of the Polish state. The transferred territory had an area of 6,880 sq. km. For this area the Lithuanians established a new administrative unit - the District of Wilno (Vilniaus Kraštas). It was inhabited by about 549,000 people, of whom 321,700 were Poles, 107,600 Jews, 75,200 Byelorussians, 31,300 Lithuanians and 9,900 Russians.12

The secret protocol to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, signed on 23 August and amended in 28 September 1939, placed Lithuania in the Soviet sphere of influence, and called for Germany and the USSR to come to each other's assistance in case of aggression by any other European country. According to the secret Soviet-Lithuanian agreement of 28 October 1939, on the location of Soviet military bases in Lithuania, such bases were to be established in Porubanek (Kirtimai) near Wilno, Nowa Wilejka (Naujoji Vilnia), Olita (Alytus), Preny (Prienai), and Gudži?nai.

Lithuanian troops entered Wilno in late October 1939. At that time, the first "proclamations of Lithuanian society to Wilno residents about the return of Wilno - the old capital of the Grand-Duchy of Lithuania - to Lithuania" began to appear.13 During the transitional period, order in Lithuania was to be maintained by Lithuanian policemen dressed in navy blue uniforms with golden cords and a tall cap with the Lithuanian emblem (a mounted knight in pursuit), and armed with long rubber truncheons and pistols.

The Lithuanian authorities sought to incorporate the occupied territory into Lithuania, but the local Polish population treated this situation as a temporary state of affairs. The Lithuanian government vigorously proceeded to introduce new laws that were targeted mainly at Poles. These included a law on the citizenship of Wilno residents, which divided the population into citizens, refugees, and foreigners. The principal aims of Lithuanian policy were the complete de-Polonization of Wilno. The use of Polish in public offices and in the street was prohibited. Surnames, street names and store signs were changed from Polish to Lithuanian. In a blow to Polish culture, Stefan Batory University was closed down and Polish teachers were dismissed from public schools.14 To keep the disgruntled Poles in check, units of the Lithuanian Riflemen's Union (Lietuvos šauli? sąjunga) were brought to Wilno. Under the command of the city's military commander, Lt. Col. Pranas Kaunas, members of this paramilitary organization formed militias and initially attacked local Poles as they attended church services. Using oppressive administrative, economic, and linguistic measures, the Lithuanians sought to rid the city of its Polish population, which had lived there for centuries.15

The measures implemented by the Lithuanians backfired - the Poles living in Wilno and other towns of the Wilno region subject to the 10 October 1939 agreement began to revolt in response to the Lithuanians' increasingly aggressive measures. The first demonstrations were put down by the Lithuanian police, such as the one on 29 October 1939 on Zamkowa Street (now Pilies), where 800 university and high school students demonstrated at 1 p.m.

The protests did not cease, even on the advice of the Polish government in exile in London. The Committee of Ministers for Country Affairs, in a resolution passed in Paris on 28 December 1939 in connection with the closure of Stefan Batory University, called on young Poles to "desist from all such acts that lead to harmful bloodshed. With clenched teeth, with faith in the victory of our just cause, the responsibility for the consequences of violence must be left to the Lithuanians."16

Overt organizations began to emerge in Wilno with the aim of protecting the Polish community from wholesale Lithuanization. A Polish Committee was established, composed, among others, of representatives of Polish political parties headed by Bronislaw Krzyżanowski, who attempted to negotiate with the Lithuanian authorities in defense of the interests of the Wilno community. The Civic Self-Help Society under the leadership of Rev. Dr. Kazimierz Kucharski, and the War Refugee Relief Committee were also established. A well-organized network of covert organizations also operated in Wilno. To begin with, in affiliation with political parties, the following were set up: the Committee of Struggle for Liberation under the leadership of Maj. Władysław Kamiński "Śliwy"; an organization made up of former supporters of ­Piłsudski under the leadership of Witold Staniewicz; the Government Commissariat of Bronisław Świątkowski; the Regimental Circles of Lt. Col. Adam Obtułowicz "Leon"; as well as the Falanga national organization headed by the editor of Dziennik Wileński (a Wilno daily), Piotr Kownacki. Young people were most strongly represented in the Union of Free Poles. This organization mainly included junior high school students, headed by Jan Kazimierz Mackiewicz "Konrad". Also influential were the Young Eagles, comprising former cadets. There were about 40 such organizations in this time in Wilno alone, and they were involved in gathering arms, training, distributing underground newspapers, and vetting new members. The Lithuanian security police (Sauguma) treated them as illegal entities seeking to rebuild a Polish state that would include Wilno.17

