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The Koniuchy (Kaniūkai) massacre was a massacre of Polish and Byelorussian civilians, including women and children, carried out by a Soviet partisan unit along with a contingent of Jewish partisans under their command during the Second World War in the Polish village of Koniuchy (now Kaniūkai, Lithuania) on January 29, 1944. Between 30 to 40 civilians were killed and dozens were injured.

The Lithuanian authorities launched an investigation into the massacre in 2004, in which they sought to interview elderly Jewish holocaust survivors who served with the partisans. The investigation was seen in the West and among Jewish groups as an attack on the heroic Soviet antifascist resistance.

Background

Before the Second World War the village belonged to Second Polish Republic, after Soviet invasion of Poland it was briefly transferred to Lithuania which was then takenover by Soviets on 3rd of August 1940. With Operation Barbarossa the areas were taken over by Nazi Germany and remaining Soviet forces hid in local forests, forming partisan groups. Koniuchy is located at the edge of the Rudniki Forest. In this forest partisan groups, both Soviet and Jewish, set up their bases from which they attacked the German forces. In order to survive the partisans regularly raided nearby villages in order to obtain food, clothes, and footwear. This raiding led to skirmishes between the partisans and the men of Koniuchy. According to Soviet and Jewish sources, the villagers constituted a pro-Nazi threat to the partisans, though collaborations is denied by the villagers who have claimed that only a few men in the village were armed with rifles for self-protection.

Massacre

A small local self-defence unit was created in autumn 1943 to defend the village against repeated Soviet partisans' raids. It was located on the edge of the Rūdininkai Forest, a known hideout of the partisans. The village of about 60 households and 300 inhabitants was not fortified but the villagers were armed with a few rifles. On January 29, 1944, the village was attacked by Soviet partisan units under the command of the Central Partisan Command in Moscow. The raid was carried out by 100–120 partisans from various units including 30 Jewish partisans from the "Avengers" and "To Victory" units under the command of Jacob (Yaakov) Prenner. Between 30 to 40 villagers were killed and dozen more were wounded, and in addition many houses were looted and burned.

Some Jewish partisans groups noted presence of their fighters in the massacre, Diary of a Jewish Partisan Unit (1943-1944) notes participation of 30 fighters under command of Jacob Prener from units "Avangers" and "To Victory" in operation against Koniuchy. The events at Koniuchy have also been described by one of the Jewish fighers in which he claimed that 300 people had been killed. This number has not been supported by other sources. In a November 2008 interview with Adam Fuerstenberg, former director of Toronto’s Holocaust Centre, York University professor Sara Ginaitė, a veteran Jewish partisan fighter, described Koniuchy as having a record of hostility to the partisans and that, in collaboration with the Nazis and the local police, the town had organized an armed group to fight the partisans.

Investigation and controversy

The Lithuanian authorities launched an investigation into the massacre in 2004, in which they sought to interview elderly Jewish holocaust survivor who served with the partisans. The investigation was seen in the West and among Jewish groups as an attack on the heroic Soviet antifascist resistance.

The Institute of National Remembrance initiated a formal investigation into the incident on March 3, 2001, at the request of the Canadian Polish Congress. The institute examined a number of archival documents including police reports, encoded messages, military records and personnel files of the Soviet partisans. Requests for legal assistance were then sent to state prosecutors in Belarus, Lithuania, the Russian Federation and Israel.

Most of the rest of the world, as well as some Lithuanians, viewed the Lithuanian investigation of Jewish holocaust survivors as a "contemptible farce", particularly given the lack of prosecution in Lithuania against the many collaborators with the Nazis. The rise of antisemitism in post-communist Lithuania had led to politicized attempts to equate communism with nazism in an attempt to create a false symmetry and conceal the extent of Lithuanian criminality during the Holocaust. Michael Marrus has said that Polish and Lithuanian authorities chose to investigate to draw attention away from their own atrocities such as the Jedwabne pogrom and Kielce pogrom. According to Meike Wulf the investigation was a "historic act of partisanship is employed to endorse the potent Judeo-Bolshevik myth and to support the strategies of whitewashing of guilt to legitimise the local collaboration with the German occupiers".

