What nationality were the killing squad who helped murder 100,000 people mainly from Vilnius?
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Ypatingasis būrys Ypatingasis būrys ("Special Squad") or Special SD and German Security Police Squad (Lithuanian: "Vokiečių Saugumo policijos ir SD ypatingasis būrys" , Polish: "Specjalny Oddział SD i Niemieckiej Policji Bezpieczeństwa" , also colloquially "strzelcy ponarscy" ("Ponary riflemen" in Polish) (1941–1944) was a Lithuanian killing squad of approximately 50 men, also called the "Lithuanian equivalent of Sonderkommando", operating in the Vilnius Region. The unit, primarily composed of Lithuanian volunteers was formed by the German occupational government and was subordinate to Einsatzkommando 9 and later to Sicherheitsdienst (SD) and Sicherheitspolizei (Sipo). There are different estimates regarding the size of the unit. Polish historian Czesław Michalski estimates that it grew from base of 50 while Tadeusz Piotrowski asserts about that there were 100 volunteers at its onset. According to Michalski, after its initial creation at various times hundreds of people were its members. Arūnas Bubnys states that it never exceeded a core of forty or fifty men. 118 names are known, 20 of the members have been punished. Together with German police the squad participated in the Ponary massacre, where some 70,000 Jews were murdered, along with estimated 20,000 Poles and 8,000 Russian POWs, many from nearby Vilnius.
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Ponary massacre The Ponary massacre (Polish: "zbrodnia w Ponarach" ) was the mass murder of up to 100,000 people by German SD, SS and Lithuanian Nazi collaborators, such as the Ypatingasis būrys units,
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Voćin massacre The Voćin massacre was the killing of 43 civilians in Voćin, Croatia, by the Serbian White Eagles paramilitary unit on 13 December 1991, during the Croatian War of Independence. The massacre was carried out after the unit was ordered to abandon the village before the Croatian Army ("Hrvatska vojska" – HV) recaptured the area in Operation Papuk-91. All the victims were local Croats, save one Serb, who had tried to protect his neighbours. Gunfire was the leading cause of death, though some of the victims were killed with axes or chainsaws, or were burned to death. The victims exhibited signs of torture and were left unburied. On the night of 13–14 December, the White Eagles dynamited a 550-year-old church in the village.
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List of Polish Jews From the Middle Ages until the Holocaust, Jews comprised a significant part of the Polish population. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, known as a "Jewish paradise" for its religious tolerance, attracted tens of thousands of Jews who fled persecution from other European countries, even though, at times, discrimination against Jews surfaced in Poland just as it did elsewhere in Europe. Poland was a major spiritual and cultural center for Ashkenazi Jews and Ashkenazi Jewry. At the start of the Second World War, Poland had the largest Jewish population in the world (over 3.3 million), but the vast majority of them were killed by the Nazis in the Holocaust during the German occupation of Poland, particularly through the implementation of the "Final Solution" mass extermination program. Only 369,000 (11%) survived. After massive postwar emigration, the Polish Jewish population stands at somewhere between 50,000 and 200,000.
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Walter Blume (SS officer) Walter Blume (23 July 1906 – 13 November 1974) was a mid-ranking SS commander and leader of "Sonderkommando" 7a, part of the extermination commando group Einsatzgruppe B. The unit perpetrated the killings of thousands of Jews in Belarus and Russia. Blume was responsible for the deportation of over 46,000 Greek Jews to Auschwitz.
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Robert Eideman Robert Eideman (Latvian: "Roberts Eidemanis" ) (1895 – June 12, 1937) was an ethnic Latvian Soviet Komkor, writer and poet. He was born in Lejasciems, Gulbene Municipality in modern-day Latvia. He fought in World War I in the Imperial Russian Army and the Russian Civil War on the side of the Soviet Red Army. He was a member of the Russian Constituent Assembly of 1918. He was one of the defendants in the Case of Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization alongside Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky. He was executed in Moscow. After the death of Joseph Stalin, he was rehabilitated.
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Guerrilla war in the Baltic states The Guerrilla war in the Baltic states or the Forest Brothers resistance movement was the armed struggle against Soviet rule that spanned from 1944 to the mid-1950s. After the occupation of the Baltic territories by the Soviets in 1944, an insurgency started. According to some estimates, 10,000 partisans in Estonia, 10,000 partisans in Latvia and 30,000 partisans in Lithuania and many more supporters were involved. This war continued as an organised struggle until 1956 when the superiority of the Soviet military caused the native population to adopt other forms of resistance. While estimates related to the extent of partisan movement vary, but there seems to be a consensus among researchers that by international standards, the Baltic guerrilla movements were extensive. Proportionally, the partisan movement in the post-war Baltic states was of a similar size as the Viet Cong movement in South Vietnam.
