The Rainiai massacre ( lt, Rainių žudynės) was the

mass murder Mass murder is the act of murdering a number of people, typically simultaneously or over a relatively short period of time and in close geographic proximity. The United States Congress defines mass killings as the killings of three or more p ...

of between 70 and 80

Lithuanian Lithuanian may refer to: * Lithuanians * Lithuanian language * The country of Lithuania * Grand Duchy of Lithuania * Culture of Lithuania * Lithuanian cuisine * Lithuanian Jews as often called "Lithuanians" (''Lita'im'' or ''Litvaks'') by other Je ...

political prisoner A political prisoner is someone imprisoned for their politics, political activity. The political offense is not always the official reason for the prisoner's detention. There is no internationally recognized legal definition of the concept, al ...

s by the

NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union. ...

, with help from the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian language, Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist R ...

, in a forest near

Telšiai Telšiai (; Samogitian: ''Telšē'') is a city in Lithuania with about 21,499 inhabitants. It is the capital of Telšiai County and Samogitia region, and it is located on the shores of Lake Mastis. Telšiai is one of the oldest cities in Lith ...

, Lithuania, during the night of June 24–25, 1941. It was one of many similar massacres carried out by Soviet forces in Lithuania, and other parts of the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

, during June 1941. Several thousand people were killed in these massacres. The Rainiai massacre was far from the largest of these massacres, but it is one of the best-known, due to the brutality and tortures inflicted on the victims by the perpetrators. Similar atrocities were committed in other places, like the Tartu massacre, in which almost two hundred and fifty people were murdered.

Massacre

A decision had been made to carry out the massacre after the June Revolt had taken place, during which the

Lithuanian Activist Front The Lithuanian Activist Front or LAF () was a short-lived, far-right underground resistance organization established in 1940 after Lithuania was incorporated by the Soviet Union. The goal of the organization was to liberate Lithuania and re-est ...

had deposed the Soviet government in Lithuania, and

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

had

invaded An invasion is a military offensive in which large numbers of combatants of one geopolitical entity aggressively enter territory owned by another such entity, generally with the objective of either: conquering; liberating or re-establishing co ...

the

. The Soviet authorities were unable to evacuate the inmates (

s) of the

prison, but they did not want to abandon them, as the inmates would then have been freed by the local population or by the Germans. Therefore, a punishment squad of the

led by Dontsov was called in to "liquidate" them. Most of the prisoners were put into trucks during the night of June 24 and taken to the Rainiai forest where they were tortured and killed. Many of the victims were so mutilated that only twenty-seven bodies could be identified after they were exhumed, only three days later. According to the coroner's examination after the exhumation, both the report and the testimonies of witnesses, concurred that the Soviets cut off tongues, ears, genitals, scalps, put genitals into mouths, picked out eyes, pulled off fingernails, made belts of victims' skins to tie their hands, burned them with torches and acid, crushed bones and skulls, all done while the prisoners were still alive. The organizers of the massacre included Pyotr Raslan, Boris Mironov,

Nachman Dushanski Nachman Dushanski ( lt, Nachmanas Dušanskis, russian: Нахман Ноахович Душанский, he, נחמן דושנסקי; December 29, 1919 in Šiauliai – February 20, 2008 in Haifa) was a Lithuanian officer of Soviet security a ...

, political leader of 8th border army Mikhail Kompanyanec,

Kretinga Kretinga (; german: Crottingen) is a City in Klaipėda County, Lithuania. It is the capital of the Kretinga district municipality. It is located east of the popular Baltic Sea resort town of Palanga, and about north of Lithuania's 3rd largest ...

county deputy director Yermolayev, NKVD lieutenant Zhdanov and others.

Victims

Most of those who were killed in the Rainiai massacre had been arrested for political reasons from the time when Lithuania was occupied by the Soviet Union in 1940. Some of them, like

Vladas Petronaitis Vladas Petronaitis (November 2, 1888 – June 25, 1941) was a Lithuanian military officer. He was tortured and executed in the infamous Rainiai massacre by members of the NKVD. Early life and education Petronaitis was born on November 2, 1888 ...