The Lithuanian prosecutor general subsequently opened its own investigation into the massacre. As part of its investigation, Lithuanian prosecutors have sought out Jewish veterans of the partisan movement, including Ginaitė and Yitzhak Arad, a former Israel Defense Forces brigadier general, Jewish resistance movement veteran, and former chairman of Yad Vashem, who served as a member of a commission appointed by Lithuania's president in 2005 to examine past war crimes. Arad became the subject of criticism by Lithuanian right wing groups after his public recommendation for an examination of Lithuania's role in the Holocaust. An investigation into Arad's wartime activities in Koniuchy was opened by Lithuania's chief prosecutor in the wake of the criticisms of Arad's proposal. Following wide international criticism, the investiation was closed in September 2008.

Commemoration

In May 2004, a memorial cross commemorating the event was erected in Kaniūkai with the names of the victims.

See also

• List of massacres in Lithuania
• Naliboki massacre
• Skidel revolt

References

1. ^ Suziedelis, Saulius A. (February 7, 2011). Historical Dictionary of Lithuania. Scarecrow Press. ISBN 9780810875364.
2. ^ Polonsky, Antony; Michlic, Joanna B. (April 11, 2009). The Neighbors Respond: The Controversy over the Jedwabne Massacre in Poland. Princeton University Press. ISBN 1400825814.
3. ^ Historical Dictionary of Lithuania, Saulius A. Suziedelis, page 146-147, "The Koniuchy incident gained international notoriety when Lithuanian prosecutors opened an investigation into the massacre in 2004... In the West and among Jewish groups, the Koniuchy affair was seen as an attack on the heroic Soviet antifascist resistance"
4. ^ Tumavičius, Andrius (February 2014). "Kaniūkų kaimo tragedija" (PDF). Atmintinos datos (in Lithuanian). Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania. Retrieved May 1, 2017.
5. ^ Zeleznikow, John. "Life at the end of the world: a Jewish Partisan in Melbourne." Holocaust Studies 16.3 (2010): 11-32. "The village of Koniuchy (now Kaniukai) was located at the edge of the Rudniki Forest in eastern Poland. In this forest partisan groups, both Soviet and Jewish, had set up their bases from which to attack the German occupation forces. To survive in the forest, raids were regularly made on surrounding villages to obtain food, footwear and clothing. Unsurprisingly, this led to skirmishes between the men of Koniuchy and the partisans." "The prosecution has drawn criticism, with a particular focus on the politics of memory in the post-Soviet era. Michael Marrus 18 and other academics claim that Poles and Lithuanians have focused upon Koniuchy to draw attention away from their atrocities such as Jedwabne and Kielce. 19 Sara Ginaite, a veteran Jewish partisan claims: Lithuania’s informal, unspoken position has been not to prosecute either the Nazi war criminals or the Soviet oppressors ... In this context, it is hard to understand the strange new action of opening, in 2008, a pre-trial investigation of the anti-Nazi partisans’ wartime actions … Jews did not join the partisans as a normal act of choice. We were forced to fight the Nazis to save ourselves from extermination … The activity of the Jewish partisans was self-defence – in the face of the most overwhelming instance of genocide in human history In contrast to Lithuanian collaborators, who volunteered to put to death their unarmed civilian Jewish neighbours, and Soviet collaborators, who also volunteered to kill and oppress the Lithuanians, the Jewish partisans’ aim was not to kill anyone, not to ‘inherit’ the property of a murdered people, but to fight our common enemy. However, in a military action, you cannot avoid civilian casualties and death. That is the ugly reality of war, particularly a war of partisans who live in the forest and do battle against a world power.’ 20
6. ^ "Operations Diary of a Jewish Partisan Unit in Rudniki Forest 1943–1944". Jewish Virtual Library. American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise. Retrieved March 16, 2011.
7. Stachura, Peter (June 17, 2004). Poland, 1918-1945: An Interpretive and Documentary History of the Second Republic. Routledge. ISBN 9781134289493.
8. Adam Fuerstenberg. Lithuania asks partisans to 'justify' their actions. The Canadian Jewish News. November 20, 2008. (retrieved May 1 , 2017)
9. Marc Perelman. Poles Open Probe Into Jewish Role In Killings. Group Fingers WWII Partisans. The Forward. August 8, 2003.
10. ^ Bringing the Dark Past to Light: The Reception of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Europe, John-Paul Himka and Joanna Michlic, pages 339-342, "Not surprisingly, the inquest evoked strong foreign protests, out— rage among Jews everywhere, even criticism from President Adamkus. The failure of the Lithuanian judiciary to press the investigation of pro-Nazi collaborators, as evidenced by the delayed proceeding against the former head of the Lithuanian security policy in Vilnius, Aleksandras Lileikis an others, gave rise to charges of hypocrisy concerning the motives behind the investigation of Jewish partisans. In one stroke, the prosecutor's office derailed the official research apparatus on Nazi war crimes. The Yad Vashem directorate protested the investigation of a "victim of Nazi oppression", and suspended Israeli participation in the commission. In solidarity with their Israeli colleague, the commission refused to convene any further meetings until the case was resolved." "The outside world and even some Lithuanians viewed the entire case as a contemptible farce. Unwilling to judge Nazi collaborators, the judiciary was preparing a case against Arad, a teenage ghetto survivor who, faced with an existential choice, had fled to the forests and joined the battle against the fascists" "The acrimony engendered by the Arad partisan case... One of the persistent themes that has gained new momentum is the rise of anti-Semitism, which, according to some, is now expressed in Lithuania by politicized attempts to equate Nazism with communism. As in the case with the establishment of the commission in 1998, charges of false symmetry between Nazism and communism as an effort to conceal the scope and extent of Lithuanian criminality during the Holocaust have been raised again."
11. CHANGING MEMORY REGIMES IN A NEW EUROPE, Meike Wulf, East European Memory Studies No. 7, Nov 2011
12. Lana Gersten and Marc Perelman. Tensions mount over probe into Jewish 'war crimes'. Haaretz. July 8, 2008.
13. Yossi Melman. Nazi hunter: Lithuania hunts ex-partisans, lets war criminals roam free. Haaretz. August 26, 2008.
14. Sara Ginaite. ‘Investigating’ Jewish Partisans in Lithuania. The Protest of a Veteran Jewish Partisan. Jewish Currents. September 2008.

