Lithuanian Security Police
Encyclopedia
The Lithuanian Security Police, also referred to as Saugumas , was a Lithuania
n Nazi collaborationist police force that operated from 1941 to 1944. It had a staff of approximately 400 people, 250 of them in Kaunas
and around another 130 in Vilnius
.
Motorized units of German police, Latvian, Estonian and Ukrainian police battalions were also present in Lithuania. In response to growing partisan activity in Eastern Lithuania, 9th and 16th regiment of SS
police were sent there.
.
Stasys Čenkus. He kept this position until the end of German occupation. His deputy assistants were head of Security Police Kazys Matulis and personal secretary Vytenis Stasiškis. Head of Criminal Police was Petras Pamataitis.
LSP had six regional branches - in Kaunas itself (headed by Albinas Čiuoderis), in Vilnius (Aleksandras Lileikis), Šiauliai
(Juozas Pakulis), Ukmergė
(Aleksandras Braziukaitis), Marijampolė
(Petras Banys) and Panevėžys
(Antanas Liepa). The headquarters were divided onto several departments: Organization (head Povilas Žičkus, 1942), Economical and Financial (headed by Pranas Nenorta]), and Information (headed by Juozas Jucius). Melamed adds department of Communists, Ethnic Minorities and Jews to this list.
Regional branches usually had seven commissariats:
Regional branches sometimes had different set of commissariats, for example Kaunas's branch had commissariat for rightwing organizations.
(Security Police) and SD
, the unit was directly subordinate to the German Kripo (Criminal Police). As such, it fulfilled a variety of roles. Among its main tasks were providing the German police forces with information and intelligence on Polish resistance
, Communist organizations and ethnic minorities. It also served the role of an anti-partisan unit in the area of German-occupied northern Poland and Lithuania. A special section within the Saugumas was devoted entirely to Jew Communists . Finally, it presented its German superiors with proscription lists of Jews and intelligentsia
bound for extermination,
People suspected of Jewish roots, evaded being imprisoned in (or tried to escape from) the ghettos or those who violated the Nazi racial laws were arrested and handed over either to the Gestapo
or to another Lithuanian collaborationist force named Ypatingasis būrys
, which then transported them to the mass murder site of Paneriai
or to other places of mass execution. Bubnys, however, claims, that Jewish questions were exceptionally in competence of German Security Police and German civilian administration. According to Bubnys, role of Lithuanian Security Police in extermination of Jews was minor and mostly limited to searching for individual Jews escaped from ghettos and transferring captives to the German Security Police. He points to the fact, that Lithuanian Security Police was directly subordinate to the German Criminal Police and not to the SD or Gestapo, which were directly persecuting enemies of Reich.
Those LSP offices in the province took part in the Holocaust and, altogether, were more active. Here, the LSP officials would not only conduct the interrogations, but would also organize the very process of persecution of the Jews: mass arrests, transportation of the Jews to the venues of imprisonment and massacre. Heads of some LSP divisions in the province would also themselves supervise the massacre actions.
During the first months of German occupation, the Communist commissariat of the Vilnius branch, headed by Juozas Bagdonis, was especially active. This commissariat in some documents of 1941 is sometimes referred to as the Communist-Jewish section (Komunistų-žydų sekcija). This commissariat was responsible for spying on, arresting and interrogating communists, members of Komsomol
, former Soviet government workers, NKVD collaborators, Jews and supporters of Jews.
, notably to Germany
. In 1955, the former commander of its Vilnius branch, Aleksandras Lileikis, emigrated to the USA
, where he obtained citizenship, of which he was stripped in 1996. Lileikis's trial was postponed several times due to his poor health; he died at age 93 without trial. Kazys Gimžauskas, deputy of Lileikis, who returned to Lithuania after US authorities began to investigate him in 1996, was convicted in 2001 of participation in genocide.
In 2006 Algimantas Dailidė
was convicted in Lithuania of persecuting and arresting two Poles and 12 Jews while he was a member of Lithuanian Security Police.
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
n Nazi collaborationist police force that operated from 1941 to 1944. It had a staff of approximately 400 people, 250 of them in Kaunas
Kaunas
Kaunas is the second-largest city in Lithuania and has historically been a leading centre of Lithuanian economic, academic, and cultural life. Kaunas was the biggest city and the center of a powiat in Trakai Voivodeship of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania since 1413. During Russian Empire occupation...
and around another 130 in Vilnius
Vilnius
Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania, and its largest city, with a population of 560,190 as of 2010. It is the seat of the Vilnius city municipality and of the Vilnius district municipality. It is also the capital of Vilnius County...
.
Overview
The police in German occupied Lithuania, consisted of separate Nazi German and Nazi Lithuanian units. The most important German police organizations were the security police and security service with headquarters in Kaunas, and the public police . The major Lithuanian police organisations were Public Police, Lithuanian Security and Criminal Police, Lithuanian self-defence units (police battalions), Railway Police and Fire Police. Lithuanian police organizations were subordinate to the respective German police organizations.Motorized units of German police, Latvian, Estonian and Ukrainian police battalions were also present in Lithuania. In response to growing partisan activity in Eastern Lithuania, 9th and 16th regiment of SS
Schutzstaffel
The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...
police were sent there.
