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144-656: The city was first mentioned in historical records in 1267. From the 14th century, it was part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania , and since the Union of Lublin (1569), part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth , where it became known as Mohylew . In the 16th-17th centuries, the city flourished as one of the main nodes of the east–west and north–south trading routes. In 1577, Polish King Stefan Batory granted it city rights under Magdeburg law . In 1654, during

288-545: 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

432-703: 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 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

576-475: A forced labour complex , and at the Majdanek concentration camp . In most other camps prisoners were selected for slave labor first; they were kept alive on starvation rations and made available to work as required. Auschwitz, Majdanek, and Jasenovac were retrofitted with Zyklon B gas chambers and crematoria buildings as the time went on, remaining operational until war's end in 1945. Heinrich Himmler visited

720-635: A 'euthanasia programme' to disguise that mass murder was taking place. Despite the lethal effects of carbon monoxide, this was seen as unsuitable for use in the East due to the cost of transporting the carbon monoxide in cylinders. Each extermination camp operated differently, yet each had designs for quick and efficient industrialized killing. While Höss was away on an official journey in late August 1941 his deputy, Karl Fritzsch , tested out an idea. At Auschwitz clothes infested with lice were treated with crystallised prussic acid . The crystals were made to order by

864-553: 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

1008-605: A chemical plant were established. By the 1950s, tanning was Mogilev's principal industry, and it was a major trading centre for cereal, leather, salt, sugar, fish, timber and flint: the city has been home to a major inland port on the Dnieper river since and an airport since. Since the fall of the Soviet Union and the establishment of Belarus as an independent country, Mogilev has become one of that country's main economic and industrial centres. The town's most notable landmark

1152-543: 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

1296-567: A death camp in Mogilev were abandoned in favour of Maly Trostenets . In 1944, with the Mogilev offensive , the devastated city was liberated by the Red Army and returned to Soviet control. Mogilev then was the site of a labour camp for German POW soldiers . Since Belarus gained its independence in 1991, Mogilev has remained one of its principal cities. Mohilev was the episcopal see of

1440-591: 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

1584-532: 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,

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1728-437: 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 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

1872-576: 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

2016-479: A result of the secretive Sonderaktion 1005 , the camps were dismantled by commandos of condemned prisoners, their records were destroyed, and the mass graves were dug up. Some extermination camps that remained uncleared of evidence were liberated by Soviet troops, who followed different standards of documentation and openness than the Western allies did. Nonetheless Majdanek was captured nearly intact due to

2160-471: A site out of view to be killed off discreetly. According to Höss, enslaved prisoners, euphemistically called Sonderkommando (Special Detachment), assisted in the process of extermination; they encouraged the Jews to undress and accompanied them into the gas chambers which were outfitted to appear as shower rooms (with nonworking water nozzles, and tile walls); and remained with the victims until just before

2304-648: 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

2448-675: Is firmly established by testimonies of camp survivors and Final Solution perpetrators, material evidence (the remaining camps, etc.), Nazi photographs and films of the killings, and camp administration records. In 2017 a Körber Foundation survey found that 40 percent of 14-year-olds in Germany did not know what Auschwitz was. A 2018 survey organized in the United States by the Claims Conference , United States Holocaust Memorial Museum , and others found that 66 percent of

2592-620: Is the late 17th-century town hall , named the Ratuša (Rathaus), that was built during the times of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth . The grand tower of the town hall sustained serious damage during the Great Northern War and the Great Patriotic War . It was eventually demolished in 1957 and rebuilt in its pre-war form in 2008. Another important landmark of Mogilev is the six-pillared St. Stanisław's Cathedral, built in

2736-535: The SS-Totenkopfverbände (the Skull Units, SS-TV), who operated extermination camps from 1941 as well. An SS anatomist , Johann Kremer , after witnessing the gassing of victims at Birkenau , wrote in his diary on 2 September 1942: " Dante's Inferno seems to me almost a comedy compared to this. They don't call Auschwitz the camp of annihilation for nothing!" The distinction was evident during

