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ABSTRACT
Prior to Operation Barbarossa there were 220,000 Jews living in Lithuania, of which approximately 120,000 in small towns and villages. These provincial Jews were totally annihilated within the first five months of the German occupation. Extermination camps were not yet in existence, and the Jews were not even imprisoned in ghettos during the initial period. It could have been expected that the harsh German and Lithuanian violence against the Jews would be met with an active response. However, the article reveals very limited resistance, whether active or passive, by any of the Jews. In order to explain the phenomenon of so few acts of resistance, the article proposes to analyse these acts along the timeline of the stages of the extermination process, which were aimed to prepare the Jews for their deaths. Examining those acts in light of the circumstances and the physical and mental condition of the Jews in each of those stages separately, enables a better assessment of the acts of resistance that did take place during each stage, as well as a more convincing interpretation of the reasons for the limited extent of Jewish resistance in the Lithuanian province.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Ben-Tsiyon Klibansky, a native of Vilnius, Lithuania, holds a B.Sc. and a M.Sc. in electronics engineering and a Ph.D. in Jewish history from Tel Aviv University. He is a researcher of the history of East-European Jewry in the 19th and the 20th centuries with emphasis on the history of the Lithuanian Jews. He is an author of The Golden Age of the Lithuanian Yeshivot in Eastern Europe (Zalman Shazar Center in Jerusalem, 2014). He is currently a lecturer in a M.Ed. Program at Efrata College of Education in Jerusalem.
ORCID
Ben-Tsiyon Klibansky http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7536-6646
Correction Statement
This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Notes
* This article is based on the author's lecture delivered at the international academic conference ‘That Terrible Summer: 70 Years to the Annihilation of the Jewish Communities in Provincial Lithuania,’ held on 24 November 2011 in Efrata College of Education, Jerusalem.
1 Only on 2 July 1941 the German army reached eastern Lithuania, namely Sventzian (Švenčionys) and the surrounding towns Ignaline (Ignalina), Haydutsishok (Adutiškis) and others (see the Koniuḥovsky Collection in the Yad Vashem archives [henceforth: YVA-O.71], files 23, 27, 29).
2 There is no exact figure accepted by scholars regarding the number of Jews in Lithuania on 22 June 1941. Yitzḥak Arad estimated their number at 215,000–220,000 (Arad, “The Murder,” 176); Dov Levin – 225,000 at least (Levin, The Litvaks, 135, 199). The figure mentioned in the text is a derivation and in some way a correction to those numbers. Attention should be paid to the unofficial figure of 208,500 Jews for 1 January 1941, published by the Lithuanian Board of Statistics. The number of non-Jews then was 2.8 million (Dieckmann, Deutsche Besatzungspolitik, 280).
3 In Vilna (Vilnius) – 58,000 Jews out of 210,000 citizens; Kovna (Kaunas) – 32,000 out of 156,000; Shavl (Šiauliai) – 6,000 out of 32,000 and Ponivezh (Panevėžys) – 6,000 out of 27,000 (Dieckmann, Deutsche Besatzungspolitik, 282–3).
4 Jews and Lithuanians lived side-by-side in some 600 towns, villages and estates. Prior to First World War, the Jews were a central component in many of them. Their percentage declined significantly due to this war and to the large emigration following it to the large cities and to foreign countries. Examine of the percentage of towns in which Jews were still more than one-third of their population reveals 34% of the 65 small towns (with 500–1000 residents), 38% of the 90 middle-size towns (1000–5000 residents) and 30% of the 17 large towns (over 5000 residents). In comparison, the percentage of Jews in the four large cities was 20–28% (Levin, Pinkas hakehillot, 113–705).
5 Bubnys's study was written for the International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania, and did not receive its approval. The testimonies of survivors upon which Bankier based his book are from the Koniuḥovsky Collection in the Yad Vashem archives.