On 15 June 1940, Soviet troops invaded Lithuania in response to the alleged violation, through "provocative actions in relation to the Soviet garrisons stationed in bases in Lithuania,"18 of the Lithuanian-Soviet agreement of 10 October 1939. On 14 and 15 July, with Soviet troops occupying the country, a general election was held to establish a People's Parliament. During a meeting held in Kaunas on 21 July 1940, this parliament adopted the Declaration on State Power, which heralded the creation of the LSSR, and petitioned the Supreme Soviet of the USSR to accept Soviet Lithuania into the USSR. At a sitting on 3 August 1940, a unanimous resolution was adopted in this matter. The deputies of the People's Parliament also decided on territorial changes and incorporated into the LSSR parts of Poland's former Białystok Voivodeship. These included the town of Druskienniki (Druskininkai), the towns of former Nowogródek Voivodeship - Ejszyszki (Eišišk?s), Marcinkańce (Marcinkonys) and Dziewieniszki (Dievenišk?s) - and, farther to the north, the area of the towns of Święciany (Švenčionys), Hoduciszki (Adutiškis), and Twerecz (Tverečius). Thus, the LSSR increased in area by 2,650 sq. km.

During the second Soviet occupation, Wilno suffered enormous material losses (mainly on account of the looting of public and private property) and personal losses - 5,000 people were first arrested and imprisoned in Łukiszki (Lukišk?s) prison in Wilno, as well as in Wilejka, and Minsk, and then deported eastward. The deportation of Wilno residents essentially lasted from September/October 1939 until the German invasion in June 1941. It was preceded by the registration by the NKVD of citizens deemed socially dangerous, along with their entire families. The repressive measures affected primarily the intelligentsia, social and political activists, wealthy landowners, people holding high state positions, and a great many of workers.19 It should be noted that in Wilno and its surroundings, the Soviets repressed (arrested and deported) not only Poles, but also Jews, Lithuanians, Russians, Byelorussians and citizens of other countries.20 Four mass deportations of Poles took place from the Wilno region deep into the USSR.21 They were part of much larger deportation operations. The first three deportations, which occurred in 1940 (10 February, 13 April, as well as 20 and 29 June) covered all of the Polish territories that had been incorporated into the USSR after 17 September 1939; the fourth, in 1941, also encompassed the Baltic states and Bessarabia.

Between 8 and 13 April 1941, officials of the People's Commissariat for State Security (NKGB) proceeded to break up the structures of the Union of Armed Struggle (ZWZ) in Wilno and arrested 272 people with ties to the Wilno District and Wilno City commands. The largest wave of arrests in 1941 took place on 16, 17, 19, and 20 June, when between ten and twenty thousand people were deported from the Wilno region. The deportation process followed a set pattern: "On 4 June 1941, at 7:00 a.m., six NKVD agents came to our apartment and ordered us to leave, and we were taken by truck to the railroad siding in Nowa Wilejka (Naujoji Vilnia), where a prepared train was already waiting. Between 40 and 50 people were loaded in each freight car. After a murderous journey of about 2 weeks, we arrived in Siberia." From the total amount of deported, at least 300,000 died in exile from starvation, exhaustion, lack of medication, and dire living conditions.22

