Algirdas Klimaitis (1910Baltic News /ref> – 29 August 1988) was a Lithuanian paramilitary commander who was born in
Kaunas
Kaunas (; ) is the second-largest city in Lithuania after Vilnius, the fourth largest List of cities in the Baltic states by population, city in the Baltic States and an important centre of Lithuanian economic, academic, and cultural life. Kaun ...
and died in
Hamburg
Hamburg (, ; ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg,. is the List of cities in Germany by population, second-largest city in Germany after Berlin and List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, 7th-lar ...
. He was infamous for his role in the Kaunas pogrom in June 1941. Klimaitis was likely an officer in the Lithuanian Army. During the pre-war years he was editor of the tabloid (Ten Cents). His attitudes shifted to
anti-communism
Anti-communism is Political movement, political and Ideology, ideological opposition to communism, communist beliefs, groups, and individuals. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia, and it reached global ...
and
antisemitism
Antisemitism or Jew-hatred is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who harbours it is called an antisemite. Whether antisemitism is considered a form of racism depends on the school of thought. Antisemi ...
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and several of its European Axis allies starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during World War II. More than 3.8 million Axis troops invaded the western Soviet Union along ...
, Klimaitis formed a military unit of roughly 600 members, which was not subordinate to the
Lithuanian Activist Front
The Lithuanian Activist Front or LAF () was a Lithuanian underground resistance organization established in 1940 after the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states (1940), Soviets occupied Lithuania. Its goal was to free Lithuanian Soviet Socialist ...
Kaunas
Kaunas (; ) is the second-largest city in Lithuania after Vilnius, the fourth largest List of cities in the Baltic states by population, city in the Baltic States and an important centre of Lithuanian economic, academic, and cultural life. Kaun ...
. On the evening of 23 June, most of the city was in the hands of the insurgents.
On the night of 25–26 June, Kaunas pogrom led by Klimaitis' unit was instigated by Franz Walter Stahlecker, commanding officer of Einsatzgruppe A. By 28 June 1941, according to Stahlecker, 3,800 people had been killed in Kaunas and a further 1,200 in surrounding towns in the region. Klimaitis' men destroyed several synagogues and about sixty Jewish houses. Modern sources claim that the number of victims in Stahlecker's report were probably exaggerated. The murder of Slobodka's rabbi, Rav Zalman Osovsky, is attributed to Jonas Klimaitis's gang.
After the war, Klimaitis moved to Hamburg, Germany, where he was discovered in the late 1970s. Hamburg Police launched an investigation, but Klimaitis died in 1988, before the case could be brought to trial.