Further reading

• Lazar, Chaim (1985). Destruction and Resistance: A History of the Partisan Movement in Vilna. Translated by Galia Eden Barshop. New York: Shengold Publishers. ISBN 978-0884001133.
• Kowalski, Isaac (1969). A Secret Press in Nazi Europe: The Story of a Jewish United Organization. New York: Central Guide Publishers. OCLC 925932918.
• Collection of various letters and reports
• Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, Intermarium: The Land between the Baltic and Black Seas (New Brunswick, New Jersey and London: Transaction, 2012), 500–519 ("Koniuchy: A Case Study")
• Mark Paul, Tangled Web: Polish-Jewish Relations in Wartime Northeastern Poland and the Aftermath, Part 3 (Toronto: PEFINA Press, 2017) ("Civilian Massacres—The Case of Koniuchy") posted at: http://www.kpk-toronto.org/obrona-dobrego-imienia/
• Report from IPN on Poland

54°16′50″N 25°14′40″E / 54.28056°N 25.24444°E / 54.28056; 25.24444

• 1944 in Lithuania
• 1944 in Poland
• Mass murder in 1944
• Lithuania in World War II
• Jewish Polish history
• Massacres in Lithuania
• Massacres in Poland
• Poland–Soviet Union relations
• Soviet partisans
• Soviet World War II crimes in Poland
• Soviet World War II crimes
• Reichskommissariat Ostland
• January 1944 events