The Holocaust in Lithuania

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The Holocaust in Lithuania

Burning synagogue in Lithuania.
Date	June–December 1941
Target	Jews
Organised by	Einsatzgruppen, Ypatingasis būrys
Deaths	190,000–195,000

The Holocaust in Lithuania resulted in the near total eradication of Lithuanian (Litvaks) and Polish Jews^[a] in Generalbezirk Litauen of the Reichskommissariat Ostland in the Nazi-controlled Lithuania. Of approximately 208,000–210,000 Jews at the time of the Nazi invasion, an estimated 190,000 to 195,000 were killed before the end of World War II, most of them between June and December 1941. More than 95% of Lithuania's Jewish population was murdered over the three-year German occupation,^[1] a more complete destruction than befell any other country in the Holocaust.^[2] Historians attribute this to the massive collaboration in the genocide by the non-Jewish local paramilitaries, though the reasons for this collaboration are still debated.^[3] The Holocaust resulted in the largest loss of life in so short a period of time in the history of Lithuania.^[4]

The events in the western regions of the USSR occupied by Nazi Germany in the first weeks after the German invasion, including Lithuania, marked a sharp intensification of the Holocaust.^[5][6][b]

The occupying Nazi German administration fanned antisemitism by blaming the Soviet regime's annexation of Lithuania in June 1940, on the Jewish community. One prevalent antisemitic trope at the time linked Bolsheviks and Jews.^[7] There were other tropes, even more unpleasant. To a large extent the Nazis also relied on the physical preparation and execution of their orders by local Lithuanian collaborators.^[3]

As of 2020, the topic of the Holocaust in Lithuania and the role played by Lithuanians in the genocide, including several notable Lithuanian nationalists, remained unsettled.^[8]