One effect of the incorporation of Lithuania into the USSR was the rise of a resistance movement which core was driven by Lithuanian army officers, by "Shaulists,"23 and by "Aeitists,"24 a Christian democrat affiliated organization made up of university and high school students. The leadership of the Lithuanian underground organizations - which organizations were made up of nationalists, Christian democrats, populists, "Voldemarists," and social democrats - was concentrated in the Lithuanian Activist Front (Lietuvi? Aktyvist? Frontas, LAF), set up on 9 October 1940 in Kaunas and operating mainly in the Kaunas area. The purpose of this organization was to prepare all resistance groups for the upcoming war between the USSR and Germany as well as for a planned uprising.25 In October 1940, its members called on the people of Lithuania to:

greet German soldiers joyfully and with flowers and give them all the help they may need, for it will be an infinitely beautiful sight when German soldiers and military guns are decorated with flowers by the people, and they in return give candies to children and cigarettes to adults. Citizens of Lithuania, continue to help the German army everywhere and in everything, so that as soon as possible our forests and shrub lands will be cleansed of Jews, Bolsheviks and other, foreign to our country, scum, and also be cleansed of Lithuanian traitors. In this way, your lives and property will be preserved and protected more readily.26

The political situation taking shape in Lithuania led Poles living in Wilno to consider emigrating. The Swedish foreign ministry in Stockholm received many applications for documents that would enable immigration to Sweden. An especially great number of them were submitted in December 1940, when the Soviet authorities announced that all Polish refugees in Lithuania were obliged to register.27 The Swedish foreign ministry decided to close Sweden's borders to residents of the Baltic states. The Polish embassy in Stockholm managed to obtain visas for only 60 Polish citizens. Applications for a specific destination or transit visas were also submitted by Polish citizens to the foreign ministries of Finland (mainly by Stefan Batory University professors), Japan, and Great Britain.28 The Staff of the Supreme Commander in London sought to admit about a thousand military families from Wilno. Negotiations between the Polish Ministry of Foreign affairs and the British Foreign Office were successful and the families of soldiers who fought alongside Britain, as well as those of prisoners of war from the Wilno region, were granted secondary British citizenship. In all, some 3,000 Poles left the LSRR at that time.29

On 22 June 1941, Germany launched war operations against the USSR. At 10 a.m. the same day, an uprising began in Kaunas on the initiative of the LAF. The insurgents captured the presidential building, the radio station and the post and telegraph office, and seized control of several quarters of the city. They demanded Lithuanian independence under an interim government led by Juozapas Ambrozevičius. The following day, Leonas Prapuolenis - the LAF staff plenipotentiary for Lithuania in Berlin - proclaimed the independence of Lithuania during a Kaunas radio broadcast. Demonstrations began in Wilno on 23 June but the city was occupied by the Wehrmacht on the following day. On 26 June, Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch, the commander in chief of the German land forces, declared that Germany did not recognize the new government of Lithuania, and called for its troops to lay down their arms. A national board of seven general councilors was established, headed by Gen. Petras Kubiliunas.30

The Germans began to set up their own civil and judicial administration on the territory they had occupied. By a decree of 17 July 1941, Adolf Hitler created the Reich Ministry of Occupied Eastern Territories (Reichsministerium für die besetzten Ostgebiete), headed by Alfred Rosenberg.31

In a proclamation to the Eastern Territories Leadership Corps, Rosenberg wrote that bringing about change in the Baltic states called for:

the work of the entire German people, because the European living space in the East is expanding in an unprecedented way and, after a four-hundred-year period of colonization beyond the ocean, offers for the first time the possibility of laying the foundations on the old continent that will make Europe independent of an overseas blockade and safe from a dangerous war blockade. It is this new order based on German power that will put an end to the dangerous conflicts of war that have been constantly instigated by forces opposed to European unity. Awareness of this mission must and will give strength to all to endure the coming difficult years and bring about the flourishing of the Greater German Reich and the entire European continent.32

The German occupier treated Lithuania as a war conquest, fought against all opposition, and banned political parties and social organizations. Prohibiting the use of national symbols, such as the Lithuanian flag, was clear evidence of a policy aimed at depriving the Lithuanians of their national identity. The Germans pursued a well-thought-out occupation policy regarding the nations of the former Baltic states. Changes were proposed during a meeting devoted to the functioning of local self-administration in the general districts of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia which was held on 13 February 1942 at the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories. The head of the Ostland department at the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories, Dr. Bruno P. Kleist, stated that the inhabitants of the three Baltic states should be Germanized, since the area was to become an integral part of the Reich.

