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170-516: There are three theories about the origin of the name Lepel . The first is that the name 'Lepel' come from the word "lepene" which means "lake between the lime-groves". The second is that the name comes from the Belarusian word "лепей" meaning "the best place to live in". The third theory for the name Lepel is that it derives from the Belarusian word "ляпiць" meaning "well-developed pottery". The first known mention of Lepel dates back to 1439. In

340-545: A blessed sword and hat , given by Pope Gregory XIII through the envoy Paweł Uchański. This was a recognition by the Pope of the ruler's successes in the struggle against the infidels. In Lithuania, this ceremony was treated as the celebration of the elevation of the Grand Duke of Lithuania, during which Lithuania's sovereignty was manifested. Báthory's reign was marked with successful Livonian campaign against tsar Ivan

510-553: A base for further military campaigns. Around 1307, Polotsk, an important trading centre, was annexed by military force. Vytenis also began constructing a defensive castle network along Nemunas . Gradually this network developed into the main defensive line against the Teutonic Order. The expansion of the state reached its height under Grand Duke Gediminas , also titled by some contemporaneous German sources as Rex de Owsteiten (English: King of Aukštaitija ), who created

680-403: A certain street corner on 29 September; anyone who disobeyed would be shot. Since word of massacres in other areas had not yet reached Kyiv and the assembly point was near the train station, they assumed they were being deported. People showed up at the rendezvous point in large numbers, laden with possessions and food for the journey. After being marched three kilometres (two miles) northwest of

850-519: A collective act without individual responsibility. Framing the shootings in this way was not psychologically sufficient for every perpetrator to feel absolved of guilt. Browning notes three categories of potential perpetrators: those who were eager to participate right from the start, those who participated in spite of moral qualms because they were ordered to do so, and a significant minority who refused to take part. A few men spontaneously became excessively brutal in their killing methods and their zeal for

1020-602: A convention in Grodno (on 8-20 April 1576), protested this choice, threatening to break the union and giving themselves the right to choose a separate ruler. However, the king managed to rally the Lithuanian delegation by promising to preserve their rights and freedoms. On May 29, 1580, in Vilnius Cathedral , King and Grand Duke Stephen Báthory received from the hand of the bishop of Samogitia Merkelis Giedraitis

1190-734: A county seat of the Vitebsk Governorate . The town suffered greatly in the 1812 French invasion of Russia due to the passing troops razing many buildings to the ground. On 9 September 1852 Lepel was awarded its own coat of arms. Poet Jan Czeczot , friend of Adam Mickiewicz , worked as an engineer on the Berezina Canal in Lepel between 1833 and 1839. In 1880, the population of Lepel consisted of 5,284 people, including 2,458 Jews, 2,281 Orthodox, and 536 Roman Catholics. By 1913 Lepel had lost its strategic and economic importance and

1360-772: A cyanide-based pesticide gas. Plans for the total eradication of the Jewish population of Europe—eleven million people—were formalised at the Wannsee Conference , held on 20 January 1942. Some would be worked to death , and the rest would be murdered in the implementation of the Final Solution of the Jewish question (German: Die Endlösung der Judenfrage ). Permanent killing centres at Auschwitz, Belzec , Chelmno , Majdanek , Sobibor , Treblinka , and other Nazi extermination camps replaced mobile death squads as

1530-591: A decade of relative peace. Mindaugas later renounced Christianity and converted back to paganism. Mindaugas tried to expand his influence in Polatsk , a major centre of commerce in the Daugava River basin, and Pinsk . The Teutonic Knights used this period to strengthen their position in parts of Samogitia and Livonia, but they lost the Battle of Skuodas in 1259 and the Battle of Durbe in 1260. This encouraged

1700-724: A lack of transportation led to a slowdown in deportations of Jews from points further west. Thus, an interval passed between the first round of Einsatzgruppen massacres in summer and fall, and what American historian Raul Hilberg called the second sweep, which started in December 1941 and lasted into the summer of 1942. During the interval, the surviving Jews were forced into ghettos. Einsatzgruppe A had already murdered almost all Jews in its area, so it shifted its operations into Belarus to assist Einsatzgruppe B. In Dnepropetrovsk in February 1942, Einsatzgruppe D reduced

1870-484: A large crowd that cheered each murder with much applause; he occasionally paused to play the Lithuanian national anthem " Tautiška giesmė " on his accordion before resuming the murders. As Einsatzgruppe A advanced into Lithuania, it actively recruited local nationalists and antisemitic groups. In July 1941, local Lithuanian collaborators, pejoratively called "White Armbands" ( Lithuanian : Baltaraiščiai , lit.   'People with white armbands'), joined

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2040-583: A manifestation of the sovereignty of Lithuania occurred when Casimir was elected as the Grand Duke of Lithuania upon his arrival to Vilnius on 29 June 1440 and subsequently titled himself as a "free lord" ( pan – dominus ), this way breaching the agreements of the Union of Grodno (1432) and terminating the Polish–Lithuanian union ; Casimir also became the King of Poland in 1447. Following Casimir's death in 1492,

2210-590: A memorandum of complaint to Hitler about the atrocities, Hitler dismissed his concerns as "childish", and Blaskowitz was relieved of his post in May 1940. He continued to serve in the army but never received promotion to field marshal . The final task of the Einsatzgruppen in Poland was to round up the remaining Jews and concentrate them in ghettos within major cities with good railway connections. The intention

2380-509: A negative impact on the economy and the food supply. The Nazis began to round their victims up into concentration camps and ghettos and rural districts were for the most part rendered Judenfrei (free of Jews). Jewish councils were set up in major cities and forced labour gangs were established to make use of the Jews as slave labour until they were all dead, a goal that was postponed until 1942. The Einsatzgruppen used public hangings as

2550-576: A privilege that equalized the rights of Orthodox and Catholics in Lithuania and abolished all previous restrictions on Orthodox. There was an effort to polarise Orthodox Christians after the Union of Brest in 1596, by which some Orthodox Christians acknowledged papal authority and Catholic catechism, but preserved their liturgy. The country also became one of the major centres of the Reformation. In

2720-416: A small and local object could have lent its name to an entire nation. On the other hand, such a fact is not unprecedented in world history. A credible modern theory of etymology of the name of Lithuania (Lithuanian: Lietuva ) is Artūras Dubonis's hypothesis, that Lietuva relates to the word leičiai (plural of leitis , a social group of warriors-knights in the early Grand Duchy of Lithuania). The title of

2890-708: A strong central government and established an empire that later spread from the Black Sea to the Baltic Sea . In 1320, most of the principalities of western Rus' were either vassalized or annexed by Lithuania. In 1321, Gediminas captured Kiev , sending Stanislav , the last Rurikid to rule Kiev , into exile. Gediminas also re-established the permanent capital of the Grand Duchy in Vilnius , presumably moving it from Old Trakai in 1323, which previously served as

3060-426: A terror tactic against the local population. An Einsatzgruppe B report, dated 9 October 1941, described one such hanging. Due to suspected partisan activity near Demidov, all male residents aged 15 to 55 were put in a camp to be screened. The screening produced seventeen people who were identified as "partisans" and "Communists". Five members of the group were hanged while 400 local residents were assembled to watch;

3230-461: A thousand people toward the execution ground. As they walked, some SS men went up and down the line, shooting people who could not keep up the pace or who tried to run away or rest. When the columns neared the prepared execution site, the victims were driven some 270 metres (300 yd) from the road into the forest, where any possessions that had not yet been abandoned were seized. Here the victims were split into groups of fifty and taken deeper into

3400-474: A transition should be made to gassing the victims, especially the women and children, and ordered the recruitment of expendable native auxiliaries who could assist with the murders. Gas vans, which had been used previously to murder mental patients, began to see service by all four main Einsatzgruppen from 1942. However, the gas vans were not popular with the Einsatzkommandos , because removing

3570-495: Is Lietava . As time passed, the suffix - ava could have changed into - uva , as the two are from the same suffix branch. The river flows in the lowlands and easily spills over its banks, therefore the traditional Lithuanian form liet - could be directly translated as lietis (to spill), of the root derived from the Proto-Indo-European leyǝ- . However, the river is very small and some find it improbable that such

