Kaunas pogrom

Nazi SS Brigadeführer Franz Walter Stahlecker arrived in Kaunas on the morning of 25 June.

[5] According to Stahlecker's report of 15 October, local Lithuanians were not enthusiastic about the pogrom and so he had to use Algirdas Klimaitis and his men.

[5] Klimaitis controlled a paramilitary unit of approximately 600 men that was organized in Tilsit by SD and was not subordinated to the LAF.

According to Rabbi Ephraim Oshry, Germans were present on the bridge to Slobodka, but it was the Lithuanian volunteers who killed the Jews.

Memoirs of witnesses say that German Nazi soldiers in uniform participated in Lietūkis' sadistic tortures and massacres, but were also accompanied by Lithuanians recently freed from Kaunas Prison.

[10] Franz Walter Stahlecker's report of 15 October to Heinrich Himmler said that he had succeeded in covering up actions of the Vorkommando (German vanguard unit) and made it look like an initiative of the local population.

Lithuanian civilians and German soldiers watching the massacre of 68 Jews in the Lietūkis garage of Kaunas on 25 or 27 June 1941.
An unknown perpetrator (nicknamed the "Death Dealer") at the massacre in the Lietūkis garage, though possible names are known. [ 3 ] [ better source needed ]
Map sent by Stahlecker to Heydrich, 31 January 1942, illustrating 1941 killings of Jews in the Baltic states under Stahlecker's command
Kaunas pogrom memorial