He suggested, however, that these changes be made gradually, because removing sovereignty suddenly might weaken the willingness of the local population to collaborate and lead them to rebel. He pointed out that there was a big difference between occupied Poland, where the Germans faced hostility, and the Baltic states, where the population was disposed to cooperate and officials were well-educated and could be entrusted with responsible functions without fear, and even be allowed to set up self-government structures. The head of the War Administration, Friedrich Fromm, proposed that a transparent German system of government be established in these territories, in keeping with the Reich commissar - commissar general - field commissar scheme. The official language introduced in the Reichskommissariat Ostland was German. Only within the local Lithuanian administration was Lithuanian allowed to be used alongside German.33

In their political and military aims, the Germans took full advantage of the Lithuanians' willingness to collaborate. In what was a political ploy of sorts, they entrusted them with all lower level and auxiliary positions. Municipal administration employees, including heads and secretaries, who had held positions up until 15 June 1940, returned to work.

The Lithuanians began to organize their offices and take over property from the former militia and other offices for their own use. A Lithuanian Municipal Committee was formed in Wilno, headed by Stasys Žymantas-Žakevičius. The committee, which oversaw defense and policing matters, was recognized by the German military authorities and in cooperation with them set about building a Lithuanian administration in Wilno and in the Wilno district. Former Lithuanian army soldiers and officers hitherto hiding from the NKVD, along with Šaulists, policemen,34 as well as reservists and deserters from the 29th Red Army Corps, began to report for duty.

The Germans formed three battalions with these volunteers: a sentry, a dispositional, and a sapper battalion - each with a strength of about 800 men. The rest were temporarily disarmed, and their weapons were deposited in the German war booty depot (Bautestelle).

A few months later additional police battalions were formed - the Lithuanian Self-Defense Troops (Lit.: Lietuvos Savisaugos Dalinai, Ger.: Litauische Selbstschutz Abteilungen), and the Lithuanian Protection Detachments (Lit.: Lietuvos Apsaugos Dalinai, Ger.: Litauische Schutzmannschaftseinheiten) . The Germans numbered those units 1 to 15, and then from 250 upwards. By 1944, 25 such battalions had been formed in all; most were sent to the rear of the Eastern Front to guard the German army's transportation lines.

The LAF leaders were aware that their country could not count on sovereignty, and that it was heading toward becoming another German colony. They protested in a memorandum addressed to the authorities of the Third Reich in November 1941, stating "the LAF wants to collaborate, now and in the future, with Greater Germany at the state level, but will never agree with the policy of annihilation and dispersion of the Lithuanian Nation, and in this area it is and will remain extremely nationalistic, that is, it will be against assimilation, deportations and the colonization of Lithuanian territory."35

For this stance, the LAF leaders were arrested by the Gestapo and sent to a concentration camp, and the organization itself was declared illegal. Senior Lithuanian army officers equally distanced themselves from the Germans, refusing to submit blindly to German orders or to participate in actions against people who the German Reich saw as enemies - most notably in the mass killings in Ponary near Wilno. The attitude of the Lithuanian army's high command toward the German authorities is evidenced by the refusal in 1942 of Commander in Chief Gen. Stasys Raštikis to take command of police formations. Moreover, in March 1943, Gen. Raštikis and other senior officers of the former Lithuanian army refused to allow their names and standing to be used to legitimize a call for volunteers for the Lithuanian SS divisions.36

The leaders of the Polish underground resistance movement followed the political situation in Lithuania closely. Since it was obvious to them that hostilities between Poles and Lithuanians were only in Germany's interest, they went to great lengths to reach the small section of Lithuanian society that was aware of the aims and consequences of German policy toward Lithuania. On the initiative of the Wilno Democratic Concentration, a political faction of the Government Delegation for Poland, a Polish-Lithuanian conference was held in Wilno on 30 June 1942. Participating in the meeting from the Polish side were Dr. Jerzy Dobrzański "Maciej" on behalf of the Polish Socialist Party, Ludwik Chmaj "Jaroński" from the People's Party, and Lucjan Krawiec "Kazimierz," while on the Lithuanian side were two representatives of the Socialist Party and two of the People's Party.