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3740-593: The Freikorps . Heydrich instructed Wagner in meetings in late July that the Einsatzgruppen should undertake their operations in cooperation with the Ordnungspolizei (Order Police; Orpo) and military commanders in the area. Army intelligence was in constant contact with Einsatzgruppen to coordinate their activities with other units. Initially numbering 2,700 men (and ultimately 4,250 in Poland),

3910-881: The Schutzstaffel (SS) before and during World War II . The Einsatzgruppen had their origins in the ad hoc Einsatzkommando formed by Heydrich to secure government buildings and documents following the Anschluss in Austria in March 1938. Originally part of the Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police; SiPo), two units of Einsatzgruppen were stationed in the Sudetenland in October 1938. When military action turned out not to be necessary due to

4080-652: The Arājs Kommando in Latvia and the Rollkommando Hamann in Lithuania, the attacks changed from the spontaneous mob violence of the pogroms to more systematic massacres. With extensive local help, Einsatzgruppe A was the first Einsatzgruppe to attempt to systematically exterminate all the Jews in its area. Latvian historian Modris Eksteins wrote: Of the roughly 83,000 Jews who fell into German hands in Latvia, not more than 900 survived; and of

4250-725: The Arājs Kommando murdered 2,300 Jews in Riga on 6–7 July. Within six months, Arājs and collaborators would murder about half of Latvia's Jewish population. Local officials, the Selbstschutz , and the Hilfspolizei (Auxiliary Police) played a key role in rounding up and massacring local Jews in German-occupied Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. These groups also helped the Einsatzgruppen and other killing units to identify Jews. For example, in Latvia,

4420-580: The Einsatzgruppe released the criminals from the local jail and encouraged them to join the pogrom which was underway. Between 23 and 27 June 1941, 4,000 Jews were murdered on the streets of Kaunas and in nearby open pits and ditches. Particularly active in the Kaunas pogrom was the so-called "Death Dealer of Kaunas", a young man who murdered Jews with a crowbar at the Lietukis Garage before

4590-582: The Einsatzgruppen has been attributed to several factors. Since the Russian Revolution of 1905 , the Kresy Wschodnie and other borderlands had experienced a political culture of violence. The 1940–1941 Soviet occupation had been profoundly traumatic for residents of the Baltic states and areas that had been part of Poland until 1939; the population was brutalised and terrorised, and

4760-454: The Einsatzgruppen in front-line areas were to operate under army command, while the army provided the Einsatzgruppen with all necessary logistical support. Given their main task was defeating the enemy, the army left the pacification of the civilian population to the Einsatzgruppen , who offered support as well as prevented subversion. This did not preclude their participation in acts of violence against civilians, as many members of

4930-527: The Einsatzgruppen 's mission was to murder members of the Polish leadership most clearly identified with Polish national identity: the intelligentsia, members of the clergy , teachers, and members of the nobility. As stated by Hitler: "... there must be no Polish leaders; where Polish leaders exist they must be killed, however harsh that sounds". SS- Brigadeführer Lothar Beutel , commander of Einsatzgruppe IV, later testified that Heydrich gave

5100-507: The Einsatzkommandos began to take their victims out in larger groups and shot them next to, or even inside, mass graves that had been prepared. Some Einsatzkommandos started to use automatic weapons, with survivors being murdered with a pistol shot. As word of the massacres got out, many Jews fled; in Ukraine, 70 to 90 per cent of the Jews ran away. This was seen by the leader of Einsatzkommando VI as beneficial, as it would save

5270-702: The Hilfspolizei , consisting of auxiliary police organised by the Germans and recruited from former Latvian army and police officers, ex- Aizsargi , members of the Pērkonkrusts , and university students, assisted in the murder of Latvia's Jewish citizens. Similar units were created elsewhere, and provided much of the manpower for the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. With the creation of units such as

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5440-970: The Ardennes offensive . Hahn had previously been in command of Einsatzgruppe Griechenland in Greece. Other Einsatzgruppen and Einsatzkommandos included Einsatzgruppe Iltis (operated in Carinthia, on the border between Slovenia and Austria) under SS- Standartenführer Paul Blobel , Einsatzgruppe Jugoslawien (Yugoslavia) Einsatzkommando Luxemburg (Luxembourg), Einsatzgruppe Norwegen (Norway) commanded by SS- Oberführer Franz Walter Stahlecker, Einsatzgruppe Serbien (Yugoslavia) under SS- Standartenführer Wilhelm Fuchs and SS- Gruppenführer August Meysner, Einsatzkommando Tilsit  [ de ] (Lithuania, Poland), and Einsatzgruppe Tunis ( Tunis ), commanded by SS- Obersturmbannführer Walter Rauff . After

5610-799: The Constitution of 3 May and Reciprocal Guarantee of Two Nations were passed in 1791. Following the partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth , most of the lands of the former Grand Duchy were directly annexed by the Russian Empire , the rest by Prussia . In 1812, just prior to the French invasion of Russia , the former Grand Duchy revolted against the Russians. Soon after his arrival in Vilnius, Napoleon proclaimed

5780-673: The Deluge in the mid-17th century most of the territory of Lithuania was annexed by the Tsardom of Russia and even the Lithuania's capital Vilnius was captured for the first time by a foreign army and ravaged . In 1655, Lithuania unilaterally seceded from Poland, declared the Swedish King Charles X Gustav as the Grand Duke of Lithuania and fell under the protection of the Swedish Empire . However, by 1657 Lithuania

5950-576: The Diocese of Wilno with the approval of the Pope. After Polatsk was captured by the Muscovite army in 1563, the Diocese of Wilno was no longer able to protect its property from Muscovite attacks. The decision was made to donate Lepel to King Sigismund II Augustus on the erroneous assumption that the king would return the gift by awarding the diocese with other property of the same value. Instead,

6120-499: The Einsatzgruppen trial in 1947–48, charged with crimes against humanity and war crimes . Fourteen death sentences and two life sentences were handed out. However, only four of these death sentences were carried out. Four additional Einsatzgruppe leaders were later tried and executed by other nations. The Einsatzgruppen were formed under the direction of SS- Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich and operated by

6290-527: The Federation , the Grand Duchy of Lithuania maintained its political distinctiveness and had separate ministries, laws, army, and treasury. The federation was terminated by the passing of the Constitution of 3 May 1791 , when it was supposed to become a single country, the Commonwealth, under one monarch, one parliament and no Lithuanian autonomy. Shortly afterward, the unitary character of the state

6460-595: The Geneva Conventions . However, Hitler had decreed that the army would have to tolerate and even offer logistical support to the Einsatzgruppen when it was tactically possible to do so. Some army commanders complained about unauthorised shootings, looting, and rapes committed by members of the Einsatzgruppen and the Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz , to little effect. For example, when Generaloberst Johannes Blaskowitz sent

6630-627: The Golden Horde , maintaining vassal relationships with a fair degree of independence. Lithuania annexed some of these areas as vassals through diplomacy, as they exchanged rule by the Mongols or the Grand Prince of Moscow with rule by the Grand Duchy. An example is Novgorod , which was often in the Lithuanian sphere of influence and became an occasional dependency of the Grand Duchy. Lithuanian control resulted from internal frictions within

6800-575: The Grand Duchy was consistently applied to Lithuania from the 14th century onward. In other languages, the grand duchy is referred to as: Naming convention of both title of ruler ( hospodar ) and the state changed as it expanded its territory. Following the decline of the Kingdom of Ruthenia and incorporation of its lands into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Gediminas started to title himself as "King of Lithuanians and many Ruthenians", while

6970-470: The Kingdom of Prussia and Austria in 1795. The name of Lithuania ( Litua ) was first mentioned in 1009 in Annals of Quedlinburg . Some older etymological theories relate the name to a small river not far from Kernavė , the core area of the early Lithuanian state and a possible first capital of the would-be Grand Duchy of Lithuania, is usually credited as the source of the name. This river's original name

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7140-619: The Lithuanian nobility . After Vytautas's death, Lithuania's relationship with the Kingdom of Poland greatly deteriorated. Lithuanian noblemen, including the Radvila family , attempted to break the personal union with Poland. However, unsuccessful wars with the Grand Duchy of Moscow forced the union to remain intact. Eventually, the Union of Lublin of 1569 created a new state, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth . In

7310-609: The Munich Agreement , the Einsatzgruppen were assigned to confiscate government papers and police documents. They also secured government buildings, questioned senior civil servants, and arrested as many as 10,000 Czech communists and German citizens. From September 1939, the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Main Office; RSHA) had overall command of the Einsatzgruppen . As part of