6 Bubnys, “Holocaust in Lithuanian Province,” 26. Gudleve is located 10 km south of Kovna. Bubnys also mentions cases of resistance in two other towns (ibid., 10, 61), but it should be noted that at that time these towns were outside the borders of Lithuania.
7 Bankier, Expulsion and Extermination, 40.
8 Ibid. This instance, in the Postov (Postawy) ghetto, was also 6 km outside the Lithuanian border!
9 Dieckmann, “Holocaust,” 76, 83.
10 Ibid., 80.
11 Dieckmann, Deutsche Besatzungspolitik, 377.
12 Ibid., 1196.
13 See Dina Porat, “L’ma hakavana b‘ketson latevaḥ’?” [What is the Meaning of ‘Like Sheep to the Slaughter’?], Yisrael Hayom, 2 May 2011; Keshev, Ketzon latevaḥ?, 19.
14 On this problematic nature, see Browning, Remembering Survival, 4–12.
15 In such cases, only one example was presented in the text, while its parallels were mentioned in the note.
16 Especially the Yad Vashem Testimonies Collection of the Central Historical Committee in Munich [henceforth: YVA-M.1.E]), the detailed anthologies of the Jews’ fate in the provincial towns Erslavaitė, Masinės žudynės; Barak, “Arei hasadeh;” Levin, Pinkas hakehillot, 113–705; Dean, Encyclopedia, 1038–157; Vitkus and Bargmanas, Holokaustas žemaitijoje and memorial books on Lithuanian towns.
17 See, for example: Levin, Pinkas hakehillot, 672; Garfunkel, “Ḥamisihim shana,” 5. Cf. Sužiedėlis, “The Historical Sources,” 119–22.
18 Sužiedėlis, “Jews and Lithuanians,” 100, 115. On the governmental attitude towards the Jews see Levin, The Litvaks, 141–3.
19 Levin, The Litvaks, 182–5.
20 Dieckmann and Sužiedėlis, The Persecution, 100; Truska, “The Upsurge,” 31. On the actual percent of Jews in the governmental apparatus see Truska, “The Upsurge,” 11–2.
21 Truska, “The Upsurge,” 21–2. These elements included Voldemarists (named after Augustinas Voldemaras, the leader of the radical wing of the Nationalist party) as well as former members of the Lithuanian police and the paramilitary Riflemen's Union (known as Shaulists).
22 Dieckmann and Sužiedėlis, The Persecution, 117–8; Truska, “The Upsurge,” 22–6, 29.
23 Truska, “The Upsurge,” 1–2. On the actual number of Jews in the Soviet repressive institutions in Lithuania see ibid., 12–5; Dieckmann, Deutsche Besatzungspolitik, 170–1. On the percentage of Jews among the deportees see Truska, “The Upsurge,” 18.
24 On these causes see, for example, Arad, “The Murder,” 188–91; Dieckmann and Sužiedėlis, The Persecution, 100; Bubnys, The Holocaust in Lithuania, 50–1; Dieckmann, Deutsche Besatzungspolitik, 171–7.
25 Latvian soldiers did not let anyone, either Jews or Soviet officials, to pass the Latvian border (Rot’holtz-Kur, “Mayn gviyes-eydus,” 385–6). For exceptional cases of opening a border, see for example: ibid., 386; Farbstein, Mi'Telz ad Telz, 224.
26 Levin, The Litvaks, 199; Bankier, Expulsion and Extermination, 42; Sužiedėlis, “The Burden of 1941,” 50–51. See, for example, a testimony from Aniksht (Anykščiai): YVA-O.71, 116.
27 Dieckmann and Sužiedėlis, The Persecution, 121.
28 Bankier, Expulsion and Extermination, 29.
29 Cf. Dieckmann and Sužiedėlis, The Persecution, 120. The civil administration that the Germans established on 17 July 1941 drained the Provisional Government of its authority until it disbanded on 5 August 1941.