, were arrested for their roles in the independence struggle or their societal roles in independent Lithuania ("intellectuals", politicians, lawyers, policemen and public servants). Some had been arrested as "enemies of the revolution" for their business interests, land ownership or savings, as

Soviet propaganda Propaganda in the Soviet Union was the practice of state-directed communication to promote class conflict, internationalism, the goals of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and the party itself. The main Soviet censorship body, Glavli ...

taught that businessmen and landlords were thieves and oppressors. Other people were arrested for possession of non-communist literature (such as books which supported the idea of independent Lithuania or were written by authors considered to be in the wrong by the Soviets), owning a Lithuanian flag, not giving their crops to the Soviet authorities, and similar "crimes". Others had been arrested without any evidence, because their friends had been arrested or because someone had "denounced" them. This group included mainly younger people, such as students from the Telšiai Crafts School (aged 18 – 19), and young people from the villages around Telšiai. Many were arrested for having been members of certain parties and organizations such as

Boy Scouts Boy Scouts may refer to: * Boy Scout, a participant in the Boy Scout Movement. * Scouting, also known as the Boy Scout Movement. * An organisation in the Scouting Movement, although many of these organizations also have female members. There are t ...

.Lithuanian Resistance to Foreign Occupation
/ref> Some of the youth had been preparing for an anti-Soviet rebellion. These people were not tried, but were held in the Telšiai prison until the time it was decided to carry out the massacre. While most of the prisoners of the Telšiai prison were killed in the massacre, a few were released prior to the massacre.

After the massacre

When the bodies of those killed in Rainiai were exhumed and reburied after the Soviets retreated from the country, the funeral turned into a mass demonstration against the former Soviet occupation. Both the German and Soviet occupying forces tried to use the events for propaganda purposes. Since several of the organizers and perpetrators were Jewish, the Nazi German occupying force produced propaganda blaming Jewish Bolshevik activists for the massacre. Perversely, in 1942, Soviet planes dropped propaganda pamphlets in

Samogitia Samogitia or Žemaitija ( Samogitian: ''Žemaitėjė''; see below for alternative and historical names) is one of the five cultural regions of Lithuania and formerly one of the two core administrative divisions of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania ...

asking ''Who are those "Bolshevik martyrs"?'' and blaming German forces for the massacre. The local citizenry were well aware of the Soviet responsibility and in 1942, planned to build a chapel, designed by Jonas Virakas, to honor and remember the victims of the massacre. However, as the Soviet Union reoccupied the area again in 1944, it was not built. Throughout the Soviet occupation, discussion of the massacre was suppressed, and it was not permitted to hold memorial services commemorating it. Despite this, local people, under threat of arrest used to build crosses at the site of the Rainiai massacre; the crosses were periodically demolished by the Soviet authorities, only to spring up again. The political organization

Sąjūdis Sąjūdis (, "Movement"), initially known as the Reform Movement of Lithuania ( lt, Lietuvos Persitvarkymo Sąjūdis), is the political organisation which led the struggle for Lithuanian independence in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was e ...

began to discuss the massacre more openly in 1988, during the

glasnost ''Glasnost'' (; russian: link=no, гласность, ) has several general and specific meanings – a policy of maximum openness in the activities of state institutions and freedom of information, the inadmissibility of hushing up problems, ...

policy of

Soviet general secretary The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

Mikhail Gorbachev. After Lithuania regained its independence, a chapel designed by

Algirdas Žebrauskas Algirdas ( be, Альгерд, Alhierd, uk, Ольгерд, Ольґерд, Olherd, Olgerd, pl, Olgierd; – May 1377) was the Grand Duke of Lithuania. He ruled the Lithuanians and Ruthenians from 1345 to 1377. With the help of his b ...

was built in the Telšiai cemetery. Funded by donations, it was built in 1991, and became one of the first memorials to be erected for the people who were killed by the Soviet authorities during the Soviet occupation of Lithuania (1940–1941 and 1944–1991).