7480-575: The Połock Voivodeship . It remained difficult for the diocese to protect Lepel from foreign invasions and thus the decision was made in 1586 to sell it to Lew Sapieha , a leading politician. Sapieha eventually donated Lepel in 1609 to Bernardine nuns in Vilnius (Wilno) who lived next to St. Michael's Church, a donation confirmed in 1617. The town was annexed by Russia in the Second Partition of Poland in 1793. In 1802 Lepel became

7650-454: The Rus' . Pagan Lithuanians initially paid tribute to Polotsk , but they soon grew in strength and organized their own small-scale raids. At some point between 1180 and 1183 the situation began to change, and the Lithuanians started to organize sustainable military raids on the Slavic provinces, raiding the Principality of Polotsk as well as Pskov , and even threatening Novgorod . The sudden spark of military raids marked consolidation of

7820-406: The Third Statute of Lithuania which stated that the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth is a federation of two countries – Poland and Lithuania where both countries have equal rights within it and separated the powers of the ruler, the Seimas , the executive and the courts (this for the first time in European history ensured the rule of law in the state, but Lithuania's citizens, who were subjects to

7990-426: The Union of Krewo in 1386, bringing two major changes in the history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania: conversion to Christianity of Europe's last pagan state, and establishment of a dynastic union between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland . This marked the beginning of the rule of other countries by the patrilineal members of the Lithuanian ruling Gediminids dynasty who since

8160-427: The Wehrmacht assisted the Einsatzgruppen in rounding up and murdering Jews of their own accord. Heydrich acted under orders from Reichsführer-SS Himmler, who supplied security forces on an "as needed" basis to the local SS and Police Leaders . Led by SD, Gestapo, and Kripo officers, Einsatzgruppen included recruits from the Orpo, Security Service and Waffen-SS , augmented by uniformed volunteers from

8330-408: The 14th–15th centuries ruled not only Lithuania, but also Poland , Hungary , Croatia , Bohemia , and Moldavia . The reign of Vytautas the Great , son of Kęstutis, marked both the greatest territorial expansion of the grand duchy (it became one of the largest countries territorially in Europe) and the defeat of the Teutonic Knights in the Battle of Grunwald in 1410. It also marked the rise of

8500-430: The 15th century, the town belonged to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania . In 1439, thanks to efforts of a Roman Catholic priest, Kucharski, Grand Lithuanian Duke Sigismund Kestutaitis ' son Michael gave Lepel to the Vitebsk Roman Catholic church. In 1503, it the donation was confirmed by King Alexander Jagiellon . In 1541 King Sigismund I the Old included the possessions of the Vitebsk Catholic parish, including Lepel, into

8670-577: The 16th century. Ruthenians, ancestors of modern Belarusians and Ukrainians, living in the eastern and southern lands of the Grand Duchy spoke Ruthenian language . The Ruthenian language had an old writing tradition. The language of the Orthodox Church was Old Church Slavonic , while official documents used the so-called Chancery Ruthenian , close to but not identical to the spoken language, which over time absorbed many Lithuanian and Polish words. Some Poles (mainly burghers , clergy, merchants, and szlachta ) moved to Lithuania, although this migration

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8840-569: The 17th century, there were relics of old faith reported by counter-reformation active Jesuit priests, like feeding žaltys with milk or bringing food to graves of ancestors. The lands of modern-day Belarus and Ukraine , as well as local dukes (princes) in these regions, were firmly Orthodox Christian (Greek Catholic after the Union of Brest ), though. While pagan beliefs in Lithuania were strong enough to survive centuries of pressure from military orders and missionaries, they did eventually succumb. A separate Eastern Orthodox metropolitan eparchy

9010-417: The 80,000 Muscovite soldiers, capturing their camp and commander. The Muscovites lost about 30,000 men, while the losses of the Poland–Lithuania army totalled only 500. While the battle is remembered as one of the greatest Lithuanian victories, Muscovy ultimately prevailed in the war. Under the 1522 peace treaty, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania made large territorial concessions. The wars with the Teutonic Order,

9180-521: The Babi Yar massacre, to liquidate the Riga ghetto . Jeckeln selected a site about 10 km (6 mi) southeast of Riga near the Rumbula railway station, and had 300 Russian prisoners of war prepare the site by digging pits in which to bury the victims. Jeckeln organised around 1,700 men, including 300 members of the Arajs Kommando , 50 German SD men, and 50 Latvian guards, most of whom had already participated in mass-murdering of civilians. These troops were supplemented by Latvians, including members of

9350-508: The Bolshevik troops and the Polish Army's 30th regiment of the Rifles of Kaniów of the XX brigade continued through November 1919 and the Polish-Soviet frontline was established there until spring 1920. On 22 June 1941, Operation Barbarossa , the German invasion of the Soviet Union, began. Lepiel was captured by the rapidly advancing German troops on 3 July. While the Lepel's Jewish population had once been as high as 3,379 (53.7%) in 1897, by 1941 this had dwindled to only 1,919, or 13.6 percent of

9520-463: The Eastern Front to carry out operations ranging from the murder of a few people to operations which lasted over two or more days, such as the massacre at Babi Yar (with 33,771 Jews murdered in two days), and the Rumbula massacre (with about 25,000 Jews murdered in two days of shooting). As ordered by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler , the Wehrmacht cooperated with the Einsatzgruppen , providing logistical support for their operations, and participated in

9690-474: The Führer, which he would carry out independently. This directive was intended to prevent friction between the Wehrmacht and the SS in the upcoming offensive. Hitler also specified that criminal acts against civilians perpetrated by members of the Wehrmacht during the upcoming campaign would not be prosecuted in the military courts, and thus would go unpunished. In a speech to his leading generals on 30 March 1941, Hitler described his envisioned war against

9860-401: The German regime when it arrived. Some who had collaborated with the Soviet regime sought to divert attention from themselves by naming Jews as collaborators and murdering them. In November 1941 Himmler was dissatisfied with the pace of the exterminations in Latvia, as he intended to move Jews from Germany into the area. He assigned SS- Obergruppenführer Jeckeln, one of the perpetrators of

10030-470: The Grand Duchy of Lithuania slowly became more centralized, as the governours loyal to Vytautas replaced local princes with dynastic ties to the throne. The governours were rich landowners who formed the basis for the nobility of the Grand Duchy. During Vytautas' rule, the Radziwiłł and Goštautas families started to gain influence. In 1440, Casimir IV Jagiellon was sent by his older brother Władysław III to Lithuania to rule in his name, however instead

10200-455: The Grand Duchy to an end. Most of the lands of the former Grand Duchy were re-annexed by Russia. The Augustów Voivodeship (later Augustów Governorate ), including the counties of Marijampolė and Kalvarija , was attached to the Kingdom of Poland , a rump state in personal union with Russia. Administrative structure of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (1413–1564). After the baptism in 1252 and coronation of King Mindaugas in 1253, Lithuania

10370-422: The Great , who reigned from 1392 to 1430. Vytautas was one of the most famous rulers of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, serving as the Grand Duke from 1401 to 1430, and as the Prince of Hrodna (1370–1382) and the Prince of Lutsk (1387–1389). Vytautas was the son of Kęstutis , uncle of Jogaila, who became King of Poland in 1386, and he was the grandfather of Vasili II of Moscow . In 1410, Vytautas commanded

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10540-446: The Horde but was defeated in the Battle of the Vorskla River , losing the steppe region. Lithuania was Christianized in 1387, led by Jogaila , who personally translated Christian prayers into the Lithuanian language and his cousin Vytautas the Great who founded many Catholic churches and allocated lands for parishes in Lithuania. The state reached a peak (becoming one of the largest countries territorially in Europe) under Vytautas

10710-480: The Lithuanian lands began in the late 13th century. Mindaugas , the first ruler of the grand duchy, was crowned as the Catholic King of Lithuania in 1253. The pagan state was targeted in a religious crusade by the Teutonic Knights and the Livonian Order , but survived. Its rapid territorial expansion started late in the reign of Gediminas , and continued under the diarchy and co-leadership of his sons, Algirdas and Kęstutis . Algirdas's son Jogaila signed

