Lithuanian Police Battalions
The Lithuanian Auxiliary Police was a Schutzmannschaft formation formed during the German occupation of Lithuania between 1941 and 1944, with the first battalions originating from the most reliable freedom fighters, disbanded following the 1941 anti-Soviet Lithuanian June Uprising in 1941. Lithuanian activists hoped that these units would be the basis of a reestablished Lithuanian Army commanded by the Lithuanian Provisional Government. Instead, they were put under the orders of the SS- und Polizeiführer in Lithuania. Lithuanian auxiliary policemen were divided into four types. The first three were: regular law enforcement policemen, firefighting policemen, and auxiliary units grouped into platoons that assisted the local police when needed. The last were Lithuanian Schutzmannschaft battalions, closed formations organized into battalions, companies, platoons and groups. The battalions were charged with internal security duties and engaged in anti-partisan operations in the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Schutzmannschaft
The ''Schutzmannschaft'', or Auxiliary Police ( "protection team"; plural: ''Schutzmannschaften'', abbreviated as ''Schuma'') was the collaborationist auxiliary police of native policemen serving in those areas of the Soviet Union and the Baltic states occupied by Nazi Germany during World War II. Heinrich Himmler, head of the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS), established the ''Schutzmannschaft'' on 25 July 1941, and subordinated it to the Order Police (''Ordnungspolizei''; Orpo). By the end of 1941, some 45,000 men served in ''Schutzmannschaft'' units, about half of them in the battalions. During 1942, ''Schutzmannschaften'' expanded to an estimated 300,000 men, with battalions accounting for about a third, or less than one half of the local force. Everywhere, local police far outnumbered the equivalent German personnel several times; in most places, the ratio of Germans to natives was about 1-to-10. The auxiliary police battalions (''Schutzmannschaft-Bataillone'') were created to provid ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Holocaust
The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. The murders were carried out primarily through mass shootings and poison gas in extermination camps, chiefly Auschwitz concentration camp#Auschwitz II-Birkenau, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka extermination camp, Treblinka, Belzec extermination camp, Belzec, Sobibor extermination camp, Sobibor, and Chełmno extermination camp, Chełmno in Occupation of Poland (1939–1945), occupied Poland. Separate Nazi persecutions killed a similar or larger number of non-Jewish civilians and prisoners of war (POWs); the term ''Holocaust'' is sometimes used to include the murder and persecution of Victims of Nazi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Enemies Of The People
The terms enemy of the people and enemy of the nation are designations for the political opponents and the social-class opponents of the power group within a larger social unit, who, thus identified, can be subjected to political repression. In political praxis, the term ''enemy of the people'' implies that political opposition to the ruling power group renders the people in opposition into enemies acting against the interests of the greater social unit: society, the nation, etc. In the 20th century, the politics of the Soviet Union (1922–1991) much featured the term ''enemy of the people'' to discredit any opposition, especially during the régime of Stalin (r. 1924–1953), when it was often applied to Trotsky. In the 21st century, U.S. president Donald Trump regularly used the ''enemy of the people'' term against critical politicians, journalists and the press. Like the term '' enemy of the state'', the term ''enemy of the people'' originated and derives from the , a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Nationalization
Nationalization (nationalisation in British English) is the process of transforming privately owned assets into public assets by bringing them under the public ownership of a national government or state. Nationalization contrasts with privatization and with demutualization. When previously nationalized assets are privatized and subsequently returned to public ownership at a later stage, they are said to have undergone renationalization (or deprivatization). Industries often subject to nationalization include telecommunications, electric power, fossil fuels, railways, airlines, iron ore, media, postal services, banks, and water (sometimes called the commanding heights of the economy), and in many jurisdictions such entities have no history of private ownership. Nationalization may occur with or without financial compensation to the former owners. Nationalization is distinguished from property redistribution in that the government retains control of nationalized pro ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sovietization
Sovietization ( ) is the adoption of a political system based on the model of soviets (workers' councils) or the adoption of a way of life, mentality, and culture modeled after the Soviet Union. A notable wave of Sovietization (in the second meaning) occurred during the Russian Civil War in the territories captured by the Red Army. Later, the territories occupied by the Russian SFSR and the USSR were Sovietized. Mongolia was conquered by the Soviet Union and Sovietized in the 1920s, and after the end of the Second World War, Sovietization took place in the countries of the Soviet Bloc ( Eastern and Central Europe: Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, the Baltic states, etc.). In a broad sense, it included the creation of Soviet-style authorities, new elections held by Bolshevik party members with opposition parties being restricted, the nationalization of private land and property, and the repression against representatives of " class enemies" (kulaks, or '' osadniks'' ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Soviet Occupation Of The Baltic States (1940)
The Soviet occupation of the Baltic states covers the period from the Soviet– Baltic mutual assistance pacts in 1939, to their invasion and annexation in 1940, to the mass deportations of 1941. In September and October 1939 the Soviet government compelled the much smaller Baltic states to conclude mutual assistance pacts which gave the Soviets the right to establish military bases there. Following invasion by the Red Army in the summer of 1940, Soviet authorities compelled the Baltic governments to resign. The presidents of Estonia and Latvia were imprisoned and later died in Siberia. Under Soviet supervision, new puppet communist governments and fellow travelers arranged rigged elections with falsified results. Shortly thereafter, the newly elected "people's assemblies" passed resolutions requesting admission into the Soviet Union. In June 1941 the new Soviet governments carried out mass deportations of "enemies of the people". Consequently, at first many Balts greeted the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Bundesarchiv Bild 183-B10160, Wilna, Juden, Litauischer Polizist