2880-515: 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 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

3024-714: The SS in order to eliminate " life unworthy of life " ( German : Lebensunwertes Leben ), a Nazi designation for people who they considered to have no right to life . In 1941, the experience gained in the secretive killing of these hospital patients led to the creation of extermination camps for the implementation of the Final Solution. By then, the Jews were already confined to new ghettos and interned in Nazi concentration camps along with other targeted groups, including Roma, and

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3168-546: The Aktion T4 , or directly on site. The idea of mass extermination with the use of stationary facilities, to which the victims were taken by train , was the result of earlier Nazi experimentation with chemically manufactured poison gas during the secretive Aktion T4 euthanasia programme against hospital patients with mental and physical disabilities . The technology was adapted, expanded, and applied in wartime to unsuspecting victims of many ethnic and national groups;

3312-457: The Baroque style between 1738 and 1752 and distinguished by its frescoes. The convent of St. Nicholas preserves its magnificent cathedral of 1668, as well as the original iconostasis , bell tower, walls, and gates. It is currently under consideration to become a UNESCO World Heritage site. Minor landmarks include the archiepiscopal palace and memorial arch, both dating from the 1780s, and

3456-799: 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

3600-673: 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

3744-627: 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

3888-483: The IG Farben chemicals company for which the brand name was Zyklon B. Once released from their container, Zyklon B crystals in the air released a lethal cyanide gas. Fritzsch tried out the effect of Zyklon B on Soviet POWs, who were locked up in cells in the basement of the bunker for this experiment. Höss on his return was briefed and impressed with the results and this became the camp strategy for extermination as it

4032-476: 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 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

4176-648: The Lithuanian army : in 1655 , and in 1660 . In 1661, local residents started an uprising against the Russian imperial rule  [ ru ] . The city was set afire by Peter the Great 's forces in 1708, during the Great Northern War . After the First Partition of Poland in 1772, Mogilev became part of the Russian Empire and became the centre of the Mogilev Governorate . In 1938 it

4320-803: 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 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

4464-421: 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 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

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4608-489: The Nuremberg trials , when Dieter Wisliceny (a deputy to Adolf Eichmann ) was asked to name the extermination camps, and he identified Auschwitz and Majdanek as such. Then, when asked, "How do you classify the camps Mauthausen , Dachau , and Buchenwald ?", he replied, "They were normal concentration camps, from the point of view of the department of Eichmann." Murders were not limited to these camps. Sites for

4752-479: The Russo-Polish War (1654–1667) , the townsmen negotiated a treaty of surrender to the Russians peacefully, if the Jews were to be expelled and their property divided up among Mogilev's inhabitants. Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovitch agreed. However, instead of expelling the Jews, the Russian troops massacred them after they had led them to the outskirts of the town. During this war, the city was besieged twice by

4896-642: The SS and Police Leader Odilo Globocnik stationed in Lublin received an oral order from Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler  – anticipating the fall of Moscow  – to start immediate construction work on the killing centre at Bełżec in the General Government territory of occupied Poland. Notably, the order preceded the Wannsee Conference by three months, but

5040-568: 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 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

5184-576: 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

5328-564: The "Holocaust by Bullets" are marked on the map of The Holocaust in Occupied Poland by white skulls (without the black background), where people were lined up next to a ravine and shot by soldiers with rifles. Sites included Bronna Góra , Ponary , Rumbula and others. Irrespective of round-ups for extermination camps, the Nazis abducted millions of foreigners for slave labour in other types of camps , which provided perfect cover for