10880-443: The Lithuanian lands in Aukštaitija . The Lithuanians are the only branch within the Baltic group that managed to create a state entity in premodern times. The Lithuanian Crusade began after the Livonian Order and Teutonic Knights , crusading military orders , were established in Riga and in Prussia in 1202 and 1226 respectively. The Christian orders posed a significant threat to pagan Baltic tribes, and further galvanized

11050-409: The Lithuanian language. The Lithuanian language was still strongly present at the Vilnius court of Casimir Jagiellon , who had to learn it when he assumed power in the Grand Duchy in 1444. Casimir's assumption of power in Poland in 1447 marked the end of the existence of a separate court in Vilnius (it later existed only in years 1492–1496 and 1544–1548 ). Many Lithuanians and Ruthenian nobles joined

11220-425: The Lithuanian sphere of influence. By about 1355, the State of Moldavia had formed, and the Golden Horde did little to re-vassalize the area. In 1362, regiments of the Grand Duchy army defeated the Golden Horde at the Battle at Blue Waters . In 1380, a Lithuanian army allied with Russian forces to defeat the Golden Horde in the Battle of Kulikovo , and though the rule of the Mongols did not end, their influence in

11390-413: The Lithuanians and the Žemaičiai now faced a common enemy. Likely Živinbudas had the most authority and at least several dukes were from the same families. The formal acknowledgement of common interests and the establishment of a hierarchy among the signatories of the treaty foreshadowed the emergence of the state. Mindaugas, the duke of southern Lithuania, was among the five senior dukes mentioned in

11560-450: The Livonian Order, winning the Battle of Karuse in 1270 and the Battle of Aizkraukle in 1279, and assisted the Yotvingians /Sudovians to defend from the Teutonic Order . For his military assistance, Nameisis recognized Traidenis as his suzerain . There is considerable uncertainty about the identities of the grand dukes of Lithuania between Traidenis' death in 1282 and the assumption of power by Vytenis in 1295. The country's capital

11730-408: The Livonian Order. He promised to convert to Christianity and exchange some lands in western Lithuania in return for military assistance against his nephews and the royal crown. In 1251, Mindaugas was baptized and Pope Innocent IV issued a papal bull proclaiming the creation of the Kingdom of Lithuania . After the civil war ended, Mindaugas was crowned as King of Lithuania on 6 July 1253, starting

11900-505: The Order, the Kingdom of Poland, and Ruthenia. Vytenis was involved in succession disputes in Poland, supporting Boleslaus II of Masovia , who was married to a Lithuanian duchess, Gaudemunda . In Ruthenia, Vytenis managed to recapture lands lost after the assassination of Mindaugas and to capture the principalities of Pinsk  [ lt ] and Turov . In the struggle against the Order, Vytenis allied with Riga 's citizens; securing positions in Riga strengthened trade routes and provided

12070-429: The Riga city police, battalion police, and ghetto guards. Around 1,500 able-bodied Jews would be spared execution so their slave labour could be exploited; a thousand men were relocated to a fenced-off area within the ghetto and 500 women were temporarily housed in a prison and later moved to a separate nearby ghetto, where they were put to work mending uniforms. Although Rumbula was on the rail line, Jeckeln decided that

12240-526: The Ruthenian lands stayed Orthodox , however, on 22 February 1387, Supreme Duke Jogaila banned Catholics marriages with Orthodox, and demanded those Orthodox who previously married with the Catholics to convert to Catholicism. At one point, though, Pope Alexander VI reprimanded the Grand Duke for keeping non-Catholics as advisers. Consequently, only in 1563 did Grand Duke Sigismund II Augustus issue

12410-658: The SS, the Wehrmacht , and the Ordnungspolizei also shot civilians during the Polish campaign. Approximately 65,000 civilians were murdered by the end of 1939. In addition to leaders of Polish society, they murdered Jews, prostitutes, Romani people , and the mentally ill. Psychiatric patients in Poland were initially murdered by shooting, but by spring 1941 gas vans were widely used. Seven Einsatzgruppen of battalion strength (around 500 men) operated in Poland. Each

12580-476: The Soviet Union in 1940–1941). According to its own reports to Himmler, Einsatzgruppe A murdered almost 140,000 people in the five months following the 1941 German invasion: 136,421 Jews, 1,064 Communists, 653 people with mental illnesses, 56 partisans, 44 Poles, five Romani, and one Armenian were reported murdered between 22 June and 25 November 1941. Upon entering Kaunas , Lithuania, on 25 June 1941,

12750-702: The Soviet Union. During the course of their operations, the Einsatzgruppen commanders received assistance from the Wehrmacht . Activities ranged from the murder of targeted groups of individuals named on carefully prepared lists, to joint citywide operations with SS Einsatzgruppen which lasted for two or more days, such as the massacres at Babi Yar , perpetrated by the Police Battalion 45 , and at Rumbula , by Battalion 22, reinforced by local Schutzmannschaften (auxiliary police). The SS brigades, wrote historian Christopher Browning , were "only

12920-512: The Soviet Union. General Franz Halder , the Army's Chief of Staff, described the speech: Struggle between two ideologies. Scathing evaluation of Bolshevism, equals antisocial criminality. Communism immense future danger ... This a fight to the finish. If we do not accept this, we shall beat the enemy, but in thirty years we shall again confront the Communist foe. We don't make war to preserve

13090-680: The Statute, were only nobles). During the Polish–Swedish War (1600–1611) Polish and Lithuanian forces achieved victory and restored status quo ante bellum , notably winning the decisive Battle of Kircholm in 1605, while during the Polish–Muscovite War (1605–1618) Polish and Lithuanian armies achieved territorial gains (e.g. restored the control of Smolensk , the capital of the Smolensk Voivodeship , in 1611) and for

13260-600: The Terrible 's military forces, which resulted in the reintegration of Polotsk to Lithuania and the restoration of control of the Duchy of Livonia . The rule of Lithuania by the Gediminid–Jagiellonian family representatives resumed through matrilineal line following the death of Báthory (1586) when Sigismund III Vasa (son of Catherine Jagiellon ) was elected in 1587 . On 28 January 1588, Sigismund III confirmed

13430-468: The army of the Grand Duchy of Moscow, under Konyushy Ivan Chelyadnin and Kniaz Mikhail Golitsin. The battle was part of a long series of Muscovite–Lithuanian Wars conducted by Russian rulers striving to gather all the former lands of Kievan Rus' under their rule. According to Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii by Sigismund von Herberstein, the primary source for the information on the battle, the much smaller army of Poland–Lithuania (under 30,000 men) defeated

13600-605: The central, provincial, and district committees of the Communist Party; extremist and radical Communist Party members; people's commissars ; and Jews in party and government posts. Open-ended instructions were given to execute "other radical elements (saboteurs, propagandists, snipers, assassins, agitators, etc.)." He instructed that any pogroms spontaneously initiated by the population of the occupied territories were to be quietly encouraged. On 8 July, Heydrich announced that all Jews were to be regarded as partisans, and gave

13770-408: The city centre, the victims encountered a barbed wire barrier and numerous Ukrainian police and German troops. Thirty or forty people at a time were told to leave their possessions and were escorted through a narrow passageway lined with soldiers brandishing clubs. Anyone who tried to escape was beaten. Soon the victims reached an open area, where they were forced to strip, and then were herded down into

13940-432: The city's Jewish population from 30,000 to 702 over the course of four days. The German Order Police and local collaborators provided the extra manpower needed to perform all the shootings. Haberer wrote that, as in the Baltic states, the Germans could not have murdered so many Jews so quickly without local help. He points out that the ratio of Order Police to auxiliaries was 1 to 10 in both Ukraine and Belarus. In rural areas

14110-512: The city, which attempted to escape submission to Moscow . Such relationships could be tenuous, however, as changes in a city's internal politics could disrupt Lithuanian control, as happened on a number of occasions with Novgorod and other East-Slavic cities. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania managed to hold off Mongol incursions and eventually secured gains. In 1333 and 1339, Lithuanians defeated large Mongol forces attempting to regain Smolensk from

14280-456: The coming war of annihilation against " Judeo-Bolshevism ", his generals would have understood Hitler's call for the destruction of the Soviet Union as also comprising a call for the destruction of its Jewish population. The genocide was often described using euphemisms such as "special tasks" and "executive measures"; Einsatzgruppe victims were often described as having been shot while trying to escape. In May 1941, Heydrich verbally passed on