During the meeting, the Lithuanians agreed that the division of Lithuanian society into pro-Soviet, pro-German, and pro-Allied political orientations was unfavorable. They concluded that Germany's defeat was a foregone conclusion, so opting for a pro-German policy would be a mistake, and that the inexorable arrival of the Red Army would entail the incorporation of Lithuania into the Soviet state. They considered that since Poles and Lithuanians had common enemies - Germany and the USSR - an agreement with Poland was necessary. The Lithuanians therefore proposed military cooperation between the two countries' underground organizations.

Two more such conferences took place: in the autumn of 1942 in Wilno, when the Polish side was represented by the Wilno District Command of the Home Army, with Col. Aleksander Krzyżanowski "Wilk," Stanisław Kiałka "Jelonek," and Dr. Dobrzański "Maciej"; as well as in late 1943 or early 1944. They discussed territorial issues, the status of Wilno, and the exchange of underground and anti-German publications. It should be noted that very few Lithuanians held the view that there could be no free Lithuania without a free Poland. In 1943, Polish partisans' struggle against the Lithuanian administration and police in the Wilno region intensified greatly.

At that time, the Lithuanian underground did not yet have armed units of its own to take the fight to the Home Army units. A report from the Eastern Abwehr Division (Ostagentur der Abwehr) in Kaunas dated 9 January 1943 contains some very interesting reflections on Polish-Lithuanian relations: "Will the Lithuanians still manage to gain the trust of the Polish population given their conduct thus far? There can be no question of this, because the Lithuanians know very well that should Germany lose the war, they will be completely wiped out by the Poles."37

The reality, however, turned out to be different. According to Lithuanian historian Ar?nas Bubnys, when the Red Army once again began to occupy Lithuania in July 1944, collaboration between the Polish and Lithuanian resistance movements was established.38

1. The Establishment of the German Occupation

1 Wybory do sejmu w Wilnie 8 stycznia 1922 r., Wilno: Wydawnictwo Generalnego Komisariatu Wyborczego, 1922, passim.

2 According to research conducted by V. Stavinskien?, the number of Poles and Jews in the city was higher than reported by the Statistical Department of the Wilno City Magistrate, as their migration to Wilno in 1932-1939 was continuous.

3 G. Błaszczyk, Litwa współczesna, Warsaw: Wydawnictwo PWN, 1992, pp. 90-115; Dziesięciolecie Polski Odrodzonej 1918-1928, Cracow-Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Ilustrowanego Kuriera Codziennego, 1928, pp. 165-171.

4 See Table 1.

5 Rocznik Statystyczny Wilna, R. 8 (1937), Wilno: Zarząd Miejski w Wilnie, 1939.

6 People using other languages included Karaites, Latvians, Germans, Russians, Tatars, and Ukrainians (ibid., p. 9).

7 Journal of Laws of the Republic of Poland, 1925, no. 72, item 501: Holy See - Poland. Concordat. Rome, 10 February 1925; ibid., item 502: Exchange of instruments of ratification of the Concordat between the Holy See and the Republic of Poland signed in Rome, 10 February 1925.

8 L. Tomaszewski, Wileńszczyzna lat wojny i okupacji 1939-1945, Warsaw: Oficyna Wydawnicza RYTM, 1999, pp. 34-36; P. Łossowski, Litwa a sprawy polskie 1939-1940, Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1985, pp. 9-53; K. Kersten, Repatriacja ludności polskiej po II wojnie światowej, Wrocław: Ossolineum, 1974, p. 24; R. Żepkajte, "Okupacja Wilna przez Armię Czerwoną (19 września - 27 października 1939 r.)," in Społeczeństwo białoruskie, litewskie i polskie na ziemiach północno-wschodnich II Rzeczypospolitej (Białoruś Zachodnia i Litwa Wschodnia) w latach 1939-1941, eds. M. Giżejewska and T. Strzembosz, Warsaw: Instytut Studiów Politycznych, 1995, pp. 301-306; G. Surgailis, Antrojo pasaulinio karo pab?g?liai ir internuotieji Lenkijos kariai Lietuvoje, Kaunas-Šiauliai: Šiauli? universiteto leidykla, 2006, p. 263.