Origins
The Lithuanian Provisional Government, a temporary government that was to govern Lithuania in the transitional period between the start of hostilities and the projected liberation of the country by Germany was restoring state institutions. On June 24, 1941, the authority recreated the pre-war Ministry of Internal Affairs and most of the men from the unit were accepted into its State Security Department headed by Vytautas Reivytis. There they were joined by many more former members of pre-war Lithuanian institutions, as the government asked all those working there prior to June 15, 1940, to report for duty. However, after the German take-over of Lithuania it became apparent that the Germans had no intention to grant autonomy to Lithuania and the government was dissolved on 5 August 1941. At the same time the police and intelligence agencies recreated during the transitional period were found useful and were incorporated into the German security system. The former Security Department was reorganised to Lithuanian Security Police. Many of its members came from the fascist Iron Wolf organisationIron Wolf (Lithuania)
Iron Wolf was a Lithuanian fascist movement formed by Augustinas Voldemaras in 1927. Set up as a guard movement for Voldemaras' Tautininkai, the Iron Wolves were used by Voldemaras to target his political opponents. The movement was banned in 1930, although it continued as an underground group...
.
Structure
Head of Lithuanian Security and Criminal Police was agent of AbwehrAbwehr
The Abwehr was a German military intelligence organisation from 1921 to 1944. The term Abwehr was used as a concession to Allied demands that Germany's post-World War I intelligence activities be for "defensive" purposes only...
Stasys Čenkus. He kept this position until the end of German occupation. His deputy assistants were head of Security Police Kazys Matulis and personal secretary Vytenis Stasiškis. Head of Criminal Police was Petras Pamataitis.
LSP had six regional branches - in Kaunas itself (headed by Albinas Čiuoderis), in Vilnius (Aleksandras Lileikis), Šiauliai
Šiauliai
Šiauliai , is the fourth largest city in Lithuania, with a population of 133,900. It is the capital of Šiauliai County. Unofficially, the city is the capital of Northern Lithuania.-Names:...
(Juozas Pakulis), Ukmergė
Ukmerge
-Early history:Ukmergė was first mentioned as a settlement in 1333. It was essentially a wooden fortress that stood on a hill, near the confluence of the Vilkmergė River and the Šventoji River. Ukmergė was attacked by the Teutonic Knights and the Livonian Order in 1333, 1365, 1378, 1386, and even...
(Aleksandras Braziukaitis), Marijampolė
Marijampole
Marijampolė is an industrial city and the capital of the Marijampolė County in the south of Lithuania, bordering Poland and Russian Kaliningrad oblast, and Lake Vištytis. The population of Marijampolė is 48,700...
(Petras Banys) and Panevėžys
Panevežys
Panevėžys see also other names, is the fifth largest city in Lithuania. As of 2008, it occupied 50 square kilometers with 113,653 inhabitants. The largest multifunctional arena in Panevėžys is the Cido Arena...
(Antanas Liepa). The headquarters were divided onto several departments: Organization (head Povilas Žičkus, 1942), Economical and Financial (headed by Pranas Nenorta]), and Information (headed by Juozas Jucius). Melamed adds department of Communists, Ethnic Minorities and Jews to this list.
Regional branches usually had seven commissariats:
- Guards' commissariat - guarding buildings and prisons
- Servicing commissariat - for financial and servicing functions
- Information commissariat - screening candidates to governmental institutions, gathering operative information, creating lists of enemies of government, gathering information on political attitudes of local population, preparing reports and publication
- Communist commissariat - gathering information on Communists, Soviet partisansSoviet partisansThe Soviet partisans were members of a resistance movement which fought a guerrilla war against the Axis occupation of the Soviet Union during World War II....
, underground Communist organizations, performing arrests, and inquiries, recruiting agents - Polish commisariat - investigating activities of illegal Polish organizations, performing searches, arrests, and inquiries, recruiting agents
- Commisariat of ethnic minorities - investigating and controlling activities of Russians, Belarusians and other ethnic minorities
- Reconnaissance commisariat.
Regional branches sometimes had different set of commissariats, for example Kaunas's branch had commissariat for rightwing organizations.
Activities
Collaborating with the Nazi SipoSicherheitspolizei
The Sicherheitspolizei , often abbreviated as SiPo, was a term used in Nazi Germany to describe the state political and criminal investigation security agencies. It was made up by the combined forces of the Gestapo and the Kripo between 1936 and 1939...
(Security Police) and SD
Sicherheitsdienst
Sicherheitsdienst , full title Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS, or SD, was the intelligence agency of the SS and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. The organization was the first Nazi Party intelligence organization to be established and was often considered a "sister organization" with the...