14450-950: The conquered Semigallians and Old Prussians to rebel against the Knights. Encouraged by Treniota , Mindaugas broke the peace with the Order, possibly reverted to pagan beliefs . He hoped to unite all Baltic tribes under the Lithuanian leadership. As military campaigns were not successful, the relationships between Mindaugas and Treniota deteriorated. Treniota, together with Daumantas of Pskov , assassinated Mindaugas and his two sons, Ruklys and Rupeikis, in 1263. The state lapsed into years of internal fighting. From 1263 to 1269, Lithuania had three grand dukes – Treniota , Vaišvilkas , and Švarnas . The state did not disintegrate, however, and Traidenis came to power in 1269. Traidenis strengthened Lithuanian control in Black Ruthenia , fought with

14620-419: The conquests, already initiated by Mindaugas in 13th century, began the process of fusing Ruthenian and Lithuanian culture and, in the absence of its own writing tradition, adopting Ruthenian as the language of administration and written communication. From at least the time of Vytautas , but probably much earlier, the language of internal administration was Chancery Ruthenian , a language similar to, but not

14790-464: The corpses. Heidborn spent the next few days helping smooth out the "millions" of banknotes taken from the victims' possessions. The clothing was taken away, destined to be re-used by German citizens. Jeckeln's troops shot more than 100,000 Jews by the end of October. Einsatzgruppe A operated in Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia (the three Baltic countries which had been occupied by

14960-523: The country's capital since 1316 or 1321. The state continued to expand its territory under the reign of Grand Duke Algirdas and his brother Kęstutis , who both ruled the state harmonically. During the inaugurations of Lithuanian monarchs until 1569, the Gediminas' Cap was placed on the monarch's heads by the Bishop of Vilnius in Vilnius Cathedral . Lithuania was in a good position to conquer

15130-752: The court in Kraków, they learned Polish language over time. Casimir was the last Grand Duke to know the Lithuanian language. From 1500, the elite of the Lithuanian state rapidly adopted the Polish language. Einsatzgruppe Einsatzgruppen ( German: [ˈaɪnzatsˌɡʁʊpm̩] , lit.   ' deployment groups ' ; also ' task forces ') were Schutzstaffel (SS) paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany that were responsible for mass murder, primarily by shooting, during World War II (1939–1945) in German-occupied Europe . The Einsatzgruppen had an integral role in

15300-478: The creation of a Commissary Provisional Government of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania which, in turn, renewed the Polish-Lithuanian Union . The union was never formalized, however, as only half a year later Napoleon's Grande Armée was pushed out of Russia and forced to retreat further westwards. In December 1812, Vilnius was recaptured by Russian forces, bringing all plans for the recreation of

15470-409: The dead bodies from the van and burying them was a horrible ordeal. Prisoners or auxiliaries were often assigned to do this task so as to spare the SS men the trauma. Some of the early mass murders at extermination camps used carbon monoxide fumes produced by diesel engines, similar to the method used in gas vans, but by as early as September 1941 experiments were begun at Auschwitz using Zyklon B ,

15640-586: The direction of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler and the supervision of SS- Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich , the Einsatzgruppen operated in territories occupied by the Wehrmacht (German armed forces) following the invasion of Poland in September 1939 and the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. The Einsatzgruppen worked hand-in-hand with the Order Police battalions on

15810-561: The drive by the Nazi regime to remove so-called "undesirable" elements from the German population, from September to December 1939 the Einsatzgruppen and others took part in Aktion T4 , a program of systematic murder of persons with physical and mental disabilities and patients of psychiatric hospitals. Aktion T4 mainly took place from 1939 to 1941, but the murders continued until the end of

15980-441: The early days of the war. Initially the targets were adult Jewish men, but by August the net had been widened to include women, children, and the elderly—the entire Jewish population. Initially there was a semblance of legality given to the shootings, with trumped-up charges being read out (arson, sabotage, black marketeering, or refusal to work, for example) and victims being murdered by a firing squad. As this method proved too slow,

16150-475: The enemy ... Struggle against Russia: Extermination of Bolshevik Commissars and of the Communist intelligentsia ... Commissars and GPU personnel are criminals and must be treated as such. The struggle will differ from that in the west. In the east harshness now means mildness for the future. Though General Halder did not record any mention of Jews, German historian Andreas Hillgruber argued that because of Hitler's frequent contemporary statements about

16320-468: The ethnically Lithuanian peasants and some middle nobility. Islam in Lithuania , unlike many other northern and western European countries, has a long history starting from 14th century. Small groups of Muslim Lipka Tatars migrated to ethnically Lithuanian lands, mainly under the rule of Grand Duke Vytautas (early 15th century). In Lithuania, unlike many other European societies at the time, there

16490-419: The exception of Einsatzgruppe A's Stahlecker, were of the opinion by the fall of 1941 that it was impossible to murder the entire Jewish population of the Soviet Union in one sweep, and thought the murders should stop. An Einsatzgruppe report dated 17 September advised that the Germans would be better off using any skilled Jews as labourers rather than shooting them. Also, in some areas poor weather and

16660-422: The existing familiar structures of society were destroyed. Historian Erich Haberer has suggested that many survived and made sense of the "totalitarian atomization" of society by seeking conformity with communism. As a result, by the time of the German invasion in 1941, many had come to see conformity with a totalitarian regime as socially acceptable behaviour; thus, people simply transferred their allegiance to

16830-467: The factual termination of the Polish–Lithuanian union also occurred during the reign of Casimir's sons Alexander Jagiellon and John I Albert who had respectively ruled Lithuania and Poland separately in 1492–1501. The rapid expansion of the influence of Moscow soon put it into a comparable position to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and after the annexation of Novgorod Republic in 1478, Muscovy

17000-665: The first time fully captured Russia's capital Moscow in 1610. Sigismund III's son, Władysław IV Vasa , began ruling Lithuania in 1632 and achieved military success and popularity during the Smolensk War , but he renounced his claims to the Russian throne per the Treaty of Polyanovka in 1634 and failed at reclaiming the Swedish throne. John II Casimir Vasa 's reign was initially marked with disastrous military loses as during

17170-470: The forces of the Grand Duchy in the Battle of Grunwald . The battle ended in a decisive Polish-Lithuanian victory against the Teutonic Order . The war of Lithuania against military Orders , which lasted for more than 200 years, and was one of the longest wars in the history of Europe, was finally ended. Vytautas backed the economic development of the state and introduced many reforms. Under his rule,

17340-449: The forest, near the pits, where they were ordered to strip. The victims were driven into the prepared trenches, made to lie down, and shot in the head or the back of the neck by members of Jeckeln's bodyguard. Around 13,000 Jews from Riga were murdered at the pits that day, along with a thousand Jews from Berlin who had just arrived by train. On the second day of the operation, 8 December 1941, the remaining 10,000 Jews of Riga were murdered in

17510-402: The formation of the Lithuanian state. The peace treaty with Galicia–Volhynia of 1219 provides evidence of cooperation between Lithuanians and Samogitians . This treaty lists 21 Lithuanian dukes , including five senior Lithuanian dukes from Aukštaitija ( Živinbudas , Daujotas , Vilikaila , Dausprungas and Mindaugas ) and several dukes from Žemaitija . Although they had battled in the past,

17680-464: The former Kievan Rus' and other neighbouring states, including what is now Belarus , Lithuania , most of Ukraine as well as parts of Latvia , Moldova , Poland and Russia . At its greatest extent, in the 15th century, it was the largest state in Europe. It was a multi-ethnic and multiconfessional state, with great diversity in languages, religion, and cultural heritage. The consolidation of

17850-424: The fusion of Lithuanian and Ruthenian elements in its culture, became the trigger for a long-running debate among historians from Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine over whether the state was essentially Lithuanian or Ruthenian-Lithuanian, in which the more advanced Ruthenian culture played a central role. Before the Lithuanian expansion into the Ruthenian lands, Lithuanian was the only language of public life. However,

18020-621: The higher cadres of the Soviet state; and to instigate and encourage pogroms against Jewish populations. The men of the Einsatzgruppen were recruited from the SD, Gestapo, Kriminalpolizei (Kripo), Orpo, and Waffen-SS . Each Einsatzgruppe was under the operational control of the Higher SS Police Chiefs in its area of operations. In May 1941, General Wagner and SS- Brigadeführer Walter Schellenberg agreed that

