Part 2 of 4: The day Lithuanians could no longer murder Jews with impunity

In Part 1, I exposed the formula Lithuanian diplomats deploy before audiences: Nazis, Soviets, and collaborators. Every word conceals a Lithuanian crime. What follows is what the formula was built to hide. These accounts come from the Jewish yiskor books — the memorial volumes compiled by the survivors themselves — and from the Koniuchowsky testimony collection of 121 signed survivor accounts gathered in displaced persons’ camps between 1946 and 1948.

Kvedarna: Screams Heard Across a Lithuanian Town

Kvedarna, a small town in the Tauragė district of western Lithuania. The Koniuchowsky testimony records what three Lithuanian partisans — Gedvilys, Jakas, and a third whose name is not recorded — did to three young Jewish women: Rivke Berelovitz, Sore Aron, and Mashe Yung. The Lithuanian partisans took the three girls from the ghetto to an empty Jewish house. They removed the girls’ clothing by force and raped them. Then they burned their sexual organs with lit cigarettes. The cries of the three girls could be heard throughout the town. Afterward, the three Lithuanian perpetrators boasted to their Lithuanian friends about what they had done. The town heard the screams and did nothing. The Lithuanian murderers expected and received social approval.

Telzh: The Storm That Inconvenienced the Murderers

Telzh (Telšiai), a city in the Samogitia region of western Lithuania. The testimony of Khane Pelts records what happened when one of the last groups of Jewish men was led to the shooting pits. Among them was her father, Gedalye Peltz. The men were ordered to strip to their underwear and stand at the edge of the pit. At that moment, a storm broke. The Lithuanian murderers did not experience a crisis of conscience. They simply did not want to get wet. They ordered the men to put their underwear back on and marched them back to the barracks to wait for better weather.

For three hours, the men sat in the barracks. They had seen what was in the pits. They sat, the testimony records, “like lumps of clay, like congealed stone statues.” Every one........

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