The Signature that Still Haunts Lithuania |
A Lithuanian state archive preserves the orders signed by my grandfather during the Holocaust: the seizure of Jewish property, the confinement of Jews, and the machinery of extermination in Šiauliai County. The documents remain. The question is why Lithuania still defends the men who signed them.
He was my grandfather. He signed Šiauliai County Chief Order No. 3687 on October 15, 1941. The order is preserved in the Lithuanian Central State Archive, fund R-1099, list 1, file 2, folio 451.[1] It directs every district chief and every mayor in Šiauliai County to sell items confiscated from Jews and to deposit the proceeds into a special account of the District Commissariat at the Reich Credit Bank in Šiauliai. He signed his name. He routed it for execution to a colonel under his authority. The colonel is named on the page: Aloyzas Banys.
He was the local link
By October 15, 1941, many of the owners of the property being liquidated had already been murdered. Others had been sealed into ghettos, stripped of possessions before later selections, deportations, and liquidation. The Šiauliai Ghetto had been sealed. The pits at Kužiai, at Pročiūnai, at Bubiai, at Žagarė had received their slaughter victims. “Confiscated Jewish property” is a phrase from a state record. It refers to belongings taken from murdered families. The clothes had owners. The cooking pots had owners. The watches had owners. The owners had names. The state knew the owners’ names and chose to render them as property.
The German District Commissar issued the underlying directive. My grandfather countersigned it as Šiauliai County Chief and routed it for execution to Col. Banys with a single Lithuanian word: Vykdyti. Execute. The secretary of the County Chief’s institution, Tamašauskas, attested the copy as true. The chain ran from Berlin through my grandfather’s office to every village in his county. He was not at the edge of the chain. He was the local link.
The money went to the Reichskreditkasse, the Wehrmacht’s field bank. Lithuanian-administered receipts from the property of murdered Jewish families flowed into the financial system that paid for the war and the killing. My grandfather’s office did not assist the Holocaust. It was a department of the Holocaust.
Reading my own family record
I have read the archive. I read it before I wrote Storm in the Land of Rain.[2] I read more of it after the book appeared. Fund R-1099 holds other orders my grandfather signed. Concentration of Jews. Seizure of Jewish property. The administration of the events at Žagarė. None of this is hidden. It sits in a state archive.........