30 For the background of its formation see ibid., 142.
31 Bankier, Expulsion and Extermination, 33–5, 97, 205; Sužiedėlis, “Lithuanian Collaboration,” 157–8.
32 Dieckmann wrote:
From the Jewish point of view, the Lithuanian perpetrator stood out over all others. Often the German appeared only marginally, and sometimes not at all. This is especially true in the towns and the many places in the country's periphery (Deutsche Besatzungspolitik, 379; translated from the German).
33 Barak, “Arei hasadeh,” 246. Telz: 65 km west of Shavl; Olshad: 14 km northwest of Telz (with 30 Jewish families).
34 YVA-O.71, 154 (translated from Yiddish). Pilvishok: 50 km southwest of Kovna (with 700 Jews).
35 Bankier, Expulsion and Extermination, 164.
36 Ibid., 39, 163–4.
37 Bankier states that this was the principle function of the new administration (ibid., 28). See also Dieckmann, Deutsche Besatzungspolitik, 364.
38 Bankier, Expulsion and Extermination, 28–9, 42–58; Dieckmann, “Holocaust,” 77; Dieckmann and Sužiedėlis, The Persecution, 144. Bubnys mentions this policy in individual towns alone (“Holocaust in Lithuanian Province,” 31, 57, 62–3, 65).
39 Bankier, Expulsion and Extermination, 58–72. These events are also briefly mentioned by Bubnys (“Holocaust in Lithuanian Province,” 28, 39, 45, 59, 61–2) and by Dieckmann as well (“Holocaust,” 77, 82, 84).
40 See, for example, a testimony on Pilvishok: YVA-O.71, 154.
41 Bankier, Expulsion and Extermination, 29, 72–81.
42 Ibid., 29–30.
43 Bankier and Dieckmann found it difficult to see this treatment, which concurrently appeared all over Lithuania, as a spontaneous and random reaction (Expulsion and Extermination, 42–3; Deutsche Besatzungspolitik, 377–8). Bubnys was mistaken in his claim that in that period the persecution was only political rather than racial (“Holocaust in Lithuanian Province,” 74. Regarding this, see Arad, “Review,” 1–2). This article will not deal with the question whether the abuse in the first period was really planned offstage in an ordered program to exterminate Lithuanian Jewry, since its perspective is from the viewpoint of the Jewish victims.
44 Dean pointed out the resemblance of these makeshift ghettos to labor camps or prisons rather than to traditional full scale ghettos (Encyclopedia, 1035). For the essential difference between the character of the ghettos in the occupied areas of the Soviet Union as compared to the ghettos in Poland, see Michman, Hageta’ot hayehudiyim, 98.
45 Bankier, Expulsion and Extermination, 82; Dieckmann, “Holocaust,” 79; Dieckmann and Sužiedėlis, The Persecution, 145.
46 Cf. a notion in Pravenishok (Pravieniškės) that a Lithuanian doctor from Kovna suggested giving an herbal soup to the Jews to kill their desire to resist before their murder (Barak, “Arei hasadeh,” 339).
47 The last mass murders took place up until the middle of November 1941.
48 This situation is repeated over and over in the testimonies in the Konioḥovsky Collection and is mentioned in passing in Bubnys, “Holocaust in Lithuanian Province” as well.
49 The exception was those few towns where Jews were interned in work camps.
50 See Bankier, Expulsion and Extermination, 202.
51 Regarding the shock of the Jews at their neighbors’ behavior, see: ibid., 51, 75, 165; Dieckmann, Deutsche Besatzungspolitik, 379.
52 In contrary to the attitude of other researches mentioned in the ‘Background’ section above.
53 These suggested three major periods did not occur at the same time in the various towns. Thus, they should be considered as schematic periods or stages, which are especially meaningful from the victims’ perspective. For another division in the provincial towns, from the perpetrators’ point of view, see Bubnys, “The Holocaust in Lithuania,” 212–3.