5472-642: 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

5616-569: 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

5760-476: 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,

5904-795: The Auschwitz II (Auschwitz–Birkenau) and Majdanek camps were parts of a labor camp complex, the Chełmno and Operation Reinhard death camps (that is, Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka) were built exclusively for the rapid extermination of entire communities of people (primarily Jews) within hours of their arrival. All were constructed near branch lines that linked to the Polish railway system, with staff members transferring between locations. These camps had almost identical design: they were several hundred metres in length and width, and were equipped with only minimal staff housing and support installations not meant for

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6048-624: The Auschwitz camp physicians attributed that to the "paralyzing effect on the lungs" of the Zyklon B gas, which killed before the victim began suffering convulsions. The corpses were additionally found half-squatting, their skin discolored pink with red and green spots, with some foaming at the mouth or bleeding from their ears, exacerbated by the crowding in gas chambers. As a matter of political training, some high-ranked Nazi Party leaders and SS officers were sent to Auschwitz–Birkenau to witness

6192-594: The Eastern Front. The camps designed specifically for the mass gassings of Jews were established in the months following the Wannsee Conference chaired by Reinhard Heydrich in January 1942 in which the principle was made clear that the Jews of Europe were to be exterminated. Responsibility for the logistics was to be handled by the programme administrator, Adolf Eichmann . On 13 October 1941,

6336-524: 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

6480-455: 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

6624-585: 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

6768-505: The Holocaust . The victims of death camps were primarily murdered by gassing , either in permanent installations constructed for this specific purpose, or by means of gas vans . The six extermination camps were Chełmno , Belzec , Sobibor , Treblinka , Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau . Extermination through labour was also used at the Auschwitz and Majdanek death camps. Millions were also murdered in concentration camps , in

6912-442: The Holocaust were mostly killed at Auschwitz II Birkenau. The March of the Living is organized in Poland annually since 1988. Marchers come from countries as diverse as Estonia , New Zealand , Panama , and Turkey . Holocaust deniers or negationists are people and organizations who assert that the Holocaust did not occur, or that it did not occur in the historically recognized manner and extent. Holocaust deniers claim that

7056-443: The Holocaust. Unlike at Auschwitz, where cyanide-based Zyklon B was used to exterminate trainloads of prisoners under the guise of "relocation", the camps at Treblinka , Bełżec , and Sobibór , built during Operation Reinhard (October 1941 – November 1943), used lethal exhaust fumes produced by large internal combustion engines . The three killing centres of Einsatz Reinhard were constructed predominantly for

7200-446: 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

7344-422: The Jews of Mogilev were ghettoized and systematically murdered by Ordnungspolizei and SS personnel. Heinrich Himmler personally witnessed the executions of 279 Jews on 23 October 1941. Later that month, a number of mentally disabled patients were poisoned with car exhaust fumes as an experiment; the method of killing was thereafter applied in several Nazi extermination camps . Initial plans for establishing

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7488-478: The Jews were the primary target, accounting for over 90 percent of extermination camp victims. The genocide of the Jews of Europe was Nazi Germany's " Final Solution to the Jewish question ". After the invasion of Poland in September 1939, the secret Aktion T4 euthanasia programme – the systematic murder of German, Austrian and Polish hospital patients with mental or physical disabilities authorized by Hitler  – was initiated by

7632-448: The Jews, many suspected they were to be killed – despite having been deceived into believing they were to be deloused and then returned to the camp. As a result, the Nazis identified and isolated "difficult individuals" who might alert the prisoners, and removed them from the mass – lest they incite revolt among the deceived majority of prisoners en route to the gas chambers. The "difficult" prisoners were led to

7776-425: The Latin Catholic Archdiocese of Mohilev until its 1991 merger into the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Minsk-Mohilev . It remains the see of the Eparchy (Eastern diocese) of Mogilev and Mstsislaw in the Belarusian Exarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church . After World War II , a huge metallurgy centre with several major steel mills was built. Also, several major factories of cranes , cars , tractors and

7920-409: 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

8064-425: 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

8208-440: 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 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

