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Lithuanian Security Police

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Lithuanian Security Police also referred to as Saugumas (Template:Lang-lt) was a Lithuanian Nazi-sponsored collaborationist Police from 1941 to 1944 [1]. It had a staff of roughly 400 people, 250 of them in Kaunas[2] and further 130 in Vilna[3].

Overview

During Nazi occupation in Lithuania existed cumbersome police apparatus, which could be separated to German and Lithuanian. The most important German police organizations were Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police) with headquarters in Kaunas, and Schutzpolizei (Public Police). Main Lithuanian police organizationes were Public Police, Lithuanian Security and Criminal Police, Lithuanian self-defence units (police battalions), Railway Police and Fire Police. Lithuanian police organizations were subordinate to the respective German police organizations [4].

History

Lithuanian Provisional Government, a temporary government that was to govern Lithuania in the transitional period between the start of hostilities and the projected liberation of the country by Germany was restoring state institutions. On June 24, 1941, the authority recreated the pre-war Ministry of Internal Affairs and most of the men from the unit were accepted into its State Security Department headed by Vytautas Reivytis[5]. There they were joined by many more former members of pre-war Lithuanian institutions, as the government asked all those working there prior to June 15, 1940, to report for duty. However, after the German take-over of Lithuania it became apparent that the Germans had no intention to grant autonomy to Lithuania and the government was dissolved. At the same time the police and intelligence agencies recreated during the transitional period were found useful and were incorporated into the German security system. The former Security Department was renamed to Lithuanian Security Police[5] and was reshaped to a secret police modelled after the German Gestapo[3].

Collaborating with the Nazi Sipo (Security Police) and SD[6], the unit was directly subordinate to the German Kripo (Criminal Police)[7][2]. As such, it fulfilled a variety of roles. Among its main tasks were providing the German police forces with information and intelligence on Polish resistance, Communist organizations and ethnic minorities. It also served the role of an anti-partisan unit in the area of German-occupied northern Poland and Lithuania[8]. A special section within the Saugumas was devoted entirely to Jews and Communists (Template:Lang-lt). Finally, it presented its German superiors with proscription lists of Jews and intelligentsia bound for extermination.[9][10], and performed reconnaissance outside the pre-war borders of Lithuania[2].

Led by an Abwehr agent Stasys Čenkus[5], the organization had exclusive responsibility for cases of Jews in hiding, Jews suspected of communist links, persons who provided false documents or other assistance to Jews, and the cases of Jews who had escaped from the ghettos[3]. People suspected of Jewish roots, evaded being imprisoned in (or tried to escape from[11]) the ghettos or those who violated the Nazi racial laws were arrested and handed over either to the Gestapo or to another Lithuanian collaborationist force named Ypatingasis būrys, which then transported them to the mass murder site of Ponary (modern Paneriai) or to other places of mass execution[12][13][14]. Bubnys, however, argues, that Jewish questions were exceptionally in competence of German Security Police and German civilian administration. According to Bubnys, role of Lithuanian Security Police in extermination of Jews was minor and mostly limited to searching for individual Jews escaped from gethos and transfering captives to the German Security Police. He points to the fact, that Lithuanian Security Police was directly subordinate to the German Criminal Police and not to the SD or Gestapo, which were directly persecuting enemies of Reich [2].

Many of its members came from the Iron Wolf party[6]. After the war many of its members fled to Western Europe, notably to Germany[3]. The former commander of its branch in Vilna, Aleksandras Lileikis, in 1955 migrated to the USA, where he obtained a citizenship, of which he was deprived[1]. In 2006 Algimantas Dailidė was convicted in Lithuania of persecuting and arresting two Poles and 12 Jews while he was a member of Lithuanian Security Police[15][16]

Structure

Head of Lithuanian Security and Criminal Police was Stasys Čenkus. He kept this position until the end of German occupation. His deputy assistants were head of Security Police Kazys Matulis and personal secretary Vytenis Stasiškis. Head of Criminal Police was Petras Pamataitis [2].

LSP had six regional branches - in Kaunas itself (headed by Albinas Čiuoderis), in Vilnius (Aleksandras Lileikis), Šiauliai (Juozas Pakulis), Ukmergė (Aleksandras Braziukaitis), Marijampolė (Petras Banys) and Panevėžys (Antanas Liepa). The headquarters was divided onto several departments: Organization, Economy and Finances, Information and Intelligence and the "Communists, Ethnic Minorities and Jews" department[5]. Arūnas Bubnys lists only three departments of headquarters, ommiting "Communists, Ethnic Minorities and Jews" department [2].

