The Lietūkis Garage Massacre
27 June 1941: Horrific mass murder that is a also a public spectacle
It was a public event, and there are various accounts of it from both German and Lithuanian sources. And there are photographs.
As the Wehrmacht broke into the Baltic states as well as western Russia, they were accompanied by SS killing squads – the Einsatzgruppen. Their task was to ‘deal’ with the communist officials and other ‘enemies of the Reich’ – principally the Jewish population. Their murders began immediately. Most of the Jewish rural population of Lithuania, the southernmost Baltic state, had been shot within a few months.
The groups also played a role in encouraging local anti-semitic groups to join the murders.
Franz Walther Stahlecker1, the commander of Einsatzgruppe A reported to Berlin on his group’s activities during the early part of Barbarossa:
Following our orders, the Security Police was determined to solve the Jewish question with all possible means and determination most decisively.
But it was desirable that the Security Police should not put in an immediate appearance, at least in the beginning, since extraordinarily harsh measures were apt to still even German circles.
It had to be shown to the world that the native population itself took the first action by way of natural reaction against the suppression by Jews during several decades and against the terror exercised by the Communists during the preceding period.