18190-496: The implementation of the "special tasks". Following the Heydrich-Wagner agreement on 28 April 1941, Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch ordered that when Operation Barbarossa began, all German Army commanders were to immediately identify and register all Jews in occupied areas in the Soviet Union, and fully co-operate with the Einsatzgruppen . In further meetings held in June 1941 Himmler outlined to top SS leaders

18360-607: The implementation of the so-called " Final Solution to the Jewish question " ( Die Endlösung der Judenfrage ) in territories conquered by Nazi Germany, and were involved in the murder of much of the intelligentsia and cultural elite of Poland, including members of the Catholic priesthood . Almost all of the people they murdered were civilians, beginning with the intelligentsia and swiftly progressing to Soviet political commissars , Jews , and Romani people , as well as actual or alleged partisans throughout Eastern Europe. Under

18530-445: The invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, the Einsatzgruppen 's main assignment was to kill civilians, as in Poland, but this time its targets specifically included Soviet Communist Party commissars and Jews. In a letter dated 2 July 1941 Heydrich communicated to his SS and Police Leaders that the Einsatzgruppen were to execute all senior and middle ranking Comintern officials; all senior and middle ranking members of

18700-417: The king gave the property by way of life tenure to Yury Zenovich, the castellan of Smolensk . After Yury Zenovich died, Sigismund gave the town to voivode of Połock Mikołaj Dorohostajski. After the liberation of Polatsk from Russian occupation, Lepel returned to Polish King Stephen Báthory , who restored it to the Diocese of Wilno. Within the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth it was administratively located in

18870-466: The last Baltic ally of Lithuania, in 1291. The Orders could now turn their full attention to Lithuania. The "buffer zone" composed of other Baltic tribes had disappeared, and Grand Duchy of Lithuania was left to battle the Orders on its own. The Gediminid dynasty ruled the grand duchy for over a century, and Vytenis was the first ruler of the dynasty. During his reign Lithuania was in constant war with

19040-456: The late 18th century, when the territory was suppressed during the 1795 partitions of Poland–Lithuania . The state was founded by Lithuanians , who were at the time a polytheistic nation of several united Baltic tribes from Aukštaitija . By 1440 the grand duchy had become the largest European state, controlling an area from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south. The grand duchy expanded to include large portions of

19210-506: The local auxiliary police force. Each Einsatzgruppe was supplemented with Waffen-SS and Order Police battalions as well as support personnel such as drivers and radio operators. On average, the Order Police formations were larger and better armed, with heavy machine-gun detachments, which enabled them to carry out operations beyond the capability of the SS. Each death squad followed an assigned army group as they advanced into

19380-489: The loss of land to Moscow, and the continued pressure threatened the survival of the state of Lithuania, so it was forced to ally more closely with Poland, forming a real union with the Kingdom of Poland in the Union of Lublin of 1569. The union was formally called the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania , however now commonly known as the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth . During

19550-563: The main target of both orders. The battle provided a break in the wars with the Knights, and Lithuania exploited this situation, arranging attacks on the Ruthenian provinces and annexing Navahrudak and Hrodna . In 1248, a civil war broke out between Mindaugas and his nephews Tautvilas and Edivydas . The powerful coalition against Mindaugas included Vykintas, the Livonian Order, Daniel of Galicia and Vasilko of Volhynia . Taking advantage of internal conflicts, Mindaugas allied with

19720-467: The mass murders. Historian Raul Hilberg estimates that between 1941 and 1945 the Einsatzgruppen , related agencies, and foreign auxiliary personnel murdered more than two million people, including 1.3 million of the 5.5 to 6 million Jews murdered during the Holocaust . After the close of World War II, 24 officers, including multiple commanding officers, of the Einsatzgruppen were prosecuted in

19890-519: The massacres. A pogrom in the Latvian capital Riga in early July 1941 killed 400 Jews. Latvian nationalist Viktors Arājs and his supporters undertook a campaign of arson against synagogues. On 2 July, Einsatzgruppe A commander Stahlecker appointed Arājs to head the Arajs Kommando , a Sonderkommando of about 300 men, mostly university students. Together, Einsatzgruppe A and

20060-521: The mid-16th century, the other being Ruthenian; later, both languages began to be replaced by Polish. Ruthenian culture dominated the courts of the Gediminid princes since the 14th century, especially those ruling directly over Ruthenian subjects. Grand Duke Jogaila was most likely bilingual, knowing and speaking Lithuanian and Ruthenian, and was able to communicate in the Samogitian dialect of

20230-596: The more than 20,000 Western Jews sent into Latvia, only some 800 lived through the deportation until liberation. This was the highest percentage of eradication in all of Europe. In late 1941, the Einsatzkommandos settled into headquarters in Kaunas, Riga, and Tallinn. Einsatzgruppe A grew less mobile and faced problems because of its small size. The Germans relied increasingly on the Latvian Arājs Kommando and similar groups to perform massacres of Jews. Such extensive and enthusiastic collaboration with

20400-536: The name of the state became the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Ruthenia. Similarly the title changed to "King of Lithuanians and Ruthenians, ruler and duke of Semigallia" when Semigallia became part of the state. The 1529 edition of the Statute of Lithuania described the titles of Sigismund I the Old as "King of Poland, the Grand Duke of Lithuania, Ruthenia, Prussia, Samogitia, Mazovia, and other [lands]". The country

20570-537: The newly occupied territories. Pogroms, some of which were orchestrated by the Einsatzgruppen , broke out in Latvia , Lithuania , and Ukraine . Within the first few weeks of Operation Barbarossa, 10,000 Jews had been murdered in 40 pogroms, and by the end of 1941 some 60 pogroms had taken place, claiming as many as 24,000 victims. However, SS-Brigadeführer Franz Walter Stahlecker , commander of Einsatzgruppe A, reported to his superiors in mid-October that

20740-632: The order for all male Jews between the ages of 15 and 45 to be shot. On 17 July Heydrich ordered that the Einsatzgruppen were to murder all Jewish Red Army prisoners of war, plus all Red Army prisoners of war from Georgia and Central Asia, as they too might be Jews. Unlike in Germany, where the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 defined as Jewish anyone with at least three Jewish grandparents, the Einsatzgruppen defined as Jewish anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent; in either case, whether or not

20910-570: The order for these murders at a series of meetings in mid-August. The Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen  – lists of people to be murdered – had been drawn up by the SS as early as May 1939, using dossiers collected by the SD from 1936 forward. The Einsatzgruppen performed these murders with the support of the Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz , a paramilitary group consisting of ethnic Germans living in Poland during Operation Tannenberg . Members of

21080-772: The order to murder the Soviet Jews to the SiPo NCO School in Pretzsch , where the commanders of the reorganised Einsatzgruppen were being trained for Operation Barbarossa. In spring 1941, Heydrich and the First Quartermaster of the Wehrmacht Heer , General Eduard Wagner , successfully completed negotiations for co-operation between the Einsatzgruppen and the German Army to allow

21250-409: The peasants. Since the 16th century, Polish was used much more often than other languages for writing. Polish finally became the Commonwealth's official chancellery language in 1697. Other important ethnic groups throughout the Grand Duchy of Lithuania were Jews and Tatars . Jews spoke mainly in the eastern dialect of Yiddish. The Lithuanian Tatars used a language of Kipchak origin that

21420-519: The period of the Union, many of the territories formerly controlled by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania were transferred to the Crown of the Polish Kingdom , while the gradual process of Polonization slowly drew Lithuania itself under Polish domination. Following the death of Grand Duke Sigismund II Augustus in 1572, a joint Polish–Lithuanian monarch was to be elected as in the Union of Lublin it

21590-471: The person practised the religion was irrelevant. The unit was also assigned to exterminate Romani people and the mentally ill. It was common practice for the Einsatzgruppen to shoot hostages. As the invasion began, the Germans pursued the fleeing Red Army, leaving a security vacuum. Reports surfaced of Soviet guerrilla activity in the area, with local Jews immediately suspected of collaboration. Heydrich ordered his officers to incite anti-Jewish pogroms in

21760-468: The police, and the Gestapo . Heydrich placed SS- Obergruppenführer Werner Best in command, who assigned Hans-Joachim Tesmer  [ de ] to choose personnel for the task forces and their subgroups, called Einsatzkommandos , from among educated people with military experience and a strong ideological commitment to Nazism. Some had previously been members of paramilitary groups such as