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Untermensch Untermensch (] , "underman", "sub-man", "subhuman"; plural: "Untermenschen") is a term that became infamous when the Nazis used it to describe non-Aryan "inferior people" often referred to as "the masses from the East", that is Jews, Roma, and Slavs - mainly ethnic Poles, Serbs, and later also Russians. The term was also applied to most Blacks, and persons of color, with some particular exceptions. Jewish people were to be exterminated in the Holocaust, along with Romani people, and the physically and mentally disabled According to the "Generalplan Ost", the Slavic population of East-Central Europe was to be reduced in part through mass murder in the Holocaust, with a majority expelled to Asia and used as slave labor in the Reich. These concepts were an important part of the Nazi racial policy.
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Ethnic minorities in Lithuania The government of Lithuania has made provision for ethnic minorities since 1918. A substantial Jewish group that existed up to World War II was almost eliminated in the Holocaust. The Census of 2011 showed that 15.8% of inhabitants belonged to ethnic minorities: the two largest groups were the Poles and the Russians, although the proportions had decreased since independence in 1989. Other minorities include the Samogitians - not classified in the Census - and the historically important Latvian-speaking Kursenieki.
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NKVD prisoner massacres The NKVD prisoner massacres were a series of mass executions carried out by the Soviet NKVD secret police during World War II against political prisoners across Eastern Europe, primarily Poland, Ukraine, the Baltic states, Bessarabia and other parts of the Soviet Union from which the Red Army was retreating following the Nazi German attack on the Soviet positions in occupied Poland, known as Operation Barbarossa.
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Iron Wolf (character) The Iron Wolf (Lithuanian: "Geležinis Vilkas" ) is a mythical character from a medieval legend of the founding of Vilnius, the capital city of the old Grand Duchy of Lithuania and modern Republic of Lithuania. First found in the Lithuanian Chronicles, the legend shares certain similarities with the Capitoline Wolf and possibly reflected Lithuanian desire to showcase their legendary origins from the Roman Empire (see the Palemonids). The legend became popular during the era of Romantic nationalism. Today Iron Wolf is one of the symbols of Vilnius and is used by sports teams, Lithuanian military, scouting organizations, and others.
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Sari Squad Sari Squad is the name chosen for themselves by a group of women, mainly of south Asian origin, who helped to defend multicultural clubs and gatherings in London, United Kingdom, from racist attacks in the early 1980s.
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Sida shooting The Sida shooting was a mass murder that occurred at an observation post of the Russian peacekeeping forces near the village Sida in Gali district, Abkhazia on June 1, 1997, when 22-year-old Sergeant Artur Vaganov killed ten of his comrades and wounded three others, before committing suicide.
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Palmiry massacre The Palmiry massacre was a series of mass executions carried out by Nazi German forces, during the Second World War, near the village of Palmiry in the Kampinos Forest, located northwest of Warsaw.
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Belarusians in Lithuania The Belarusian minority in Lithuania (Belarusian: беларусы , "biełarusy", Russian: белорусы , "byelorusy", Lithuanian: "baltarusiai" or "gudai") numbered 36,200 persons at the 2011 census, and at 1.2% of the total population of Lithuania, being the third most populous national minority. The Belarusian national minority in Lithuania has deep historical, cultural and political relations. Many famous Belarusians lived and created in Lithuania, mostly its capital Vilnius; it was in Vilnius that the first standardized Belarusian language grammar was printed in.
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Role of France in the Rwandan Genocide The role of France in the Rwandan Genocide of 1994 has been a source of controversy and debate both within and beyond France and Rwanda. France actively supported the Hutu-led government of Juvénal Habyarimana against the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front, which since 1990 had been engaged in a conflict intended to restore the rights of Rwandan Tutsis both within Rwanda and exiled in neighboring countries following over four decades of anti-Tutsi violence. France provided arms and military training to Habyarimana's youth militias, the "Interahamwe" and "Impuzamugambi", which were among the government's primary means of operationalizing the genocide following the assassination of Juvénal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira on April 6, 1994.