9 S. Ciesielski and A. Srebrakowski, "Przesiedlenie ludności z Litwy do Polski w latach 1944-1947," Wrocławskie Studia Wschodnie 4 (2000), p. 228.

10 The Archives of Modern Records (hereinafter AAN), Hoover Institute, HJ/94-95, Excerpt from the report of refugees from Wilno - appendix to the letter of the Polish Legation in Sweden no. 52/S/1 from 5 April 1941; S. Mackiewicz (Cat), Lata nadziei (17 września 1939 - 5 lipca 1945), Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Głos, 1990, pp. 147-149; J. Wołkonowski, "Litewska okupacja Wileńszczyzny (27 października 1939 - 15 czerwca 1940 roku): Sauguma w walce z polskim państwem podziemnym," Mars. Problematyka i historia wojskowości. Studia i materiały, 3, (1995), p. 52.

11 P. Eberhardt, Przemiany narodowościowe na Litwie, Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Przegląd Wschodni, 1997, p. 156; The Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation, in Branch Gdańsk, (hereinafter OKGd), S3/02/Zk, vol. 10, pp. 1889-1892, Protocol from the interrogation of the witness Zbigniew Jagiełło, 23 February 1990.

12 The remaining part of former Wilno Voivodeship, with the poviats of Dzisna, Postawa, Mołodeczno, Wilejka, and part of those of Święciany and Oszmiana were incorporated into the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. The existing poviats were liquidated and replaced by regions (rayons) whose boundaries did not always coincide with those of the former poviats (Głębokie Rayon, for example). Knowledge about the then political and territorial transformations is essential in order to understand the Soviet policy of repression conducted in keeping with the new administrative divisions. From the point of view of the NKVD, the oblast of Wilno was within the jurisdiction of the Byelorussian NKVD. See J. Żołyński, Włączenie polskich ziem wschodnich do ZSRR 1939-1940. Problemy ustrojowe i prawne, Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 1994, pp. 19-23; C. Łuczak, Polska i Polacy w II wojnie światowej, Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 1993, pp. 524-529; L. Tomaszewski, Kronika wileńska 1939-1941, Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Promos, 1990, pp. 217-219.

13 A.L. Szcześniak, Zmowa. IV rozbiór Polski, Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Alfa, 1990, pp. 115-134; S. Lewandowska, Losy wilnian. Zapis rzeczywistości okupacyjnej. Ludzie, fakty, wydarzenia 1939-1945, Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Neriton, 2004, p. 31; Die faschistische Okkupationspolitik in Polen (1939-1945), ed. W. Röhr, Berlin: Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1989, p. 116; J. Karosas, Mówią kamienie Wilna, Warsaw: Książka i Wiedza, 1968, p. 346; L. Świda, "Policja Litewska w Wilnie 1939-1944," Wojskowy Przegląd Historyczny 3 (1994), pp. 395-397.

14 The Soviet occupation authorities did not stand in the way of the operation of the university. It operated unhindered from 1 October 1939, until the Lithuanians occupied Wilno. Despite the memoranda addressed by the Stefan Batory University senate to the Lithuanian government in the second half of November 1939, the rector, Prof. Stefan Ehrenkreutz, was dismissed and a "plenipotentiary of the Minister of Education," Professor Ignas Konczius of Kaunas University, was appointed in his place. See K. Górski, Divide et impera, Białystok: Towarzystwo Literackie imienia Adama Mickiewicza, Białystok branch, Uniwersytet Warszawski, 1995, p. 149.

15 Archive of the Institute of National Remembrance (hereinafter AIPN), 1786/10, Reports concerning the Wilno district 1940-1941, Report by Nikodem Sulik "Ładyny" about Lithuanian methods used to uproot Polish language, history, and culture, no. 137/40, pp. 23-26.