21930-459: The primary method of mass-murder. The Einsatzgruppen remained active, however, and were put to work fighting partisans, particularly in Belarus. After the defeat at Stalingrad in February 1943, Himmler realised that Germany would likely lose the war, and ordered the formation of a special task force, Sonderaktion 1005 , under SS- Standartenführer Paul Blobel . The unit's assignment

22100-441: The proportion was 1 to 20. This meant that most Ukrainian and Belarusian Jews were murdered by fellow Ukrainians and Belarusians commanded by German officers rather than by Germans. The second wave of exterminations in the Soviet Union met with armed resistance in some areas, though the chance of success was poor. Weapons were typically primitive or home-made. Communications were impossible between ghettos in various cities, so there

22270-509: The ravine. People were forced to lie down in rows on top of the bodies of other victims, and they were shot in the back of the head or the neck by members of the execution squads. The murders continued for two days, claiming a total of 33,771 victims. Sand was shovelled and bulldozed over the bodies and the sides of the ravine were dynamited to bring down more material. Anton Heidborn, a member of Sonderkommando 4a, later testified that three days later that there were still people alive among

22440-541: The regime the costs of deporting the victims further east over the Urals. In other areas the invasion was so successful that the Einsatzgruppen had insufficient forces to immediately murder all the Jews in the conquered territories. A situation report from Einsatzgruppe C in September 1941 noted that not all Jews were members of the Bolshevist apparatus, and suggested that the total elimination of Jewry would have

22610-493: The regime's intention to reduce the population of the Soviet Union by 30 million people, not only through direct murder of those considered racially inferior , but by depriving the remainder of food and other necessities of life. For Operation Barbarossa, initially four Einsatzgruppen were created, each numbering 500–990 men to comprise a total force of 3,000. Einsatzgruppen A, B, and C were to be attached to Army Groups North , Centre , and South ; Einsatzgruppe D

22780-579: The region waned thereafter. In 1387, Moldavia became a vassal of Poland and, in a broader sense, of Lithuania. By this time, Lithuania had conquered the territory of the Golden Horde all the way to the Dnieper River. In a crusade against the Golden Horde in 1398 (in an alliance with Tokhtamysh ), Lithuania invaded northern Crimea and won a decisive victory. In an attempt to place Tokhtamish on the Golden Horde throne in 1399, Lithuania moved against

22950-496: The residents of Kaunas were not spontaneously starting pogroms, and secret assistance by the Germans was required. A similar reticence was noted by Einsatzgruppe B in Russia and Belarus and Einsatzgruppe C in Ukraine; the further east the Einsatzgruppen travelled, the less likely the residents were to be prompted into murdering their Jewish neighbours. All four main Einsatzgruppen took part in mass shootings from

23120-503: The rest were shot. The largest mass shooting perpetrated by the Einsatzgruppen took place on 29 and 30 September 1941 at Babi Yar, a ravine northwest of Kyiv city center in Ukraine that had fallen to the Germans on 19 September. The perpetrators included a company of Waffen-SS attached to Einsatzgruppe C under Rasch, members of Sonderkommando 4a under SS- Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln , and some Ukrainian auxiliary police. The Jews of Kyiv were told to report to

23290-540: The same as, the spoken language used by Ruthenians living in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. As for the correspondences with foreign courts the grand ducal chancellery prepared it in the language appropriate to the recipient: Latin for the correspondence with the West, German with the Teutonic Order and Chancery Ruthenian with the East Slavic and Tatar rulers. The language used at court continued to be Lithuanian until

23460-543: The same way. About a thousand were murdered on the streets of the city or on the way to the site, bringing the total number of victims for the two-day extermination to 25,000 people. For his part in organising the massacre, Jeckeln was promoted to Leader of the SS Upper Section, Ostland . Einsatzgruppe B, C, and D did not immediately follow Einsatzgruppe A's example in systematically murdering all Jews in their areas. The Einsatzgruppe commanders, with

23630-509: The second half of the 16th century, Calvinism spread in Lithuania, supported by the families of Radziwiłł , Chodkiewicz , Sapieha , Dorohostajski and others. By the 1580s the majority of the senators from Lithuania were Calvinist or Socinian Unitarians ( Jan Kiszka ). In 1579, Stephen Báthory , King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, founded Vilnius University , one of the oldest universities in Northern Europe . Due to

23800-654: The task. Commander of Einsatzgruppe D, SS- Gruppenführer Otto Ohlendorf , particularly noted this propensity towards excess, and ordered that any man who was too eager to participate or too brutal should not perform any further executions. During a visit to Minsk in August 1941, Himmler witnessed an Einsatzgruppen mass execution first-hand and concluded that shooting Jews was too stressful for his men. By November he made arrangements for any SS men suffering ill health from having participated in executions to be provided with rest and mental health care. He also decided

23970-802: The thin cutting edge of German units that became involved in political and racial mass murder." Many Einsatzgruppe leaders were highly educated; for example, nine of seventeen leaders of Einsatzgruppe A held doctorate degrees. Three Einsatzgruppen were commanded by holders of doctorates, one of whom (SS- Gruppenführer Otto Rasch ) held a double doctorate. Additional Einsatzgruppen were created as additional territories were occupied. Einsatzgruppe E operated in Independent State of Croatia under three commanders, SS- Obersturmbannführer Ludwig Teichmann  [ de ] , SS- Standartenführer Günther Herrmann , and lastly SS- Standartenführer Wilhelm Fuchs . The unit

24140-480: The townspeople. The German occupation authorities created a ghetto and appointed a Jewish elder. On February 28, 1942, almost all of the 1,000 residents remaining in the ghetto were shot by an Einsatzgruppe . The Germans also operated a Nazi prison and briefly the AGSSt 8 assembly center for Soviet prisoners of war in the town. During Operation Bagration , the summer 1944 Soviet strategic offensive in Belarus, Lepiel

24310-593: The treaty with Galicia–Volhynia. The Livonian Rhymed Chronicle , reports that by the mid-1230s, Mindaugas had acquired supreme power in the whole of Lithuania. In 1236, the Samogitians, led by Vykintas , defeated the Livonian Order in the Battle of Saule . The Order was forced to become a branch of the Teutonic Knights in Prussia, making Samogitia, a strip of land that separated Livonia from Prussia,

24480-408: The troops, and sometimes did not kill the victims quickly enough. Many of the troops found the massacres to be difficult if not impossible to perform. Some of the perpetrators suffered physical and mental health problems, and many turned to drink. As much as possible, the Einsatzgruppen leaders militarized the genocide. The historian Christian Ingrao notes an attempt was made to make the shootings

24650-424: The victims should travel on foot from Riga to the execution ground. Trucks and buses were arranged to carry children and the elderly. The victims were told that they were being relocated, and were advised to bring up to 20 kg (44 lb) of possessions. The first day of executions, 30 November 1941, began with the perpetrators rousing and assembling the victims at 4:00 am. The victims were moved in columns of

24820-465: The war. Initially the victims were shot by the Einsatzgruppen and others, but gas chambers were put into use by spring 1940. In response to Adolf Hitler 's plan to invade Poland on 1 September 1939, Heydrich re-formed the Einsatzgruppen to travel in the wake of the German armies. Membership at this point was drawn from the SS, the Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service; SD),

24990-449: The western and the southern parts of the former Kievan Rus' . While almost every other state around it had been plundered or defeated by the Mongols , the hordes stopped at the modern borders of Belarus, and the core territory of the Grand Duchy was left mostly untouched. The weak control of the Mongols over the areas they had conquered allowed the expansion of Lithuania to accelerate. Rus' principalities were never incorporated directly into

25160-572: The work of the Jesuits during the Counter-Reformation the university soon developed into one of the most important scientific and cultural centres of the region and the most notable scientific centre of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The work of the Jesuits as well as conversions from among the Lithuanian senatorial families turned the tide and by the 1670s Calvinism lost its former importance though it still retained some influence among

25330-525: Was a quiet regional town center. On November 10, 1919 in the neighbourhood of Lepel there was a clash between the company of the 13th Infantry Regiment of the Polish Army sitting in an ambush and the Soviet troops advancing into the region. The fighting was successful for the Poles though their commanding officer, lieutenant Stanisław Jacheć, was the only Polish victim of the clash. Heavy fighting between