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Deportation of the Crimean Tatars The deportation of the Crimean Tatars (Crimean Tatar "Qırımtatar sürgünligi"; Russian "Депортация крымских татар"; Ukrainian "Депортація кримських татар") refers to the ethnic cleansing of Tatars from Crimea on 18 May 1944 carried out by Lavrentiy Beria, chief of the Soviet security and secret police, under the orders of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Within a space of three days, the Soviet NKVD deported at least 191,044 Crimean Tatar people in cattle trains—including women, children, and the elderly, as well as Communists and members of the Red Army−several thousands kilometers away to modern-day Uzbekistan. The deportation was ordered by Stalin as collective punishment for the 15,000–20,000 Tatars who had joined the Wehrmacht during the German occupation of Crimea in World War II, even though 25,033 Crimean Tatars had joined the Soviet Red Army during the war.
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Lithuanian Helsinki Group The Lithuanian Helsinki Group (full name: the Public Group to Promote the Implementation of the Helsinki Accords in Lithuania; Lithuanian: "Helsinkio susitarimų vykdymui remti Lietuvos visuomeninė grupė" ) was a dissident organization active in the Lithuanian SSR, one of the republics of the Soviet Union, in 1975–81. Established to monitor the implementation of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, better known as Helsinki Accords, it was the first human rights organization in Lithuania. The group published over 30 documents that exposed religious repressions, limitations on freedom of movement, political abuse of psychiatry, discrimination of minorities, persecution of human right activists, and other violations of human rights in the Soviet Union. Most of the documents reached the West and were published by other human rights groups. Members of the group were persecuted by the Soviet authorities. Its activities diminished after it lost members due to deaths, emigration, or imprisonment, though it was never formally disbanded. Some of the group's functions were taken over by the Catholic Committee for the Defense of the Rights of Believers, founded by five priests in 1978. Upon his release from prison, Viktoras Petkus reestablished the Lithuanian Helsinki Group in 1988.
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Lwów pogrom (1918) The Lwów pogrom (Polish: "pogrom lwowski" , German: "Lemberg pogrom" ) was a pogrom of the Jewish population of the city of Lwów (since 1945 Lviv, Ukraine) that took place on November 21–23, 1918 during the Polish–Ukrainian War, in the aftermath of World War I. The Ukrainian National Council proclaimed the formation of the Ukrainian Republic on November 1, 1918 with Lviv as its capital. The Regency Council of the Kingdom of Poland declared Poland's independence a week later and formed the government on 14 November 1918. The battle of Lwów lasted until 21 November 1918. In the course of the following three days of unrest in the city, an estimated 52–150 Jewish residents were killed and hundreds injured, with widespread looting carried out by Polish soldiers, and those only pretending to be so, as well as lawless civilians, and local criminals. According to Norman Davies, two hundred and seventy more Ukrainians were killed during this time as well; historian Christoph Mick stated that not a single Ukrainian was murdered. The Poles did not stop the pogrom until two days after it began. Over a thousand people, including some soldiers, were arrested by Polish authorities during and after the pogrom. Some early accounts of the pogrom, listing multiple thousands of casualties, were likely exaggerated.
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Riga Ghetto The Riga Ghetto was a small area in Maskavas Forštate, a neighborhood of Riga, Latvia, designated by the Nazis where Jews from Latvia, and later from Germany, were forced to live during World War II. On October 25, 1941, the Nazis relocated all Jews from Riga and the vicinity to the ghetto while the non-Jewish inhabitants were evicted. Most of the Latvian Jews (about 24,000) were killed on November 30 and December 8, 1941 in the Rumbula massacre. The Nazis transported a large number of German Jews to the ghetto; most of them were later killed in massacres.
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The Holocaust in Latvia The Holocaust in Latvia refers to the war crimes of Nazis and Nazi collaborators victimizing Jews during the occupation of Latvia by Nazi Germany.
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Lithuania Lithuania ( , Lithuanian: "Lietuva" ] ), officially the Republic of Lithuania (Lithuanian: "Lietuvos Respublika" ), is a country in the Baltic region of northern-eastern Europe. One of the three Baltic states, it is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, to the east of Sweden and Denmark. It is bordered by Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, Poland to the south, and Kaliningrad Oblast (a Russian exclave) to the southwest. Lithuania has an estimated population of 2.8 million people as of 2017 , and its capital and largest city is Vilnius. Lithuanians are a Baltic people. The official language, Lithuanian, along with Latvian, is one of only two living languages in the Baltic branch of the Indo-European language family.