Prosecutions

Ceremony at the Memorial to Rainiai massacre 1995

The perpetrators of the massacre continued to hold high positions in the Soviet Union; some were awarded various medals. Pyotr Raslan, for example, was employed as an official in the Soviet Ministry of Religious Affairs. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, those perpetrators who had remained in Lithuania, fled to Russia and Israel.F&P RFE/RL Archive
/ref> Lithuania requested their

extradition Extradition is an action wherein one jurisdiction delivers a person accused or convicted of committing a crime in another jurisdiction, over to the other's law enforcement. It is a cooperative law enforcement procedure between the two jurisd ...

to put them on trial, which Russia has refused, saying of one he is 'too ill to be tried'. Some of the perpetrators have since died. In 2001, the

Šiauliai Šiauliai (; bat-smg, Šiaulē; german: Schaulen, ) is the fourth largest city in Lithuania, with a population of 107,086. From 1994 to 2010 it was the capital of Šiauliai County. Names Šiauliai is referred to by various names in different ...

Area Court in northwest Lithuania issued a verdict finding a former officer of the

, Pyotr Raslan, guilty of

genocide Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the L ...

against Lithuanian civilians and sentenced him ''in absentia'', to

life in prison Life imprisonment is any sentence of imprisonment for a crime under which convicted people are to remain in prison for the rest of their natural lives or indefinitely until pardoned, paroled, or otherwise commuted to a fixed term. Crimes for ...

. He remained protected by the Russian authorities and in 2004,

Vytautas Landsbergis Vytautas Landsbergis (born 18 October 1932) is a Lithuanian politician and former Member of the European Parliament. He was the first Speaker of Reconstituent Seimas of Lithuania after its independence declaration from the Soviet Union. He has ...

, urged the Lithuanian President, to boycott the

Victory Day Victory Day is a commonly used name for public holidays in various countries, where it commemorates a nation's triumph over a hostile force in a war or the liberation of a country from hostile occupation. In many cases, multiple countries may ob ...

celebrations in Moscow, for this reason (among other reasons).Conservative member European Parliament urges president of Lithuania to decline invitation to Russia - Baltics

Documentation

The massacre was well documented by both the Lithuanians and the Soviets. Examination of the bodies was done after the exhumation. The full account of the tortures and wounds inflicted on the victims was given by the surgeons who had examined the exhumed bodies, such as Dr. Leonardas Plechavičius and others. After the war Dr. Plechavičius delivered a speech before the

US House of Representatives The United States House of Representatives, often referred to as the House of Representatives, the U.S. House, or simply the House, is the lower chamber of the United States Congress, with the Senate being the upper chamber. Together they c ...

about the massacre. An investigation was carried out. In 1942 the first book about the massacre was published ("Rainių kankiniai"). The Soviet authorities attempted to document the events that took place in the first days after Germany invaded "Soviet" territory. Most of the communists of Lithuania had fled to Russia when the invasion began, some were asked to write their testimonies of the events. The Rainiai massacre was explained in the testimonies of the communists who were based in Telšiai. The leaders of Lithuanian SSR asked the perpetrators of the massacre to write these testimonies after Antanas Bimba, a Lithuanian communist who was living in United States and sending aid to

USSR The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...

, found out about the massacre and demanded an explanation.

Gallery

File:Rainių koplyčia.jpg File:Rainių koplyčios altorius.jpg File:Rainių koplyčios freskos (autorius A. Kmieliauskas).jpg File:Rainių žudynės. Kryžius.JPG File:Rainiai Massacre place and chapel complex Telsiai 74.jpg File:Rainiai Massacre place and chapel complex Telsiai 79.jpg File:Rainiai Massacre place and chapel complex Telsiai 87.jpg