A lecture at The International Conference on the History and Memory of the National Socialist Concentration Camps, May 18 – 21, 2021.
After the German invasion of Lithuania following “Operation Barbarossa” (June 1941), Nazi camps were established there. Those Camps became a space of mass violence, as Jews and non-Jews were forced to work there, and most found their death. One of the most notorious death-camps was in the forests that surrounded Vilnius: Ponary (Paneriai in Lithuanian). In this forest, the Soviets dug pit-wholes before the war to install fuel for tanks. After the Nazi occupation, this place became an execution site for approximately 70,000 people, mostly Jews, but also Poles, POWs and others. The shootings on victims into the pits carried out mostly by Lithuanians with the guidance of Germans. The local population, who lived in the nearby villages, knew what is going on there.
The Ninth Fort camp served as an extermination site for more than 50,000 people, most of whom were Jews from Kovno and Jews who had been deported from Germany and other locations. From both death camps bold escapes were carried out by Sonderkommando Units, which worked to cover up the Nazi crimes as part of “Operation 1005”.
Approximately 2,500 skilled Jews and their families lived in two forced-labor-camps near Vilnius: Kailis, a camp for fur processing, and HKP (Heereskraftfahrpark), military vehicle repair garages. In both camps cultural and educational activity was conducted. The German commander of HKP was Captain Karl Plagge. He tried to rescue Jews and for his actions was nominated “Righteous Among the Nations”.
Those Lithuanian Nazi camps serve even today as spaces of remembrance and commemoration. They are still marked by the National-Socialism past experience of the victims, the survivors and the local population. They are evidence for a complex memory of war, Genocide, and mass violence. But also, as spaces in which resistance actions were carried out, and individual patterns of actions produced dimensions of rescue and memory. In a nationalistic political atmosphere which dominant Lithuania today, it will be interesting to examine this case study of the Lithuanian Nazi camps.