54 YVA-O.71, 99 (translated from Yiddish). Dubinik: 40 km northeast of Vilna (with 30 Jewish families).
55 Ibid., 80; Yerushalmi, Pinkas Shavli, 370; Barak, “Arei hasadeh,” 362. Cf. Rot’holtz-Kur, “Mayn gviyes-eydus,” 386. Rakishok: 80 km northeast of Ponivezh (with 3000 Jews). The German army entered the town on 28 June 1941.
56 Barak, “Arei hasadeh,” 343. Kupishok: 40 km northeast of Ponivezh (with 1200 Jews).
57 Niger, Kidush Hashem, 417. Shirvint: 45 km northwest of Vilna (with 700 Jews). The next period in Shirvint occurred only at the end of that month.
58 Barak, “Arei hasadeh,” 312. Mariampol: 50 km southwest of Kovna (with 2800 Jews). Several other incidents of active resistance by Jews occurred in that town (ibid.)
59 YVA-O.71, 27. Haydutsishok: 95 km northeast of Vilna (with 1000 Jews). The German army entered the town only on 2 July 1941.
60 Barak, “Arei hasadeh,” 242. Ushpol: 70 km east of Ponivezh (with 100 Jewish families).
61 Ibid., 269. For a slightly different version of the event see YVA-O.71, 17. Vainute: 60 km southeast of Meml (Klaipėda; with 55 Jewish families). Cf. similar acts of resistance by the rabbis of Naishtot-Tavrig (Žemaičių Naumiestis; YVA-O.71, 16) and Shvekshne (Švekšna; YVA-O.71, 14; YVA-1547/104-7) and by a respected Jew from Shat (Šeta; YVA-M.1.E, 1569).
62 Barak, “Arei hasadeh,” 313.
63 YVA-O.71, 23. Sventzian: 75 km northeast of Vilna (with 2000 Jews). Cf. verbal protests towards German and Lithuanian injustice in Aniksht and Gorzd (Gargždai; Barak, “Arei hasadeh,” 248, 258 respectively).
64 Dean, Encyclopedia, 1032–3.
65 YVA-O.71, 153 (translated from Yiddish). Shaki: 55 km west of Kovna (with 600 Jews). There is no specific date in this testimony to the ghettoization of the women and children.
66 Sapirshtein, “Umkum fun Visokidvorer jidn,” 1874–5. For a somewhat different version of the events see YVA-O.71, 88. Visoki-Dvor: 50 km southwest of Vilna (with 200 Jews).
67 Barak, “Arei hasadeh,” 309. Mazheik: 75 km northwest of Shavl (with 1200 Jews).
68 YVA-O.71, 84. Zhosle: 45 km east of Kovna (with 900 Jews); Koshedar: 10 km west of Zhosle. Cf. other incidents of resistance to leaving homes in Virbaln (Virbalis) and Kruk (Kriūkai nearby Shaki): Barak, “Arei hasadeh,” 278, 353 respectively.
69 YVA-O.71, 84.
70 The testimonies mention the Vishtinetz (Vištytis) ghetto, where the young man Manne Estersohn and the local rabbi Zalman Sudelnitsky refused to dig death pits (Barak, “Arei hasadeh,” 279).
71 ibid., 264. Vabolnik: 35 km northeast of Ponivezh (with 50 Jewish families); Posvol: 25 km northwest of Vabolnik.
72 YVA-O.71, 84. Zhezhmer: 8 km south of Koshedar (with 200 Jewish families). Cf. another incident of Ḥaya Friedman who fled from the Betigole (Betygala) ghetto as well (Barak, “Arei hasadeh,” 253).
73 Barak, “Arei hasadeh,” 355. Krakinove: 25 km southwest of Ponivezh (with 60 Jewish families).
74 YVA-O.71, 37 (translated from Yiddish). Riteve: 30 km southwest of Telz.
75 Nearly all the declared Communists were murdered in the early stages of the German occupation of Lithuania (see Bankier, Expulsion and Extermination, 35 [fn. 41], 82 [fn. 66]).
