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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. According to the findings of the Institute of National Remembrance, at least 38 Polish civilians were killed and about a dozen injured. The massacre of Koniuchy and murder of its inhabitants was documented by one of the attacking partisans, Chaim Lazar. According to Lazar the village was to be destroyed completely as an example to others, and even the livestock was to be killed. Historian Kazimierz Krajewski established that there were no fortifications in the civilian community and the self-defense force was equipped with some rusty rifles.

The Lithuanian authorities launched an investigation into the massacre in 2004. The investigation of elderly Holocaust survivors was perceived in the West and among Jewish groups as "an attack on the heroic Soviet antifascist resistance." Efraim Zuroff criticized Lithuanian authorities failure to prosecute former Nazi collaborators while focusing on Jewish veteran partisans.

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 taken over 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. The village of Koniuchy was located on the edge of the Rūdininkai forest, where multiple partisan units operated. The units raided nearby villages regularly in order to obtain essential supplies, creating friction with the local population. The village of about 60 households and 300 inhabitants was not fortified but the villagers were armed with a few rifles. A small local self-defence unit was created in autumn 1943 to defend the village against repeated Soviet partisans' raids. According to Soviet and Jewish sources, the villagers constituted a pro-Nazi threat to the partisans, though collaboration is denied by the villagers who have claimed that only a few men in the village were armed with rifles for self-protection.

Massacre

On January 29, 1944, the village was attacked by Soviet partisan units under the command of the Central Partisan Command in Moscow, who had received information of a German garrison that was stationed there. 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. Chaim Lazar, one of the participants, stated in Destruction and Resistance (1985) that 300 people were murdered. The German garrison had already left by the time the attack started.

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. Efraim Zuroff said that "to date, Lithuanian governments have not punished a single Lithuanian war criminal. In spite of our considerable efforts and the large amount of information we have given them, they handled three cases with astonishing slowness. Not one of the three served a single day in prison. On the other hand, they're not ashamed to persecute and harass Lithuanian partisans who fought the Nazis. What is common to all these cases is that they're all Jews. Instead of punishing Lithuanian criminals who collaborated with the Nazis and murdered Jews, they're harassing the partisans, Jewish heroes."

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 investigation 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. Narodowej, Instytut Pamięci. "Informacja o śledztwie dotyczącym zbrodni popełnionej w Koniuchach". Instytut Pamięci Narodowej (in Polish). Retrieved May 6, 2018.
4. Stachura, Peter (June 17, 2004). Poland, 1918-1945: An Interpretive and Documentary History of the Second Republic. Routledge. ISBN 9781134289493.
5. Sowjetische Partisanen 1941-1944: Mythos und Wirklichkeit Bogdan Musial Ferdinand Schoeningh, 2009, page 547
6. Bogdan Musial Sowjetische Partisanen in Weißrussland Innenansichten aus dem Gebiet Baranovici 1941-1944 Cover: Sowjetische Partisanen in Weißrussland Oldenbourg Verlag, München 2004, page 28
7. "Nowa Nauka Polska". nauka-polska.pl (in Polish). Retrieved May 5, 2018.
8. Chodakiewicz, Marek Jan (September 8, 2017). Intermarium: The Land Between the Black and Baltic Seas. Routledge. ISBN 9781351511957.
9. ^ 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"
10. ^ Melman, Yossi (August 7, 2008). "Nazi Hunter: Lithuania Hunts Ex-partisans, Lets War Criminals Roam Free". Haaretz (in Hebrew). Retrieved June 26, 2018.
11. ^ Tumavičius, Andrius (February 2014). "Kaniūkų kaimo tragedija" (PDF). Atmintinos datos (in Lithuanian). Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania. Retrieved May 1, 2017.
12. ^ 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 and other academics claim that Poles and Lithuanians have focused upon Koniuchy to draw attention away from their atrocities such as Jedwabne and Kielce. 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."
13. "Operations Diary of a Jewish Partisan Unit in Rudniki Forest 1943–1944". Jewish Virtual Library. American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise. Retrieved March 16, 2011.
14. Marc Perelman. Poles Open Probe Into Jewish Role In Killings. Group Fingers WWII Partisans. The Forward. August 8, 2003.
15. ^ 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."
16. CHANGING MEMORY REGIMES IN A NEW EUROPE, Meike Wulf, East European Memory Studies No. 7, Nov 2011
17. Lana Gersten and Marc Perelman. Tensions mount over probe into Jewish 'war crimes'. Haaretz. July 8, 2008.
18. 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