The German Federal Archives or Bundesarchiv (BArch) (, lit. "Federal Archive") are the national archives of Germany. They were established at the current location in Koblenz in 1952. They are subordinated to the Federal Commissioner for Culture and the Media (Claudia Roth since 2021) under the German Chancellery, and before 1998, to the Federal Ministry of the Interior. On 6 December 2008, the Archives donated 100,000 photos to the public, by making them accessible via Wikimedia Commons. History The federal archive for institutions and authorities in Germany, the first precursor to the present-day Federal Archives, was established in Potsdam, Brandenburg in 1919, a later date than in other European countries. This national archive documented German government dating from the founding of the North German Confederation in 1867. It also included material from the older German Confederation and the Imperial Chamber Court. The oldest documents in this collection dated back to the y ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Arūnas Bubnys
Arūnas Bubnys (born November 7, 1961) is a Lithuanian historian and archivist. He started his studies at Vilnius University Vilnius University ( Lithuanian: ''Vilniaus universitetas'') is a public research university, which is the first and largest university in Lithuania, as well as one of the oldest and most prominent higher education institutions in Central and Ea ... in 1985. In 1993 he received a Ph.D. for the thesis ''Lietuvių antinacinė rezistencija 1941–1944 m.'' (). From 1985 on he worked in the Lithuanian Institute of History. In 1993-1998 he was the director of Lithuanian Special Archives. Currently, he works at the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania and is a member of the International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania. Fields of interest * Nazi politics in occupied Lithuania * Lithuanian resistance against Nazi * Polish underground in Lithuania 1941-1944 Major works * ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Act Of March 11
The Act of the Re-Establishment of the State of Lithuania or Act of 11 March () was an independence declaration by Lithuania adopted on 11 March 1990, signed by all members of the Supreme Council of the Republic of Lithuania led by Sąjūdis. The act emphasized restoration and legal continuity of the interwar-period Lithuania, which was occupied by the Soviet Union and annexed in June 1940. In March 1990, it was the first of the 15 Soviet republics to declare independence, with the rest following to continue for 21 months, concluding with Kazakhstan's independence in 1991. These events (part of the broader process dubbed the "parade of sovereignties") led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991. Background Loss of independence After the partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 18th century, Lithuania was part of the Russian Empire. In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Council of Lithuania, chaired by Jonas Basanavičius, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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War Crimes
A war crime is a violation of the laws of war that gives rise to individual criminal responsibility for actions by combatants in action, such as intentionally killing civilians or intentionally killing prisoners of war, torture, taking hostages, unnecessarily destroying civilian property, deception by perfidy, wartime sexual violence, pillaging, and for any individual that is part of the command structure who orders any attempt to committing mass killings (including genocide or ethnic cleansing), the granting of no quarter despite surrender, the conscription of children in the military, and flouting the legal distinctions of proportionality and military necessity. The formal concept of war crimes emerged from the codification of the customary international law that applied to warfare between sovereign states, such as the Lieber Code (1863) of the Union Army in the American Civil War and the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 for international war. In the afterm ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Soviet Propaganda
Propaganda in the Soviet Union was the practice of state-directed communication aimed at promoting class conflict, proletarian internationalism, the goals of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and the party itself. The main Soviet censorship body, Glavlit, was employed not only to eliminate any undesirable printed materials but also "to ensure that the correct ideological spin was put on every published item." After the death of Joseph Stalin, punitive measures were replaced by punitive psychiatry, prison, denial of work, and loss of citizenship. Theory of propaganda According to historian Peter Kenez, "the Russian socialists have contributed nothing to the theoretical discussion of the techniques of mass persuasion. ... The Bolsheviks never looked for and did not find devilishly clever methods to influence people's minds, to brainwash them." Kenez says this lack of interest "followed from their notion of propaganda. They thought of propaganda as part of education." ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Lithuanian SSR
The Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic (Lithuanian SSR; ; ), also known as Soviet Lithuania or simply Lithuania, was '' de facto'' one of the constituent republics of the Soviet Union between 1940–1941 and 1944–1990. After 1946, its territory and borders mirrored those of today's Republic of Lithuania, with the exception of minor adjustments to its border with Belarus. During World War II, the previously independent Republic of Lithuania was occupied by the Red Army on 16 June 1940, in conformity with the terms of the 23 August 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, and established as a puppet state on 21 July. Between 1941 and 1944, the German invasion of the Soviet Union caused its '' de facto'' dissolution. However, with the retreat of the Germans in 1944–1945, Soviet hegemony was re-established and continued for forty-five years. As a result, many Western countries continued to recognize Lithuania as an independent, sovereign ''de jure'' state subject to internation ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |