MARTYRS OF ŽEMAITIJA
ŽEMAIČIŲ
KANKINIAI
THE TRAGEDY OF RAINIAI FOREST - JUNE 24 - 25, 1941
Translated from the original
Lithuanian by Gloria O’Brien
The
information contained in this booklet was obtained from direct witnesses, i.e.,
persons who had been held as criminals in the Telšiai prison and later
managed to escape, or guards, supervisors or general employees at the prison.
Selected portions of the booklet are here translated.
**************
More than fifty years have passed since
the tragedy of Rainiai
Forest. Few remain of that generation as witnesses, and in the forest clearing
where the slaughter was carried out, young fir trees grow, never having seen
that terrible night. But neither Žemaitija
nor all of Lithuania have ever forgotten their martyrs and their suffering.
Each year, on the anniversary of the massacre, crosses would spring up
overnight, and the barbaric Red occupation forces and their henchmen would
destroy them. Their vigilance was for naught, however - crosses continued to appear.
When the nation’s Rebirth began, the
story of Rainiai again rang out, as one
of the most chilling tragedies of the Lithuanian nation, and all of Europe.
Much has been written about it, but one booklet, “Žemaičių Kankiniai“, published in 1942
by the patriots of Telšiai, and again later in Canada, became a
bibliographic rarity. It was the first, and even till now the only, documentary
source about the tragedy. At the beginning of the Rebirth, it was circulated by
copying reprints. The latest publishers,
Lietuvos Knygos Draugija, understanding its importance, resolved to offer it to
the public once again, in 1991.
When
war began between Germany and the USSR, political prisoners held by the
Russians in the Telšiai prison hoped to be released. June 23rd
and 24th saw a lot of Russian military traffic through the town,
with various units driving back and forth, jamming the streets. During the
night of the 23rd/24th, the communist party, NKVD, and
militia, all scattered and left Telšiai.
At that time, there were no Russians at the prison, and customary order was being
maintained by the regular local prison guards. Despite pleas from the
Lithuanian populace that the prisoners be released, the jailers refused to do so.
On the morning of June 24th, a unit of Russian guards arrived. A
decision was made, to liquidate all persons who had been identified as
political prisoners. That day, June 24th, four large pits were dug
in a clearing of the Rainiai
woods. The night of 24th/25th, the prisoners were taken
from their cells to a place where they were interrogated and sentenced to
death. Their hands tied behind their backs, their mouths gagged, they were
taken out, piled into truck beds, then driven away.
Statement of I. Tiškienė, Female
Prisoner
On
Tuesday morning, June 24th , I saw that the prison guard patrol had been doubled. In our cell, first
in Lithuanian, then in Russian, orders were given that we must not open the
window, nor even look out. That day, I saw no one of our regular prison guard
except for Vaitkus. That evening, going through our nightly chores, I saw that
most of the prison guards were seated on the stairs near the kitchen, with a
few armed Russians standing over them. I understood then, that the regular
prison guards had been taken into custody.
About
3 or 4 in the afternoon, Vaitkus and the doctor (a fierce Communist), who had
worked in the prison for the past month, walked back and forth around the
cells, collecting all the political prisoners into Cell 7. That night, by 10 or
11 o‘clock, we again got strict orders to stay away from the windows, or we
would be shot. We obeyed. Soon
after, we heard Vaitkus‘s voice in the corridor: “Men, get your things ready!” We thought
that the political prisoners were being taken to Russia. One by one, the
“politicals” were called by name out of Cell 7, and taken downstairs. Each
prisoner’s transfer took about 5 minutes, and in all, these transfers continued
for a few hours. It looked like Russian guards conducted the prisoners, after
Vaitkus called out their names. As the “politicals” were led away, we heard
their voices calling: “Jezus, Marija! Where are you taking us?!” We realized that the
“politicals” were being moved to trucks, which started up and then drove away.
Not one of us dared to look out the window.
As the last “politicals” were led away,
(there must have been 42 or 43 of them) the women in our cell lay down in
tears. After a while, when we had all calmed down a bit, I got up, and quietly
opened the window just a little bit. I saw two lines of Russian soldiers
standing in the prison yard. A truck stood next to the open gate, its top
covered with small fir trees, and its tailgate let down. I saw one of the
“politicals” , a gag tied around his mouth, being pushed and shoved between the
lines of soldiers, toward the truck. There was a bench pushed against the back
of the truck, and the man was forced to step up on it and then disappeared into
the truck bed under the trees. A few minutes later, another man was brought
out, and he entered the truck in the same way. I wasn’t able to see if his
mouth was gagged. Then I saw that one Russian soldier had his rifle pointed
towards my window. I shut it quickly and lay down.
Statement of J. Bertašius, a prisoner:
I had been sent to prison accused of
conducting people to German territory. I shared space with political and
criminal prisoners from April 15th through June 25th. We
heard cannon fire on June 22nd, and from that day, we were held in
the prison without food. On the morning of June 24th, no one came to
check the roll of prisoners, and no guards appeared at all. Around 10 o’clock,
looking through the window, we saw a Russian truck, full of armed soldiers,
stopped in front of the prison. They had been hailed by the prison doctor, who
spoke at length with the Russian officer. We heard him ask for instructions as
to what should be done about the prisoners, seeing that there were no officials
from the party or the NKVD. The doctor was himself preparing to flee.
The Russians all piled out of the truck,
surrounded the prison, set up guard posts and halted all traffic about the
building. At that moment, the prison superintendent Vaitkus appeared, along
with a few other prison guards, Žalimas,
Kavaliauskas, Milaučius, Balniškaitė, Stonys, Sungaila, Raibužis,
Balvočius, Jocelis.
At about 11 o’clock a car drove up with
one NKVD officer, and Vaitkus’s voice was heard from the office: “Bring in all
the political prisoners’ files”. Vaitkus
then ordered Balvočius
to transfer all political prisoners from cells 2 and 3, to cell 7 on a lower floor.
Prisoners in cell 1, where I was being
held, began to plead for food. Vaitkus, holding two pistols, came in, with one
of the Russians, who had a light machine-gun, and Vaitkus cursed us all as
“Smetonininkai”. Ordering us to quiet down or he would shoot us all right there,
he made everyone lie down on the cement floor.
Evening passed without a roll call of
prisoners in our cell, and we all lay down for the night. After about an hour
or so, dreadful noises were heard from cell 7, and as this horror did not stop,
three truck motors were started, along with an equal number of tractors, to
cover it up. Soon we heard painful moans and horrible groaning from below, as
well as cries from the street outside: “Jezus Marija!! People, help us!”
Vaitkus then called political prisoners Motuza,
from Telšiai, and Jocius, from Luokė,
out of cell 1. Jocius asked if they should take their belongings. Vaitkus
answered that they didn’t need anything and should just wear their undershirts.
As these prisoners were led from the cell, the guard Balvočius, wearing a Russian uniform that
day, stood at the door, working the lock. An NKVD officer stood with him at the
door, while a Russian soldier armed with a machine-gun patrolled the area.
Vaitkus ordered the prisoners out of the cells in a mild voice; it didn‘t seem
like executions were planned for that evening. Plainly, he did this to avoid
raising panic among the prisoners, but the criminal prisoners understood that a
massacre would take place. They spoke to me: “Crawl under the bunks and
hide - your case is connected with politics, and they may intend to kill you
also”. I did as they suggested, and with another political prisoner,Žilinskas, we hid and covered
ourselves with some rags.
A few minutes later, Vaitkus called my
name, but one criminal prisoner named Galdikas, from Kartenos, answered: “He is
not here, he must have been transported with some others, or else he’s in
another cell.” Vaitkus left.
After a short time, the trucks’ engines
sounded much louder, and they all drove off, carrying the prisoners away, still
moaning and wailing, begging for help.
Terrible, cruel and atrocious curses were heard as well. When the trucks
had left, all became quiet, and after a while, I fell asleep. When I awoke, the
sun had risen, and it was around breakfast-time. There were a few Russian soldiers standing
outside the prison, and some of the Russian prisoners spoke with them through
the window. The soldiers asking what is this place, the prisoners answered that
it was indeed a prison. They complained that we had been left here without
eating for three days, and asked the soldiers to look around the prison yard to
find a jailer. The soldiers said they found no guards, in fact, there was no
one around at all.
Somewhat later, a person wearing a gray
uniform approached the prison, and asked whether we were political prisoners or
criminals, and we told him we were some of each. He then told us: “Men, don’t
worry, because soon the German army will march into town and will probably just
release you all. I myself am on my way to the prison office.”
Soon a great racket could be heard, and
the Russian prisoners, understanding that the Germans were arriving, told each
other: “One way or another, for us Russians it means death!” They began to
force the door. Somehow, they were able to break down the door and twist off
the lock. Some of the prisoners ran through the office, and others into the
prison yard. As I ran into the yard, I saw a loose board in the fence next to
the laundry. I pushed through it, and came out on the street.
Victims Unexpectedly Found - Statement of Fireman
P. Peckus
By June 26th, the sounds of
battle in the Telšiai area
had subsided. I went to see what was going on at the Telšiai fire department, as I had heard that
the chief, with all his assistants, had taken the best car and fled.
I hailed another car in the city, and was driven to the Rainių estate. I saw that a Russian
auto trailer had been left standing in the Rainiai woods, and some of the
nearby neighbors were busily loading military material from this trailer into
their wagons. I informed the Telšiai
police chief; he gave me a pistol and told me to deal with the matter
myself.
On June 28, I returned to the woods, intending
to relieve the guards I had left with the trailer the day before. But there was
no one available to relieve them, so I decided to leave the same guards in
place until I could get a couple of horses to move the trailer. Somewhere else
in the woods, I saw two men siphoning gasoline from another car. I checked
their passes, and found they were brothers, living in the area. I let them go.
Not far from there, we saw that large
plots of earth had been disturbed, then filled and partially covered with moss
and leaves. It was obvious someone had been digging there, and we thought that
weapons or large machinery or auto parts might have been buried in that place.
The guards were ordered to dig, and in one spot, about 30 cm. deep, we saw
something soft - some sort of clothing. I handed them a knife, and when they
cut through the fabric, we saw a man’s chest, bruised black and blue. We
decided it couldn’t be a soldier, as no one would remove a soldier’s uniform to
bury him, and this fellow wore just a light-colored undershirt. I ordered them
to extract the body, and when they did, we beheld a horrible sight. This grave
was full of numbers of arms, legs, heads, hands……….
Leaving guards in place, I left to
inform the Telšiai police of
our discovery, suggesting that possibly these were the political prisoners from
Telšiai prison. The police
chief ordered the bodies exhumed.
Returning to the woods with some
helpers, we found three bodies already unearthed and placed at the grave’s
edge, and obviously many more in the same space. The other pits, when dug into,
likewise held many bodies. By then, it seemed certain, that these were the men
who had been imprisoned at the Telšiai
jail.
We got some more helpers from the Telšiai estate, and went to work. In
these pits, horribly disfigured bodies had been buried. We dug them up and laid
them on the ground in rows. Their heads were smashed, broken; their hands
tightly tied in back; their bodies pierced and covered with black wounds. The
cruelty was terrible.
That was June 28th, about 2
p.m., and by nightfall we had unearthed 73 bodies.
How They Died - Records of Coroner’s Inquest
Exactly
how this torture was carried out, so far no one knows. All those who carried it
out have fled; all those who suffered it are dead. But, looking at the victims’
corpses, we can understand and imagine how these men suffered , and with what
perverted savagery they were tortured to death by Asiatic degenerates and their
henchmen.
The bodies were so mutilated, that
mothers could not recognize their sons; women, their husbands; siblings, their
brothers; friends, their friends. It is a fact, that women mourned as for their
husbands, over the bodies of strange men, buried them and lived through hellish
torments, while their real husbands,
having been sent to another prison, later gained their freedom and came
home alive and well.
This information is from the records of
the local court. Even though it is not complete and detailed as a later report by an international coroner’s commission would
be, it allows us to clearly recognize the uncommon brutality of the inhuman
crimes that the Bolsheviks committed in the Rainių forest. This event will be remembered with horror, as long as our
nation lives, and while a moral mankind exists.
Extracts from Records
Of
the 73 bodies found, 45 were so badly mutilated that they were not
recognizable. All of them bore evidence of ferocious torture, and their
condition was described as follows.
Arms
and legs broken, often in several places; chest smashed in; neck broken; scalp
torn away; cheek, temple smashed in; stab wound in forehead; skull/brain
smashed in; nose smashed; skin flayed from body; stab wounds in face, head,
through lips into skull; jaw smashed; fingers/toes chopped off; tongue cut off;
eyes gouged out; hands/feet scalded/burned; strangled with gag; genitals
smashed, cut off; ears cut off.
All
of these men suffered a multiplicity of torture methods and wounds; almost all
of them had their skulls smashed and brains oozing out; every one of them
suffered destruction of the genitals.
Who They Were
Three brothers - Juozas, Antanas and
Jonas Antanavičiai; Liudvikas
Bachmanas; Kazys Baltrimaitis; Povilas Balsevičius; Albinas
Baltramiejūnas; Stasys Balsevičius; Juozas Beimavičius; Kostas
Bučius; Juozas Bumblys; Steponas Bubelė; Adolfas Butkevičius;
Antanas Čiužas; Andrius Čiurinskas; Pranas Daukša; Stasys Daknevičius;
Antanas Dibisteris; Henrikas Glazauskas; Pranas Gužauskas; Augustinas Gudaitis;
Vaclovas Gailius; Ignas Gelžinis; Kazys Galdikas; Juozas Jablonskis; Aleksas
Jankauskas; Jonas Jakštas; Stasys Jocys; Adolfas Jagminas; Kazys Katkus; Juozas
Kvederis; brothers Petras and Bolius Kavoliai; Povilas Kardelis; Povilas
Kazlauskas; Karolis Kizevičius; Vladas Kaveckas; Balys Korza; Leonas Kusa;
Bronius Križinauskas; Vytautas Lileikis; Mikas Lengvinas; Pranas Lukauskas;
Mikas Longinas; Liudas Malakauskas; Petras Maskolenka; Jonas Milius; Antanas
Montvydas; Vladas Motuzas; Motiejus Norvaiša; Liudas Pakalniškis; Zigmas
Parafionavičius; Vaclocvas Pabvarčius; Kazys Puškorius, Vladas
Petronaitis; Kazys Paulauskas; brothers Andrius and Jonas Rudokas; Adomas
Rakas; Zigmas Sakelis; Adomas Simutis; Julius Simutis; Feliksas Stukas; Vladas
Sungaila; Česlovas Šalkauskas; Zenonas Šakenis; Edmundas Šalčius;
Jonas Šleinius; Jonas Telšinskas; Juozas Truška; Zenonas Tarvainis; Jurgis
Vičius; Povilas Vilčinskas; Hermenigildas Žvirzdinas.
Merchants,
prep and university students, former Lithuanian Army officers, arms-smugglers
and warehousers, foresters, local government officials, religious and agnostic,
a tax inspector, day laborers, crafts and trade school students, policemen, teachers
and professors, farmers, musicians, landowners, cobbler, watchmaker, poets, tailors,
a bricklayer. Most were partisan patriots, anti-bolshevik spies, couriers and activists,
and a few were persons falsely accused by communists, envious neighbors or “friends”.
The Funeral
A
chain of 70 wagons stretched from the Rainiai forest along the Telšiai road. Each wagon was decorated with greens and small trees,
in the middle of which lay a coffin. Žemaičiai, the people of Telšiai, escorted their martyrs to their final resting place. The
coffins were built by citizen volunteers, and now everyone was going to the Telšiai cemetery.
Work had been going on since the day
before in the cemetery, where a common grave was prepared. The authorities determined that those who had suffered
together, would be buried together, so that all visitors or passers-by should
always remember those who rest here - victims of immeasurable atrocities carried out in our
land.
Tuesday, July 1, 1941, was an ordinary
working day, but the town of Telšiai
looked and felt most uncommon. National tricolor flags had been displayed
everywhere from the moment the Russian army retreated from the oncoming
Germans. Now, however, they all bore black mourning ribbons. Every person’s
face looked sad and bitter, as they all prepared for a funeral such as Telšiai, and the nation, had never seen,
and, pray God, hoped never to see again.
Flowers,
wreaths and black ribbons - in
incalculable numbers.
The Žemaičiai (Samogitians) had woven
garlands, enough to cover each coffin and each wagon in the entire burial
procession.
The funeral services were held in Telšiai Cathedral’s churchyard,
where a temporary altar had been installed, because such a number of coffins
and mourners could not possibly be
accommodated inside. After the funeral
Mass, the procession moved on, in the final journey to the last resting place. Priests
and government officials led off, with representatives of civic organizations,
teachers and students, and others following. The streets all around the route
were packed with people. A choir and orchestra alternated in singing and
playing mournful melodies.
The coffins were laid one next to the
other in the Telšiai Catholic
cemetery, each covered by floods of flowers and sorrowful tears. The priest
uttered the words of a final farewell and performed religious rites. “Amžiną ątilsį“ (“Eternal rest“) was heard, then the sound
of earth dropping upon the coffins from the hands of relatives. Eulogies were
spoken by co-workers, relatives and representatives of the community and social
groups. All swore, at the grave of those martyrs, to defend the nation
and its liberty, with all their might.
The Tautos Himnas (National Anthem) was sung before the open grave, the
notes of the hymn blending with tears and uncontrollable sobs from the crowd.
That was truly a moment of great
spiritual uplift, that a nation can experience, having sacrificed their sons’
grave suffering, and their lives, on the altar of the fatherland. And upon
their grave, to make an unbreakable resolution for the future.
Each eulogy was followed by the singing
of national and religious hymns. The entire crowd watched in grief as workers
began to fill the grave with earth. More flowers, tears and sobs -- the very
last moments of separation.
At the entrance to Telšiai cemetery, a great mound rose,
covered with flowers and garlands, a grave such as our nation’s history had
never known. Dear fellow-countrymen, Lithuanians, Žemaičiai, when you visit Telšiai, be sure to always visit this grave. Here you may remember
the hardest years in the life of our nation, and draw strength for your own
work and aspirations from the memory of our heroes.
© English
Translation - Gloria O’Brien 2007