76 YVA-O.71, 154 (translated from Yiddish). For Dr. Dembovsky's speech see also Barak, “Arei hasadeh,” 335; Farbstein, The Forgotten Memoirs, 378. Cf. similar expressions of defiance by Jews standing by the death pits – the member of the revisionist movement Yitzḥok Bloḥ in the Rainiai ghetto next to Telz and the rabbi of Tzitevian (Tytuvėnai; =Azriel Medyn) who had been led to nearby Rasein (Raseiniai; YVA-O.71, 35; Barak, “Arei hasadeh,” 361, respectively).
77 YVA-O.71, 121 (translated from Yiddish). Meretch: 80 km south of Kovna (with 800 Jews). Cf. other protests before being murdered made by Osher Miller in Visoki-Dvor (Sapirshtein, “Umkum fun Visokidvorer jidn,” 1880–1), Yoḥeved Shkliarsky in Doig (Daugai), Rochel Shalmuk in Leipun (Leipalingis) and the young woman Irle Tzin in Plungian (Plungė; Barak, “Arei hasadeh,” 261, 306, 338 respectively). The event in Plungian is well known there to this day, but is described in the memoirs of Jakovas Bunka as active resistance rather than just a protest (Bunka, The Jewish Page, 29).
78 Barak, “Arei hasadeh,” 309.
79 Ibid., 278. At the same time, some of the young men spoke out against the murderers before their death as well. Virbaln: 75 km southwest of Kovna (with 600 Jews).
80 YVA-O.71, 160. Vilkovishk: 60 km southwest of Kovna (with 3600 Jews). Cf. another incident of refusal in Shilel (Šilalė), where Tamara Arenberg, the wife of the town veterinarian, had not let the White Armbanders to undress her two children, and the Lithuanians shot her and her children in their embrace (Ibid., 8).
81 Ibid., 7 (translated from Yiddish). Tavrig: 90 km southeast of Meml (with 2000 Jews).
82 Ibid., 45. At that same occasion another two Jews attempted to escape the pit. Erzhvilik: 110 km southeast of Meml (with 150 Jews); Batok: 15 km northwest of Erzhvilik. Cf. another incident of a refusal of a man, Motel Punsky, in Vilki (Vilkija; Barak, “Arei hasadeh,” 275).
83 In Vendzigole (Vandžiogala) and in Salok (Salakas; Barak, “Arei hasadeh,” 281, 322 respectively).
84 See text near note 77 above.
85 YVA-O.71, 121 (translated from Yiddish; my emphasis). Alite: 30 km northwest of Meretch. Cf. struggles against the murderers of Efraim Gozhansky who forcefully opposed the Lithuanians in Doig and of Yitzḥok Malkenzon, a strong Jew from Shkud (Skuodas), who even succeeded in choking one of the Lithuanian guards (Barak, “Arei hasadeh,” 261; YVA-O.71, 67, respectively).
86 Barak, “Arei hasadeh,” 296. This reaction is not mentioned in YVA-O.71, 49; Levitt, “Ḥurbn Yurburg,” 1853–4. Yurburg: 85 km west of Kovna (with 600 families). Cf. the incident of Jews of Posvol, who had been taken to their deaths on August 26, and fell upon their captors (Barak, “Arei hasadeh,” 332).
87 Barak, “Arei hasadeh,” 339 (the original testimony at Yad Vashem archives is missing). While these Jews were quickly caught and doomed to be murdered, two of them were able to escape; afterwards they even killed two armed Lithuanians who captured them nearby Kovna. Pravenishok: 20 km east of Kovna.
88 One of the exceptional cases of resistance took place in Zhager (Žagarė). Many of the town's Jews were doomed to be executed in the town square rather than by a pit. Due to the resistance of two of them, many Jews succeeded in escaping (YVA-M.1.E, 931).
