On June 27, 1941, in the city of Kaunas, on the territory of a garage, 52 people were killed. The local self-defense forces called the “White Armbanders,” named after the white armband on their arm with the inscription TDA (National Labor Guard), created by the activist front organization LAF, under the order of mandatory work for all Jews in the occupied territories, at 9 a.m. were escorting Jewish men from the NKVD prison to work. Next to the garage of the company “Lietukis” was a cemetery where funerals of killed LAF insurgents took place. Nearby, in a hotel, anti-Soviet activists recently released from prison were staying overnight. The Jews were led past the automobile garage, on the territory of which, during the Soviet republic, there were stables of the Red Army, after whose departure horse manure remained, which now had to be cleaned up. An employee who was responsible for this, seeing the column of Jews, ran up to the one leading them and insisted that it would be good for the Jews to clean the manure themselves. The escort agreed and ordered the Jews to enter the garage territory and clean the manure. When the Jews were led into the garage, which had three large gates, a large crowd of local residents gathered. What happened next unfolded in a terrible way. The people were not given tools to clean the manure but were forced to clean it with their hands. Naturally, this provoked refusal. It is unknown who first began beating the Jews. But how it ended is captured in 17 photographs taken by Nazis Karl Reder and Wilhelm Gunsilius, who filmed the pogrom in Kaunas.

Several Lithuanians of different social classes, judging by their clothing, gathered around. They held sticks in their hands. They began beating the Jews. Blows were struck to various parts of the body. If a person fell, they were beaten to get up. Some were beaten to death. Here are the memories of a witness to those events, Laimonas Noreika. He was 11 years old at the time:

“In June 1941, when the war broke out, my brother and I were working in a bookbinding workshop. Returning home at the corner of the house from Vytautas Avenue, we saw people standing nearby. Possibly, about fifty small crowd stopped on the sidewalk. We approached with my brother. I was then fifteen years old, my brother was eighteen. When I turned to the fence, there was a wire fence. I leaned very close. It was the ‘Lietukis’ garage. Three garage doors were open, and the yard was full of horse manure. There was so much of it – possibly, either the Germans or the Russians kept horses in that garage before they fled, and a lot of manure accumulated. Right before my eyes, a man dressed in black clothes, quite an intellectual type, and another man was kneeling and grabbing that manure. And the intellectual man was hitting him on the back with an iron rod and shouting: ‘Norm! Norm! Norm!’ And that man was gathering manure, manure was falling from his hands, and the other man again hit him with an iron rod on the back and shouted again: ‘Norm!’ I saw two groups. One was beating, the other. Wild horror. I didn’t even look around… and that man fell and did not get up anymore. Then another took a hose used for washing cars and poured water on him, and he began to move, to get up

… Then he struck again, again and again shouting: ‘Norm, norm!’ Three garage doors opened, and there I saw fallen, motionless people. Inside it was dark, nothing was visible. Some people stood by the gates, others lay down. Alive? Not alive? Motionless. Alive? I got the impression that all – both the beaten and the beaters – were in suits, intellectual people, not some workers. I did not see blood, just manure and a stream of water. There were no supporters or protesters in the crowd, everyone just watched by that fence. Curious. We were there for ten minutes, maybe more… Then my brother took me by the shoulders and pulled me away from that fence, and we went home.”

From the testimonies, it is clear that only one Lithuanian killed, Juozas Surmas.

He took a heavy crowbar, and when the victim was already tired of tormenting the others or could no longer get up, he approached and delivered fatal blows. When he got tired, he sat on a chair and rested.

However, there are testimonies of Jews being killed after lunch as well, but with the same result. A witness – a German – described the actions of the second killer:

“…On the left side of the large yard was a group of men aged 30 to 50. There were about 45–50 people. These people were driven there by some civilians. These civilians were armed with rifles and wore armbands… A young man (he was Lithuanian) about 16 years old, with rolled-up sleeves, was armed with an iron crowbar. A person from a nearby group was brought to him, and he killed him with one or several blows to the back of the head. In this way, he killed all 45–50 people in less than an hour… After everyone was killed, the young man put the crowbar aside, went for an accordion, and climbed on the bodies of the killed nearby. Standing on the pile, he played the Lithuanian national anthem. The behavior of the civilians standing around, among whom were women and children, was incredible – after each blow with the crowbar, they applauded, and when the killer played the Lithuanian anthem, the crowd joined in.”

From the testimonies of the German who filmed the events and many eyewitness accounts, I think two conclusions can be drawn. The first Lithuanian, described above, killed those Jews who were brought to clean the manure. And later, the young Lithuanian described by the German killed with the same crowbar the Jews whom the pogromists brought to the garage after lunch. Therefore, it is logical to assume that there were two killers, and in the photographs and according to witness testimonies, bodies lie in groups in different places.

Whether this is true or not, however, in the “Lietukis” garage, 52–60 Lithuanian citizens of Jewish origin were killed. After the execution, the participants lined up one after another, in a pile, and began washing themselves under the stream of a hydrant, which was used to water the Jews who lost consciousness during the beatings. This second pogrom, after the Jews were killed in the garage, continued further. For a long time, cries of dying Jews were still heard in the city. This episode in Lithuania is cited as the main source when talking about pogroms in Kaunas.

But there is also another version, which Dr. Arvydas Anušauskas published on the Lithuanian site “Express Week.” It says that the second pogrom could have been provoked by the Nazis, in particular by the Kaunas German State Security Service, Brigadeführer SS Franz Stahlecker. After the pogrom, Brigadeführer Franz Stahlecker, Stahlecker’s right hand, offered the Jews to relocate to the Kaunas ghetto because of the terrible pogroms carried out by the local residents. Anušauskas links the names of the killers who killed in the garage, namely: Juozas Surmas, who stayed overnight with activists from prison, Matjukas – from the “Spindulis” printing house, and three others who could have been from the cemetery, with the German state security. And the fact that all five were in the “rifle” companies of the Šimkus and Norkus detachments, formed later. The testimonies of the German photographers indicate that the photos had to be taken from a certain angle. A German officer forbade them to film. An interesting detail: three photographers filmed. But only two gave testimonies; Reder had his camera taken away, and Gunsilius simply was not given his back. From this, it can be concluded that the filming was not intended for general viewing but as a report on the work done. Anušauskas’s unofficial personal investigation leads to the conclusion that if the first pogrom was provoked by LAF, then the second pogrom was provoked by the Nazis themselves to force the Jews to relocate to the ghetto. There is, of course, no evidence of this, the evidence is circumstantial, and no official investigation was conducted by the Lithuanian side.

Sources:

Maxim Vladimirovich Sobolev: How It Was