16 The Polish Underground Movement Study Trust (hereinafter SPP) A.8, Section 6 of the Staff of the Commander in Chief, Ministerial Committee for Country Affairs - resolutions, instructions, protocols, notes, correspondence, 1939-1942; Resolution of the Ministerial Committee for Country Affairs, Paris, 28 December 1939, p. 39.

17 K. Tarka, "Spór o Wilno. Ze stosunków polsko-litewskich w latach drugiej wojny światowej," Zeszyty Historyczne, Paris: Institut Littéraire 114 (1995); B. Krzyżanowski, Wileński matecznik 1939-1944, Paris: Instytut Literacki, 1979, pp. 17-19; W. Chocianowicz, "Ziemie Wschodnie RP w latach 1939-1944," in Pamiętnik wileński, London: Polska Fundacja Kulturalna, 1972, p. 90.

18 S. Lewandowska, Losy wilnian, pp. 48-49.

19 W.K. Roman, Konspiracja polska na Litwie i Wileńszczyźnie, Toruń: Wydawnictwo Adam Marszałek, 2001, p. 92; SPP, 7.6.1, Report about Poles deported to the USSR, from post no. 9, p. 1; P. Kołakowski, NKWD i GRU na ziemiach polskich 1939-1945, Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Bellona, 2002, pp. 105-108.

20 See Lietuvos gyventoj? genocidas 1939-1941, ed. T.B. Burauskait?, vol. 1, Vilnius: The Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania (hereinafter LGGRTC, 1999.

21 By resolution no. VIII-757 voted by the Parliament of the Republic of Lithuania on 27 May 1998, the mass deportations from Lithuania to the USSR were recognized as war crimes that are not subject to a statute of limitations.

22 OKGd, S3/02/Zk, vol. 12, Protocol from the interrogation of witness Janina Czurejno, April 3, 1990, pp. 2233-2236, 2238,

23 The Union of Lithuanian Riflemen (Lietuvos šauli? sąjunga) also known as the "Shaulists" or "Ponar Shooters," was established in Lithuania as early as 1919. In 1940 it had 62,000 members recruited mainly from among the youth. The organization was characterized by chauvinism and very strong anti-Semitism. The organization also included soldiers of the Activist Front of Lithuania. See J. Wołkonowski, Okręg Wileński ZWZ AK w latach 1939-1945, Warsaw: Oficyna Wydawnicza Adiutor 1996, p. 75; J. Dębiński, "Ludobójstwo w litewskich Ponarach," Niedziela Ogólnopolska 34 (2000).

24 Ateitis ("Future") was a Catholic youth organization in Lithuania bringing together schoolchildren, university students, and graduates. Its members were known in Lithuanian as Ateitininkai. The organization's aim was to preserve Lithuania's cultural heritage.

25 A. Jureviči?t?, "Walki partyzanckie na Litwie w latach 1944-1953," Klio 3 (2003), pp. 65-134; M. Wardzyńska, Sytuacja ludności polskiej w Generalnym Komisariacie Litwy, czerwiec 1941 - lipiec 1944, Warsaw: Agencja Wydawnicza Mako, 1993, p. 28.

26 "Program of the Lithuanian Activist Front no. 31," in Masin?s žudyn?s Lietuvoje 1941-1944, eds. B. Baranauskas and E. Rozauskas, Vilnius: Leidykla "Mintis," 1965, p. 17.

27 The questionnaire for granting Soviet citizenship contained a clause on page 5 under which the signatory renounced his Polish identity, pledged not to seek Poland's independence and to be a loyal citizen of the USSR. Some Poles, when accepting citizenship, signed individual pages of the questionnaire excluding this one, AAN, Hoover Institute, HJ/94-95, Excerpt from the report on refugees from Wilno, being an appendix to the letter of the Polish Legation in Stockholm no. 52/S/1, 5 April 1941.

28 Ibid., letter of the Polish delegate Gustaw Potworowski to the Polish Legation in Stockholm, 7 February 1941.

29 Ibid., cipher from the Polish ambassador in Japan, Tadeusz Romer, from Tokyo to the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 29 March 1941.