, the unit was directly subordinate to the German Kripo (Criminal Police). As such, it fulfilled a variety of roles. Among its main tasks were providing the German police forces with information and intelligence on Polish resistance
Polish resistance movement in World War II
The Polish resistance movement in World War II, with the Home Army at its forefront, was the largest underground resistance in all of Nazi-occupied Europe, covering both German and Soviet zones of occupation. The Polish defence against the Nazi occupation was an important part of the European...
, Communist organizations and ethnic minorities. It also served the role of an anti-partisan unit in the area of German-occupied northern Poland and Lithuania. A special section within the Saugumas was devoted entirely to Jew Communists . Finally, it presented its German superiors with proscription lists of Jews and intelligentsia
Intelligentsia
The intelligentsia is a social class of people engaged in complex, mental and creative labor directed to the development and dissemination of culture, encompassing intellectuals and social groups close to them...
bound for extermination,
People suspected of Jewish roots, evaded being imprisoned in (or tried to escape from) the ghettos or those who violated the Nazi racial laws were arrested and handed over either to the Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
or to another Lithuanian collaborationist force named Ypatingasis būrys
Ypatingasis burys
Ypatingasis būrys or Special SD and German Security Police Squad was a Nazi killing squad of approximately 50 men, also called the "Lithuanian equivalent of Sonderkommando", operating in the Vilnius Region...
, which then transported them to the mass murder site of Paneriai
Paneriai
Paneriai is a neighborhood of Vilnius, situated about 10 kilometres away from the city center. It is the largest elderate in the Vilnius city municipality. It is located on low forested hills, on the Vilnius-Warsaw road...
or to other places of mass execution. Bubnys, however, claims, that Jewish questions were exceptionally in competence of German Security Police and German civilian administration. According to Bubnys, role of Lithuanian Security Police in extermination of Jews was minor and mostly limited to searching for individual Jews escaped from ghettos and transferring captives to the German Security Police. He points to the fact, that Lithuanian Security Police was directly subordinate to the German Criminal Police and not to the SD or Gestapo, which were directly persecuting enemies of Reich.
Persecution of Jews
The activities of the LSP offices in major towns (Vilnius, Kaunas) and in the provinces differed in principle. The LSP officers in major towns would most often study more complicated cases of political and strategic character, thus not taking part in mass killing of the Jews directly. After interrogations, the arrested Jews would be forwarded to relevant police divisions which would perpetrate the mass slaughter.Those LSP offices in the province took part in the Holocaust and, altogether, were more active. Here, the LSP officials would not only conduct the interrogations, but would also organize the very process of persecution of the Jews: mass arrests, transportation of the Jews to the venues of imprisonment and massacre. Heads of some LSP divisions in the province would also themselves supervise the massacre actions.
During the first months of German occupation, the Communist commissariat of the Vilnius branch, headed by Juozas Bagdonis, was especially active. This commissariat in some documents of 1941 is sometimes referred to as the Communist-Jewish section (Komunistų-žydų sekcija). This commissariat was responsible for spying on, arresting and interrogating communists, members of Komsomol
Komsomol
The Communist Union of Youth , usually known as Komsomol , was the youth division of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Komsomol in its earliest form was established in urban centers in 1918. During the early years, it was a Russian organization, known as the Russian Communist Union of...
, former Soviet government workers, NKVD collaborators, Jews and supporters of Jews.
Resistance
There are known many cases of Lithuanian Security Police staff resisting the German occupiers. Staff participated in secret anti-Nazi organizations, distributed underground leaflets and secret information. For example, Povilas Žičkus, the head of Polital, later the Administrative Department of Security Police, was an active resistant to the German occupation and on 14 May 1944, was arrested by the Gestapo and deported to prison in Germany. Kazys Gimžauskas, deputy of commander of the Vilnius branch, was a member of the organization Kęstutis and illegally supplied information to the Lithuanian Front. Lileikis knew about the relations of his deputy with the Lithuanian underground but didn't tell anyone. In 1943, an employee of the Vilnius branch, Zenonas Pranckevičius, was caught distributing illegal papers and removed from service.Postwar developments
At the end of the war many members of the Lithuanian Security Police fled to Western EuropeWestern Europe
Western Europe is a loose term for the collection of countries in the western most region of the European continents, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a geographic entity—the region lying in the...
, notably to Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. In 1955, the former commander of its Vilnius branch, Aleksandras Lileikis, emigrated to the USA
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, where he obtained citizenship, of which he was stripped in 1996. Lileikis's trial was postponed several times due to his poor health; he died at age 93 without trial. Kazys Gimžauskas, deputy of Lileikis, who returned to Lithuania after US authorities began to investigate him in 1996, was convicted in 2001 of participation in genocide.
In 2006 Algimantas Dailidė
Algimantas Dailidė
Algimantas Mykolas Dailidė is a former Lithuanian Security Police official. After the war, Dailidė sought refuge in the United States, saying he had been a "forester." While in the United States, Dailidė was a real estate agent until he retired to Gulfport, Florida...
was convicted in Lithuania of persecuting and arresting two Poles and 12 Jews while he was a member of Lithuanian Security Police.