25500-483: Was agreed that the title "Grand Duke of Lithuania" will be received by a jointly elected monarch in the Election sejm on his accession to the throne, thus losing its former institutional significance, however the Union of Lublin guaranteed that the institution and the title "Grand Duke of Lithuania" will be preserved. In 1573, Henry Valua was elected as the first joint Polish–Lithuanian monarch, however his rule

25670-523: Was also called the Republic of Lithuania ( Latin : Respublica Lituana ) since at least the mid-16th century, already before the Union of Lublin in 1569. The first mention of the name Lithuania is found in the Annals of Quedlinburg , which describes the missionary expedition of Bruno of Querfurt to Yotvingians. In the 12th century, Slavic chronicles refer to Lithuania as one of the areas attacked by

25840-480: Was among the preeminent states in northeastern Europe . Between 1492 and 1508, Ivan III further consolidated Muscovy, winning the key Battle of Vedrosha and capturing such ancient lands of Kievan Rus' as Chernihiv and Bryansk . On 8 September 1514, the allied forces of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland, under the command of Hetman Konstanty Ostrogski, fought the Battle of Orsha against

26010-506: Was assigned to the 11th Army . The Einsatzgruppe for Special Purposes operated in eastern Poland starting in July 1941. The Einsatzgruppen were under the control of the RSHA, headed by Heydrich and later by his successor, SS- Obergruppenführer Ernst Kaltenbrunner . Heydrich gave them a mandate to secure the offices and papers of the Soviet state and Communist Party; to liquidate all

26180-544: Was confirmed by adopting the Reciprocal Guarantee of Two Nations . However, the newly reformed Commonwealth was invaded by Russia in 1792 and partitioned between neighbouring states. A truncated state (whose principal cities were Kraków , Warsaw and Vilnius ) remained that was nominally independent. After the Kościuszko Uprising , the territory was completely partitioned among the Russian Empire ,

26350-426: Was created sometime between 1315 and 1317 by the Constantinople Patriarch John XIII . Following the Galicia–Volhynia Wars which divided the Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland , in 1355 the Halych metropoly was liquidated and its eparchies transferred to the metropoles of Lithuania and Volhynia. In 1387, Lithuania converted to Catholicism , while most of

26520-413: Was full of borrowings from Turkish and Arabic . It ceased to be used in the 16th century, and was replaced by Ruthenian and Polish, written in the Arabic alphabet . Brought in 1397 from Crimea, Karaites used a dialect of West Karaite language , while Hebrew was used for religious purposes. In addition, Livonia , which had been politically connected to the Grand Duchy since the mid-16th century,

26690-472: Was inhabited by Latgalians who spoke a dialect of the Latvian language . Inhabiting the towns, mainly in Livonia, the mostly Protestant Germans used a local variety of German called Baltendeutsch . Prussian and Yotvingians refugees, pushed out by the Teutonic Knights, also found their footing in the Grand Duchy. Similarly, Russian Old Believers emigrated to Lithuanian lands in the 17th century. The Grand Duchy's linguistic and ethnic situation, as well as

26860-428: Was liberated on 3 July. Lepel has: Lepel is situated on a highway connecting Minsk and Vitebsk , and is 115 km from Vitebsk and 155 km from Minsk. The town is connected by road to Polatsk and by rail to Orsha . Grand Duchy of Lithuania The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a sovereign state in northeastern Europe that existed from the 13th century, succeeding the Kingdom of Lithuania , to

27030-420: Was located in Kernavė until 1316 or 1321 where Traidenis and Vytenis mainly resided and led to its prosperity. During this time, the Orders finalized their conquests. In 1274, the Great Prussian Rebellion ended, and the Teutonic Knights proceeded to conquer other Baltic tribes: the Nadruvians and Skalvians in 1274–1277, and the Yotvingians in 1283; the Livonian Order completed its conquest of Semigalia,

27200-422: Was mentioned for the first time in 1558. There were 42 Tatar families in the village in 1630. The majority of inhabitants of Lithuania proper , which included the voivodeships of Vilnius , Trakai and Samogitia , spoke Lithuanian. These areas remained almost wholly Lithuanian-speaking, both colloquially and by ruling nobility. Despite its frequent oral use, Lithuanian did not begin to be used in writing until

27370-461: Was no way to create a unified strategy. Few in the ghetto leadership supported resistance for fear of reprisals on the ghetto residents. Mass break-outs were sometimes attempted, though survival in the forest was nearly impossible due to the lack of food and the fact that escapees were often tracked down and murdered. After a time, Himmler found that the killing methods used by the Einsatzgruppen were inefficient: they were costly, demoralising for

27540-422: Was once again a part of the Commonwealth following the Lithuanian revolt against the Swedes. The Lithuania's capital Vilnius was liberated in 1661. Throughout this Polish–Lithuanian Union period, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania remained a separate state and retained many rights in the federation (including separate name, territory, coat of arms, ministries, ruling system, laws, army, courts, treasury, and seal) until

27710-423: Was recognized as a Christian state until 1260, when Mindaugas supported an uprising in Courland and (according to the German order) renounced Christianity. Up until 1387, Lithuanian nobles professed their own religion, which was polytheistic . Ethnic Lithuanians were very dedicated to their faith. The pagan beliefs needed to be deeply entrenched to survive strong pressure from missionaries and foreign powers. Until

27880-496: Was religious freedom. Lithuanian Tatars were allowed to settle in certain places, such as Trakai and Kaunas . Keturiasdešimt Totorių is one of the oldest Tatar settlements in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. After a successful military campaign of the Crimean Peninsula in 1397, Vytautas brought the first Crimean Tatar prisoners of war to Trakai and various places in the Duchy of Trakai , including localities near Vokė river just south of Vilnius. The first mosque in this village

28050-405: Was short and he never personally visited the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, despite being announced as the Grand Duke of Lithuania. The double election of 1575 was held in the presence of a small number of Lithuanian lords, who additionally supported the Habsburg candidate Emperor Maximilian II, however, the race for the crown was won by Stephen Báthory, crowned on May 1, 1576. The Lithuanian lords, at

28220-406: Was small-scale. After the Union of Lublin , this movement significantly increased. Polish was adopted also gradually by the local inhabitants. Already in early 16th century, Polish became the Lithuanian magnates' first language. The following century it was adopted by the Lithuanian nobility in general. The Polish language also penetrated other social strata: the clergy, the townspeople, and even

28390-539: Was subdivided into five Einsatzkommandos located in Vinkovci , Sarajevo , Banja Luka , Knin , and Zagreb . Einsatzgruppe F worked with Army Group South. Einsatzgruppe G operated in Romania , Hungary , and Ukraine , commanded by SS- Standartenführer Josef Kreuzer  [ de ] . Einsatzgruppe H was assigned to Slovakia . Einsatzgruppen K and L, under SS- Oberführer Emanuel Schäfer and SS- Standartenführer Ludwig Hahn , worked alongside 5th and 6th Panzer Armies during

28560-419: Was subdivided into five Einsatzkommandos of company strength (around 100 men). Though they were formally under the command of the army, the Einsatzgruppen received their orders from Heydrich and for the most part acted independently of the army. Many senior army officers were only too glad to leave these genocidal actions to the task forces, as the murders violated the rules of warfare as set down in

28730-587: Was to eventually remove all the Jews from Poland, but at this point their final destination had not yet been determined. Together, the Wehrmacht and the Einsatzgruppen also drove tens of thousands of Jews eastward into Soviet-controlled territory . On 13 March 1941, in the lead-up to Operation Barbarossa , the planned invasion of the Soviet Union, Hitler dictated his "Guidelines in Special Spheres re: Directive No. 21 (Operation Barbarossa)". Sub-paragraph B specified that Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler would be given "special tasks" on direct orders from

28900-560: Was to visit mass graves all along the Eastern Front to exhume bodies and burn them in an attempt to cover up the genocide. The task remained unfinished at the end of the war, and many mass graves remain unmarked and unexcavated. By 1944 the Red Army had begun to push the German forces out of Eastern Europe, and the Einsatzgruppen retreated alongside the Wehrmacht . By late 1944, most Einsatzgruppen personnel had been folded into Waffen-SS combat units or transferred to permanent death camps. Hilberg estimates that between 1941 and 1945

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