8352-450: 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

8496-408: 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

8640-481: The Nazi system, each referring to camps whose primary function was genocide . Six camps meet this definition, though extermination of people happened at every sort of concentration camp or transit camp; the use of the term extermination camp with its exclusive purpose is carried over from Nazi terminology. The six camps were Chełmno , Belzec , Sobibor , Treblinka , Majdanek and Auschwitz (also called Auschwitz-Birkenau). Death camps were designed specifically for

8784-505: 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

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8928-412: 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

9072-445: The Soviet POWs . The Nazi's so-called " Final Solution of the Jewish Question ", based on the systematic murder of Europe's Jews by gassing, began during Operation Reinhard , after the June 1941 onset of the Nazi–Soviet war. The adoption of the gassing technology by Nazi Germany was preceded by a wave of hands-on killings carried out by the SS Einsatzgruppen , who followed the Wehrmacht army during Operation Barbarossa on

9216-432: 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

9360-428: 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

9504-417: The addresses of those members of their race still in hiding". Once the door of the filled gas chamber was sealed, pellets of Zyklon B were dropped through special holes in the roof. Regulations required that the Camp Commandant supervise the preparations, the gassing (through a peephole), and the aftermath looting of the corpses. Commandant Höss reported that the gassed victims "showed no signs of convulsion";

9648-468: 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

9792-426: The chamber door closed. To psychologically maintain the "calming effect" of the delousing deception, an SS man stood at the door until the end. The Sonderkommando talked to the victims about life in the camp to pacify the suspicious ones, and hurried them inside; to that effect, they also assisted the aged and the very young in undressing. Many young mothers hid their infants beneath their piled clothes fearing that

9936-457: 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

10080-515: The command of Hauptsturmführer Franz Stangl , and Treblinka (operational by July 1942) under Obersturmführer Irmfried Eberl from T4, the only doctor to have served in such a capacity. Auschwitz concentration camp was fitted with brand new gas chambers in March 1942. Majdanek had them built in September. The Nazis distinguished between extermination and concentration camps. The terms extermination camp ( Vernichtungslager ) and death camp ( Todeslager ) were interchangeable in

10224-780: 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

10368-419: 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

10512-418: The corpse of a relative, or saw them entering the gas chambers. According to Höss, they were obviously shaken by this but "it never led to any incident". He mentioned the case of a Sonderkommando who found the body of his wife, yet continued to drag corpses along "as though nothing had happened". At Auschwitz, the corpses were incinerated in crematoria and the ashes either buried, scattered, or dumped in

10656-556: The country from Minsk to Mogilev. Due to that, the now- Mogilev City Council building was built in 1938–1940 with the aim of being the government building. It was designed to resemble the Minsk Government building . During Operation Barbarossa , the city was conquered by Wehrmacht forces on 26 July 1941 and remained under German occupation until 28 June 1944. Mogilev became the official residence of High SS and police leader (HSSPF) Erich von dem Bach . During that period,

10800-523: 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

10944-420: The courage to joke with the children, to encourage them, despite the mortal terror visible in their own eyes". Some women would suddenly "give the most terrible shrieks while undressing, or tear their hair, or scream like maniacs"; these prisoners were taken away for execution by shooting. In such circumstances, others, meaning to save themselves at the gas chamber's threshold, betrayed the identities and "revealed

11088-705: 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. Extermination camp Nazi Germany used six extermination camps ( German : Vernichtungslager ), also called death camps ( Todeslager ), or killing centers ( Tötungszentren ), in Central Europe, primarily Occupied Poland , during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million people – mostly Jews  – in

11232-478: 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

11376-671: The delousing "disinfectant" might harm them. Camp Commandant Höss reported that the "men of the Special Detachment were particularly on the look-out for this", and encouraged the women to take their children into the "shower room". Likewise, the Sonderkommando comforted older children who might cry "because of the strangeness of being undressed in this fashion". Yet, not every prisoner was deceived by such tactics; Commandant Höss spoke of Jews "who either guessed, or knew, what awaited them, nevertheless ... [they] found

