Zbrodnia ponarska 1941-1944

ENPonary near Vilnius was the scene of the greatest crime perpetrated by the German invader in the north-east Borderlands of the Second Republic of Poland during World War Two. Among the victims there were several dozen thousand Polish citizens of Jewish origin, members of the Polish underground organizations and priesthood, Polish intellectuals from the Vilnius Region, as well as Soviet prisoners of war and Roma people. The book aims to show the period of the German military occupation (from July, 1941, to July, 1944) in the north-east Borderlands of the Second Republic, with a special focus on the persecution and extermination of those considered enemies of the Third Reich, and, in particular, on the Ponary Crime. The book gives details of the organizational structure of the German and Lithuanian Security Police, including the Vilnius Special Purpose Detachment (Sonderkommando, Ypatingas Burys) responsible for killing nearly 80 thousand people in Ponary in the years 1941-1944. [...] The book is comprised of five chapters. The presented material is organized in accordance with the chronological principle and by problem category. Chapter One shows the organizational structure and the machinery of justice administered by the German authorities and by the Third Reich Security Service in the Nazi controlled territories, with a focus on their bodies established in the Vilnius Region in the summer and autumn of the year 1941. [...] Chapter Two gives an account of the extermination of Jews in the Vilnius Region and follows the sequence of events in the Vilnius prisons in the years 1941-1944, bringing to light some individual cases as well. It also deals with the issue of Nazi terror campaigns against the Polish people in the German controlled territory, and with the persecution of Polish priests.Chapter Three recapitulates the events connected with transporting prisoners to Ponary where the mass executions took place, and with the executions themselves. An attempt was made to estimate the number of victims killed in Ponary, including Polish people. This, however, turned out difficult since the Germans had most of the corpses burnt and the documents and records destroyed to cover their war crime. It has been determined that ca. 80 thousand people liable to extermination on grounds of their nationality, political membership, or views considered antagonistic to the ideology of the Third Reich perished in the mass executions in Ponary. What must be kept in mind, however, is that there were criminal prisoners among those executed in Ponary as well. No doubt, Jews, Roma people, Soviet prisoners of war, people holding communist views, members of the Polish underground organizations, Polish priests, and other political prisoners belong to that other group, doomed to extermination on ideological grounds.All in all, the list of Ponary Crime victims includes ca. 70 thousand Jews, 4 thousand Soviet prisoners of war, 781 Soviet communists and activists, 1,500-2,000 Poles, and ca. 40 Roma people. Chapter Four says about covering the war crime by the Nazi. The operation took place between December, 1943, and June, 1944, and was headed by Paula Blobel Sonderkommando 1005 using Jewish and Polish prisoners and the Soviet prisoners of war to burn the corpses. Chapter Four also gives a description of the exhumation work carried out in Ponary in August, 1944, by Soviet commissions including experts in forensic medicine, doctors, and academics from the Vilnius University. Chapter Five gives an account of a number of the court proceedings where in the dock one could see the heads, the commanders and the members of the Vilnius Sonderkommando. The Ponary Crime Case was part of the Nuremberg Trials, included in the Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal, IMT. The material presented in the book is complemented with that included in the 25 attachments arranged in the chronological order and in accordance with the subject matter of the successive chapters, and with a collection of photographs mostly unpublished before. [From the publication]