89 YVA-O.71, 47 (translated from Yiddish). Kelm: 40 km southwest of Shavl (with 2000 Jews); Pupšiai – a village 65 km west of Kelm. Cf. the incident in Shilel where one hundred men and boys were taken to the pits on 7 July 1941. The elderly sexton of the synagogue asked for a cigarette from the Lithuanian who was standing guard next to him. When the guard lowered his weapon to get the cigarette, the sexton fell on him and bit him in the throat (Barak, “Arei hasadeh,” 369).
90 Ronder, “Hatevaḥ hahamoni,” 234; YVA-M.1.E, 1415. Keidan: 40 km north of Kovna; Shat: 15 km east of Kėdainiai; Zheim: 20 km southeast of Kėdainiai.
91 Regarding Tzodok Shlapobersky, a well-known figure in Keidan, see Ḥittin, “Min hanof ha’enoshi,” 223–4.
92 Erslavaitė, Masinės žudynės, 140–1 (translated from Lithuanian). For similar versions see YVA-O.71, 40; YVA-M.1.E, 1415.
93 For example, the struggles of the shoḥet [ritual slaughterer] and the Vinnik brothers in Betigole and of Hirshke Friedman and Shmerl Shapiro in Yaneve (Jonava) with the Lithuanian murderers (Barak, “Arei hasadeh,” 253 and Blumberg, “Yemey-ha’enut,” 176, respectively), the attempts of Pertsikovitch in Butrimantz (Butrimonys) and Elozor Segal in Ponivezh to strangle armed Lithuanians, and the grabbing the leg of one of the Lithuanian murderers and severely beating him by Binyomin Rothschild in Shaki (Barak, “Arei hasadeh,” 252, 331, 373 respectively).
94 Regarding the circumstances that allowed it, see Arad, “The Murder,” 188, 193. See also Dieckmann and Sužiedėlis, The Persecution, 147.
95 The first of the death camps, Chełmno, was activated in December 1941, after the extermination of the Jews in the provincial towns of Lithuania.
96 Clear evidence to this is quoted in Bankier, Expulsion and Extermination, 59–60.
97 Ghetto Fighters House Archives, 20730, 5 (translated from Hebrew; my emphasis). Utyan: 90 km northeast of Vilna (with 100 Jewish families). Cf. a similar formulation in testimony about the town of Krozh (Kražiai; Barak, “Arei hasadeh,” 350). See also the testimony of Jews who were assembled in the aforementioned shed in the town of Koshedar: ‘Not a few could still have been saved and run away. But it seems that no one believed that their lives were in danger, and they did not run away from the shed’ (YVA-O.71, 83; translated from Yiddish).
98 YVA-O.71, 132 (translated from Yiddish; my emphasis). Lazdei: 80 km southwest of Kovna (with 1200 Jews). Alite and Marijampol are both 40 km from Lazdei. Cf. a similar incident in Keidan (YVA-M.1.E, 1415).
99 A resident of the town of Shukian (Šaukėnai), for example, told the few who remained alive that the Jews of the town who had been taken out of the barn (designated as a ghetto) were murdered. His listeners refused to believe him (Barak, “Arei hasadeh,” 367).
100 See text near note 89 above.
101 YVA-O.71, 47 (translated from Yiddish).
102 Keshev wrote about the results of losing hope:
When all hope of salvation was lost – any desire to fight, to resist, to raise hand or foot was lost as well. Then an abysmal despair takes over the soul, whose expression is the anticipation of the redeeming death that should come quickly and release from this life that cannot be saved (Ketzon latevaḥ?, 57; translated from Hebrew).
103 YVA-O.71, 24 (translated from Yiddish). See also Svirsky-Holtzman, “Iḥ bin geven in Polygon,” 569, regarding this event. Nai-Sventzian: 10 km west of Sventzian.