11520-509: The diesel [engine] did not start. The people wait inside the gas chambers. In vain. They can be heard weeping, "like in the synagogue", says Professor Pfannenstiel, his eyes glued to a window in the wooden door. Furious, Captain Wirth lashes the Ukrainian ( Trawniki ) assisting Hackenholt twelve, thirteen times, in the face. After 2 hours and 49 minutes – the stopwatch recorded it all –

11664-490: The diesel started. Up to that moment, the people shut up in those four crowded chambers were still alive, four times 750 persons, in four times 45 cubic meters. Another 25 minutes elapsed. Many were already dead, that could be seen through the small window, because an electric lamp inside lit up the chamber for a few moments. After 28 minutes, only a few were still alive. Finally, after 32 minutes, all were dead ... Dentists [then] hammered out gold teeth, bridges, and crowns. In

11808-584: The enormous theater in a blend of the Neo-Renaissance and Russian Revival styles. At Polykovichi, an urban part of Mogilev, there is a 350 metre tall guyed TV mast, one of the tallest structures in Belarus. Mogilev has a warm-summer humid continental climate ( Köppen climate classification Dfb ) with warm summers and cold winters. City sports teams: Mogilev is twinned with: Grand Duchy of Lithuania The Grand Duchy of Lithuania

11952-468: 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

12096-467: The extermination camps were actually transit camps from which Jews were deported farther east. However, these theories are disproven by surviving German documents, which show that Jews were sent to the camps to be murdered. Extermination camp research is difficult because of extensive attempts by the SS and Nazi regime to conceal the existence of the extermination camps. The existence of the extermination camps

12240-637: The extermination of Poland's Jews trapped in the Nazi ghettos . At first, the victims' bodies were buried with the use of crawler excavators , but they were later exhumed and incinerated in open-air pyres to hide the evidence of genocide in what became known as Sonderaktion 1005 . The six camps considered to be purely for extermination were Chełmno extermination camp , Bełżec extermination camp , Sobibor extermination camp , Treblinka extermination camp , Majdanek extermination camp and Auschwitz extermination camp (also called Auschwitz-Birkenau). Whereas

12384-477: The extermination process by removing corpses from the gas chambers and burning them. At the camps of Operation Reinhard, including Bełżec , Sobibór , and Treblinka , trainloads of prisoners were murdered immediately after arrival in gas chambers designed exclusively for that purpose. The mass killing facilities were developed at about the same time inside the Auschwitz II-Birkenau subcamp of

12528-456: The extermination programme. Prisoners represented about a quarter of the total workforce of the Reich, with mortality rates exceeding 75 percent due to starvation, disease, exhaustion, executions, and physical brutality. In the early years of World War II, the Jews were primarily sent to forced labour camps and ghettoised, but from 1942 onward they were deported to the extermination camps under

12672-467: 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

12816-610: 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

12960-470: 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,

13104-481: 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,

13248-504: The gassings at Chełmno north of Łódź using gas vans began already in December, under Sturmbannführer Herbert Lange . The camp at Bełżec was operational by March 1942, with leadership brought in from Germany under the guise of Organisation Todt  (OT). By mid-1942, two more death camps had been built on Polish lands for Operation Reinhard: Sobibór (ready in May 1942) under

13392-571: The gassings. As the Auschwitz Camp Commandant Rudolf Höss justified the extermination by explaining the need for "the iron determination with which we must carry out Hitler's orders". After the gassings, the Sonderkommando removed the corpses from the gas chambers, then extracted any gold teeth. Initially, the victims were buried in mass graves, but were later cremated during Sonderaktion 1005 in all camps of Operation Reinhard . The Sonderkommando

