Rainiai massacre

[1] 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.

[2] 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 had been arrested as "enemies of the revolution" for their business interests, land ownership or savings, as Soviet propaganda taught that businessmen and landlords were thieves and oppressors.

Perversely, in 1942, Soviet planes dropped propaganda pamphlets in Samogitia asking Who are those "Bolshevik martyrs"?

[4] 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.

The political organization Sąjūdis began to discuss the massacre more openly in 1988, during the glasnost policy of Soviet general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev.

After Lithuania regained its independence, a chapel designed by Algirdas Žebrauskas was built in the Telšiai cemetery.

In 2001, the Šiauliai Area Court in northwest Lithuania found a former officer of the NKVD, Pyotr Raslan, guilty of genocide against Lithuanian civilians and sentenced him in absentia to life in prison.

He remained protected by Russian authorities and in 2004 Vytautas Landsbergis urged the Lithuanian president to boycott the Victory Day celebrations in Moscow for this among other reasons.

[6] 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.