Regional branches usually had seven commissariats:

  • Guards' commissariat - guarding buildings and prisons
  • Servicing commissariat - for financial and servicing functions
  • Information commissariat - screening candidates to governmental institutions, gathering operative information, creating lists of enemies of government, gathering information on political attitudes of local population, preparing reports and publication
  • Anti-Communist commissariat - gatvering information on Communists, Soviet partisans, underground Communist organizations, performing searches and arrests, recruiting agents
  • Polish commisariat - investigating activities of illegal Polish organizations, performing searches and arrests, recruiting agents
  • Commisariat of ethnic minorities - investigating and controlling activities of Russians, Belarussians and other ethnic minorities
  • Reconnaissance commisariat. [2]

Regional branches sometimes had different set of commissariats, for example Kaunas's branch had commisariat for rightwing organizations.[2]

References

  1. ^ a b Template:En icon United States Department of Justice (institutional author) (1996-06-26). "Court Revokes U.S. Citizenship of Former Security Police Official". Retrieved 2006-06-09. {{cite news}}: |author= has generic name (help)
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h Template:Lt icon Arūnas Bubnys (2004). Vokiečių ir lietuvių saugumo policija (1941–1944) (German and Lithuanian criminal police: 1941-1944). Vilnius: Lietuvos gyventojų genocido ir rezistencijos tyrimo centras. Retrieved 2006-06-09. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |chapterurl= and |coauthors= (help)
  3. ^ a b c d Template:En icon various authors (2005). "Lithuanian Collaboration in the "Final Solution": Motivations and Case Studies". Lithuania and the Jews; The Holocaust Chapter (pdf). Washington, D.C.: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  4. ^ Arūnas Bubnys. Lithuanian Security Police and the Holocaust (1941–1944)
  5. ^ a b c d Template:En icon Joseph A. Melamed (2004). "The Security Police (Sicherheits-polizei or Saugumas)". The Malicious Face and Criminal Acts of the "Provisional Government" of Lithuania or "the Insurrection of the Lithuanian Nation" (רשימת יישובי היהודים בליטא בזמן השואה, תאריכי ומקומות הרצח וכן ) (doc). Association of Lithuanian Jews. pp. 10–11. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |chapterurl= and |coauthors= (help)
  6. ^ a b Template:En icon Zvi Gitelman (1998). Bitter Legacy: Confronting the Holocaust in the USSR. Indiana University Press. p. 98. ISBN 0253333598. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |chapterurl= and |coauthors= (help)
  7. ^ Fifth office of Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA, Reich Security Main Office)
  8. ^ Template:Pl icon Piotr Niwiński, Okręg Wileński SZP-ZWZ-AK 1939-1944 (Wilno Region SZP-ZWZ-AK 1939-1944), 2nd Conference on „Opór społeczeństwa wobec systemu represji w Polsce i na Litwie w latach 1944 – 1956” (Society's resistance against the system of repression in Poland and Lithuania in the years 1944-1956), 2003, at the site of Instytut Pamięci Narodowej
  9. ^ Template:Pl icon PONARY
  10. ^ Template:Pl icon WILNO
  11. ^ Template:En icon "Deported Nazi denies any guilt". Jewish Telegraphic Agency. 1996-07-12. Retrieved 2006-06-09.
  12. ^ Template:Pl icon Tomasz Krzyżak (2004). "Lawina Steinbach ([[Erika Steinbach|Steinbach]]'s Avalanche)". Wprost. 1138 (2004-09-19). Retrieved 2006-06-09. {{cite journal}}: URL–wikilink conflict (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  13. ^ Template:Pl icon Śmierć pod czerwono-czarną flagą UPA (Death under the red-black flag of UPA], Inne Oblicza Historii
  14. ^ Template:Pl icon Marek A. Koprowski, Ponarski Wyrzut Sumienia (Ponary's Concience), Gość Niedzielny (17/2001)
  15. ^ Template:En icon "Nazi helper avoids Lithuania jail". BBC News (2006-03-27). 2006. Retrieved 2006-06-09. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  16. ^ Template:En icon United States Department of Justice (institutional author) (2001-07-11). "Justice Department Moves to Deport Florida Man Who Participated in Wartime Nazi Roundups of Lithuanian Jews". Retrieved 2006-06-09. {{cite news}}: |author= has generic name (help)

See also

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