13536-431: The ghettos for "special treatment" in an atmosphere of terror by uniformed police battalions from both Orpo and Schupo . Death camps differed from concentration camps located in Germany proper, such as Bergen-Belsen , Oranienburg , Ravensbrück , and Sachsenhausen , which were prison camps set up prior to World War II for people defined as 'undesirable'. From March 1936, all Nazi concentration camps were managed by

13680-596: 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 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

13824-527: The guise of "resettlement". For political and logistical reasons, the most infamous Nazi German killing factories were built in occupied Poland , where most of the intended victims lived; Poland had the greatest Jewish population in Nazi-controlled Europe . On top of that, the new death camps outside of Germany's prewar borders could be kept secret from the German civil populace. During

13968-540: The initial phase of the Final Solution , gas vans producing poisonous exhaust fumes were developed in the occupied Soviet Union (USSR) and at the Chełmno extermination camp in occupied Poland , before being used elsewhere. The killing method was based on experience gained by the SS during the secretive Aktion T4 programme of involuntary euthanasia . There were two types of death chambers operating during

14112-406: 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 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

14256-466: 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

14400-489: 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

14544-618: 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

14688-521: 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

14832-403: The midst of them stood Captain Wirth. He was in his element, and, showing me a large can full of teeth, he said: "See, for yourself, the weight of that gold! It's only from yesterday, and the day before. You can't imagine what we find every day – dollars, diamonds, gold. You'll see for yourself!" Auschwitz Camp Commandant Rudolf Höss reported that the first time Zyklon B pellets were used on

14976-647: The outskirts of Minsk in 1941 to witness a mass shooting. He was told by the commanding officer there that the shootings were proving psychologically damaging to those being asked to pull the triggers. Thus, Himmler concluded that another method of mass killing was required. Auschwitz Commandant Rudolf Höss claimed in his memoir that many Einsatzkommandos were "unable to endure wading through blood any longer" and went mad or killed themselves, but he gives no specific numbers to support this claim. The Nazis had first used gassing with carbon monoxide cylinders to murder 70,000 disabled people in Germany in what they called

15120-645: 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 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

15264-483: The past, 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

15408-409: 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

15552-468: 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

15696-470: 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 the Federation , the Grand Duchy of Lithuania maintained its political distinctiveness and had separate ministries, laws, army, and treasury. The federation was terminated by

15840-556: The rapid advance of the Soviet Red Army during Operation Bagration . In the post-war period the government of the People's Republic of Poland created monuments at the extermination camp sites. These early monuments mentioned no ethnic, religious, or national particulars of the Nazi victims. The extermination camps sites have been accessible to everyone in recent decades. They are popular destinations for visitors from all over

15984-579: 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

16128-484: The river. At Sobibór , Treblinka , Bełżec , and Chełmno , the corpses were incinerated on pyres. The efficiency of industrialised murder at Auschwitz-Birkenau led to the construction of three buildings with crematoria designed by specialists from the firm J. A. Topf & Söhne . They burned bodies 24 hours a day, and yet the death rate was at times so high that corpses also needed to be burned in open-air pits. The estimated total number of people who were murdered in

16272-485: The root derived from the Proto-Indo-European leyǝ- . However, the river is very small and some find it improbable that such 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

16416-540: 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

16560-483: The same fate in the end. At the Lazaret killing station they held the sick so they would never see the gun while being shot. They did it "in such a matter-of-course manner that they might, themselves, have been the exterminators", wrote Höss. He further said that the men ate and smoked "even when engaged in the grisly job of burning corpses which had been lying for some time in mass graves." They occasionally encountered

16704-509: 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

16848-508: The six Nazi extermination camps is 2.7 million, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. All six camps are located in present-day Poland. The Nazis attempted to either partially or completely dismantle the extermination camps in order to hide any evidence that people had been murdered there. This was an attempt to conceal not only the extermination process but also the buried remains. As