30 C. Madajczyk, Polityka III Rzeszy w okupowanej Polsce, vol. 1, Warsaw: Wydawnictwo ISP PAN, 1970; V. Brandišauskas, "Litewska instytucja władzy na początku wojny niemiecko-radzieckiej: zarys działalności, kompetencje oraz stanowisko w kwestii stosunków narodowościowych (na przykładzie Komitetu Miejskiego Wilna)," in Opór wobec systemów totalitarnych na Wileńszczyźnie w okresie II wojny światowej, ed. P. Niwiński, Gdańsk: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2003, pp. 60-65.

31 Alfred Rosenberg (born 12 January 1893 in Revel, present-day Tallinn in Estonia, executed on 16 October 1946 in Nuremberg) - completed his studies in architecture in 1918 in Revel and Moscow; from 1921 served in the ranks of the SA; from 1930 to 1945 was a member of the Reichstag; from April 1933 to 1945 was head of the NSDAP Foreign Policy Office; from June 1933 held the rank of Reichsleiter; from 1934 he was the Führer's plenipotentiary for the supervision of the spiritual and worldview formation and education of the NSDAP (the so-called Rosenberg agency); from 17 November 1941 to 30 April 1945 served as Reich Minister for the occupied eastern territories; in May 1945 he fled to Schleswig-Holstein, was arrested by the US military police, indicted in the trial of major war criminals at Nuremberg and sentenced to death. See E. Piper, Alfred Rosenberg, Hitlers Chefideologie, München: Allitera Verlag, 2005; C. Madajczyk, Faszyzm i okupacje 1938-1945, vol. 1, Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, 1983, p. 562; M. Burleigh, Trzecia Rzesza. Nowa historia, trans. G. Siwek, Cracow: Wydawnictwo Znak, 2010, p. 549; Interrogation of Alfred Rosenberg, 16 April 1946, in The trial of German major war criminals, vol. 8, pp. 1-60.

32 Verordnungsblatt des Reichsministers für die besetzten Ostgebiete, 1942, p. 1.

33 AAN, Government Delegation for Poland, 202/III-132, p. 1; Latvian State Historical Archives, Riga (hereinafter LVVA), P-1018, Ap. 1, Transcript of a meeting at the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories on the functioning of national self-administrations in the general districts of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, 13 February 1942, pp. 3-15; LVVA, P-1018, Ap. 1, Decree on the Organization of the East No. 1: "Guidelines for the Conduct of Administration in the General District of Lithuania," issued by the Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, Alfred Rosenberg, Berlin, 7 March 1942, pp. 17-20.

34 Lithuanian Central State Archives (hereinafter LCVA), F. 643, Ap. 5, B. 3, sht 2, Proclamation of the administrator of internal affairs, Kostas Kalendra, and the head of the district, Bronius Draugelis, on the functioning of the police force, 27 June 1941.

35 E. Banasikowski, Na zew Ziemi Wileńskiej, Paris: Spotkania, 1988, p. 98; J. Rutkiewicz and W. Kulikow, Wojsko litewskie 1918-1940, Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Barwa i Broń, 2002, pp. 83-84; A. Jureviči?t?, "Walki," p. 76.

36 Lithuanians felt disappointed that they were being sent to fight on faraway fronts; their enthusiasm was burning out. The Germans officially announced recruitment for the SS on the radio, in newspapers and on billboards. Only 200 volunteers reported to the recruitment offices from all of Lithuania. The Germans announced that Lithuanians were not worthy to serve in the SS and were only fit for hard labor in the Reich. Lithuanian schools and universities were closed, and the young people studying there were recruited for fortification work near the front. See J. Rutkiewicz and W. Kulikow, Wojsko, p. 89.

37 The Federal Archives, Berlin (hereinafter BAB), R 90/ 121, pp. 729-732, Report on the ethnicities question in Wilno and the Wilno area.

38 See also A. Bubnys, "Litewski i polski ruch oporu w latach 1942-1945: podobieństwa i różnice," in Opór wobec systemów totalitarnych, pp. 76-80.