The Rainiai massacre () was the

mass murder Mass murder is the violent crime of murder, killing a number of people, typically simultaneously or over a relatively short period of time and in close geographic proximity. A mass murder typically occurs in a single location where one or more ...

of between 70 and 80

Lithuanian Lithuanian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Lithuania, a country in the Baltic region in northern Europe ** Lithuanian language ** Lithuanians, a Baltic ethnic group, native to Lithuania and the immediate geographical region ** L ...

political prisoner A political prisoner is someone imprisoned for their 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, although ...

s by the

NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (, ), abbreviated as NKVD (; ), was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) se ...

, with help from the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...

, in a forest near

Telšiai Telšiai (; Samogitian language, 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 ol ...

Lithuania Lithuania, officially the Republic of Lithuania, is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, bordered by Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, P ...

, 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 Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

, 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 alleged tortures inflicted on the victims by the perpetrators. Similar atrocities were committed in other places, like the Tartu massacre, in which almost two hundred people were murdered.

Massacre

A decision was made to carry out the massacre after the June Revolt, in which 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 ...

deposed the Soviet government in Lithuania, and

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

invaded An invasion is a military offensive of combatants of one geopolitical entity, usually in large numbers, entering territory controlled by another similar entity, often involving acts of aggression. Generally, invasions have objectives of co ...

the

. The Soviet authorities were unable to evacuate the

s at the

prison, but did not want to abandon them, as they would then be 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 just three days later. According to the coroner's examination published by the Lithuanian newspaper "Ūkininko patarėjas" 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 while the prisoners were still alive. The organizers of the massacre included Pyotr Raslan, Boris Mironov, Nachman Dushanski, political leader of 8th border army

Mikhail Kompanyanec Michael is a common masculine given name derived from the Hebrew phrase ''mī kāʼēl'', 'Who slike-El', in Aramaic: ܡܝܟܐܝܠ (''Mīkhāʼēl'' ). The theophoric name is often read as a rhetorical question – "Who slike he Hebrew Go ...

Kretinga Kretinga (Yiddish: קרעטינגע) is a List of cities in Lithuania, city in Klaipėda County, in north-western Lithuania. It is the capital of the Kretinga District Municipality. It is located east of the popular Baltic Sea resort town of Pala ...

county deputy director Yermolayev, and NKVD lieutenant Zhdanov.

Victims

Most of those killed in the Rainiai massacre had been arrested for political reasons 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, t ...

, 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 aimed at promoting class conflict, proletarian internationalism, the goals of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and the party itself. The main Soviet cen ...

taught that businessmen and landlords were thieves and oppressors. Other people were arrested for possessing 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, or similar "crimes". Others had been arrested without evidence, because their friends had been arrested or because someone denounced them. This group included mainly younger people, such as students from the Telšiai Crafts School aged 18 – 19 and other young people from the villages around Telšiai. Many were arrested for having been members of certain parties or organizations such as the

Boy Scouts Boy Scouts or Boy Scout may refer to: * Members, sections or organisations in the Scouting Movement ** Scout (Scouting), a boy or a girl participating in the worldwide Scouting movement ** Scouting America, formerly known as Boy Scouts of America ...

.Lithuanian Resistance to Foreign Occupation
/ref> Some of the youth had been preparing for an anti-Soviet rebellion. These people were held without trial in Telšiai prison until the massacre. While most of the prisoners of the Telšiai prison were killed in the massacre, a few were released before it happened.

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, often known by its Lithuanian language, Lithuanian name ''Žemaitija'' (Samogitian language, Samogitian: ''Žemaitėjė''; see Samogitia#Etymology and alternative names, below for alternative and historical names) is one of the five ...

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 The Sąjūdis (, ), initially known as the Reform Movement of Lithuania (), is a political organisation which led the struggle for Lithuanian independence in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was established on 3 June 1988 as the first oppositi ...

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

glasnost ''Glasnost'' ( ; , ) is a concept relating to openness and transparency. It has several general and specific meanings, including a policy of maximum openness in the activities of state institutions and freedom of information and the inadmissi ...

policy of

Soviet general secretary The General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. was the leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). From 1924 until the country's dissolution in 1991, the officeholder was the recognize ...

Mikhail Gorbachev Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022) was a Soviet and Russian politician who served as the last leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to dissolution of the Soviet Union, the country's dissolution in 1991. He served a ...

. After Lithuania regained its independence, a chapel designed by

Algirdas Žebrauskas Algirdas (; , ; – May 1377) was Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1345 to 1377. With the help of his brother Kęstutis (who defended the western border of the Duchy) he created an empire stretching from the present Baltic states to the Bla ...

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 medals. Pyotr Raslan, for example, was employed as an official in the Soviet Ministry of Religious Affairs. After the

dissolution of the Soviet Union The Soviet Union was formally dissolved as a sovereign state and subject of international law on 26 December 1991 by Declaration No. 142-N of the Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. Declaration No. 142-Н of ...

, those perpetrators who remained in Lithuania fled to Russia and Israel.F&P RFE/RL Archive
/ref> Lithuania requested their

extradition In an extradition, one Jurisdiction (area), jurisdiction delivers a person Suspect, accused or Conviction, convicted of committing a crime in another jurisdiction, into the custody of the other's law enforcement. It is a cooperative law enforc ...

for trial, which Russia refused, saying one of them was 'too ill to be tried'. Some perpetrators have since died. In 2001, the

Šiauliai Šiauliai ( ; ) is a city in northern Lithuania, the List of cities in Lithuania, country's fourth largest city and the List of cities in the Baltic states by population, sixth largest city in the Baltic States, with a population of 112 581 in 202 ...

Area Court in northwest Lithuania found a former officer of the

, Pyotr Raslan, guilty of

genocide Genocide is violence that targets individuals because of their membership of a group and aims at the destruction of a people. Raphael Lemkin, who first coined the term, defined genocide as "the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group" by ...

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

life in prison Life imprisonment is any sentence of imprisonment under which the convicted individual is to remain incarcerated for the rest of their natural life (or until pardoned or commuted to a fixed term). Crimes that result in life imprisonment are co ...

. He remained protected by 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 ...

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 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; surgeons such as Dr. Leonardas Plechavičius examined the bodies after the exhumation and gave a full account of the torture and wounds inflicted on the victims. After the war, Plechavičius delivered a speech before the

US House of Representatives The United States House of Representatives is a chamber of the bicameral United States Congress; it is the lower house, with the U.S. Senate being the upper house. Together, the House and Senate have the authority under Article One of th ...

about the massacre. An investigation was carried out. In 1942 the first book about the massacre was published, '. 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 fled to Russia when the invasion began. Some were asked to write their testimonies of the events. The Rainiai massacre was explained in the testimony of communists based in Telšiai. The leaders of Lithuanian SSR asked the perpetrators of the massacre to write their testimony after Antanas Bimba, a Lithuanian communist who was living in United States and sending aid to the USSR, 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