16992-699: The systematic killing of people delivered en masse by the Holocaust trains . Deportees were normally murdered within a few hours of arrival at Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka. The Reinhard extermination camps were under Globocnik's direct command; each of them was run by 20 to 35 men from the SS-Totenkopfverbände branch of the Schutzstaffel , augmented by about one hundred Trawnikis  – auxiliaries mostly from Soviet Ukraine, and up to one thousand Sonderkommando slave labourers each. The Jewish men, women and children were delivered from

17136-526: 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,

17280-424: The victims crammed into the railway transports . The Nazis deceived the victims upon their arrival, telling them that they were at a temporary transit stop, and would soon continue to German Arbeitslagers (work camps) farther to the east. Selected able-bodied prisoners delivered to the death camps were not immediately killed, but instead were pressed into labor units called Sonderkommandos to help with

17424-449: 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

17568-407: The word leičiai (plural of leitis , a social group of warriors-knights in the early Grand Duchy of Lithuania). The title of 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

17712-572: 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

17856-646: The world, especially the most infamous Nazi death camp, Auschwitz near the town of Oświęcim . In the early 1990s, the Jewish Holocaust organisations debated with the Polish Catholic groups about "What religious symbols of martyrdom are appropriate as memorials in a Nazi death camp such as Auschwitz?" The Jews opposed the placement of Christian memorials such as the Auschwitz cross near Auschwitz I where mostly Poles were killed. The Jewish victims of

18000-407: Was a sovereign state in northeastern Europe that existed from the 13th century, succeeding the Kingdom of Lithuania , to 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

18144-483: 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

18288-550: Was also to be at Majdanek. Besides gassing, the camp guards continued killing prisoners via mass shooting, starvation, torture, etc. SS Obersturmführer Kurt Gerstein of the Institute for Hygiene of the Waffen-SS , told a Swedish diplomat during the war, about life in a death camp. He recounted that on 19 August 1942, he arrived at Bełżec extermination camp (which was equipped with carbon monoxide gas chambers) and

18432-425: 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

18576-582: Was captured by the forces of Soviet Russia and incorporated into the Byelorussian SSR . Up to World War II and the Holocaust , like many other cities in Europe, Mogilev had a significant Jewish population: according to the Russian census of 1897 , out of the total population of 41,100, 21,500 were Jews (i.e. over 50 percent). In 1938 the leadership of Soviet Belarus decided to move the capital of

18720-632: 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

18864-746: Was decided Mogilev was to become the capital of Belarus because Minsk was too close to the then-Polish-Soviet border. In the years 1915–1917, during World War I , the Stavka , the headquarters of the Russian Imperial Army , was based in the city and the Tsar, Nicholas II , spent long periods there as Commander-in-Chief. Following the Russian Revolution , in 1918, the city was briefly occupied by Germany and placed under their short-lived Belarusian People's Republic . In 1919, Mogilev

19008-465: 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,

19152-581: 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

19296-666: 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,

19440-422: 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

19584-521: Was nominally independent. After the Kościuszko Uprising , the territory was completely partitioned among the Russian Empire , 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

19728-475: 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

19872-478: 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

20016-614: 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

20160-444: Was responsible for burning the corpses in the pits, stoking the fires, draining surplus body fat and turning over the "mountain of burning corpses ... so that the draft might fan the flames", wrote Commandant Höss in his memoir while in the Polish custody. He was impressed by the diligence of prisoners from the so-called Special Detachment who carried out their duties despite their being well aware that they, too, would meet exactly

20304-461: 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

20448-421: Was shown the unloading of 45 train cars filled with 6,700 Jews, many already dead. The rest were marched naked to the gas chambers , where: Unterscharführer Hackenholt was making great efforts to get the engine running. But it doesn't go. Captain Wirth comes up. I can see he is afraid, because I am present at a disaster. Yes, I see it all and I wait. My stopwatch showed it all, 50 minutes, 70 minutes, and

20592-406: 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

20736-552: 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 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

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