Ashley Blog #3: Motivations and Case Studies

This week, I was trying to work my way through some of my journal articles. One interesting source that I located was a short paper submitted to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Symposium, in 2004. Michael MacQueen, in this paper, examines the work of historian Alfonsas Eidintas, using case studies of participants in the Holocaust to help prove Eidintas’ ideas about motivation. The citation and analysis follow below.

MacQueen, Michael. “Lithuanian Collaboration in the ‘Final Solution’: Motivations and Case Studies.” Paper presented at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Symposium Presentation, Washington, D.C., 2004.

According to MacQueen, there has been a hesitation among some Lithuanians to acknowledge their country’s participation in the Holocaust. MacQueen states that many seek to “label the Lithuanian participants in the genocide ‘elements from the social margins’” who, upon receiving “license by the Germans,” simply vented their “preexisting appetites for mass murder” (1). Propaganda spread by the Germans and anti-Soviet resistance groups attributed to the tension within Lithuania, until this sparked violence.

However, MacQueen does not support this idea, instead stating that there is a wide range of motivations for participation in the Holocaust. He builds upon the research of Eidintas, listing the motivations as follows: revenge, opportunism, expiation, anti-Semitism, self-enrichment, and a section he adds, “mass murders by chance, the ‘accidental genocidaires’” (1). In order to help prove these motivations, he examines the motivations of actual participants.

The first participant he examines is Jonas Barkauskas, a Pole who worked at the headquarters of Ypatingas Burys, masquerading as a Lithuanian. He worked very closely at the base at Paneriai, where he was a sentry at the killing pits. He was eventually asked to rotate to shooting the Jews, and did not resist this change, taking the opportunity to begin looting all that he could get his hands on. When asked by Polish authorities about his motivations, Barkauskas stated that he “had no reason to mourn the Jews” and that they were all “parasites” (3). This is an example of self-enrichment, anti-Semitism, and the accidental genocidaires, as it was chance that led him to the job at Ypatingas Burys.

The second participant examined by MacQueen is Antanas Gečas-Gecevicius, who eagerly signed up for service with the Battalion for the Defense of National Labor when the Germans invaded Lithuania. He eventually became commander of the 2^nd Battalion and from this position traveled to Belorussia to help in “Operation Free-of-Jews” (4). It was his job to ensure that the Jews in his area of Belorussia “disappear with a remnant” (4). MacQueen states that the 2^nd Battalion alone murdered at least 19,000 people in about a month. They also participated in a massacre in Slutsk, where Gečas personally murdered Jews that did not die with the first shots from his soldiers. He was awarded an Iron Cross from Germany, and later, from a POW camp, was able to convince the Polish Army that he “always felt Polish, and… wish[ed] to serve the Polish Army” (5). He was able, through his service, to win both Polish and British military decorations.

MacQueen’s third case study is Aleksandras Lileikis, whose memoir illuminates his involvement as chief of the Lithuanian Security Police. He reorganized the security police to work like the Gestapo, and had control over “cases of Jews in hiding, Jews suspected of communist links, and… cases of Jews who had escaped from ghettos” (6). He also signed off on all executions that took place at Paneriai at the hands of the Ypatingas Burys, which MacQueen states fits “the definition of the bureaucrat who kills with a pen rather than a gun” (6).

In his final case study, MacQueen addresses several men involved in the killings in smaller cities. He is able to name the specifics of each situation, due to the testimonies of survivors. For example, in the town Darbenai, he notes that the chief of police locked 400 Jewish citizens in a synagogue for over a month before shooting them. These case studies, he states, show that the killers not only knew their victims, but also operated with extreme brutality and that “the motivation of personal enrichment at the expense of Jewish victims seems to have played a stronger role in the rural setting” (9).

Despite his paper having very little analysis and no real conclusion, it nevertheless offers interesting details about those people who were involved in the Paneriai, Ypatingas Burys, and 2^nd Battalion, their interconnectedness, and their possible motivations. It will be a good source to use for framing my own examination of motivation, along with the publication by Eidintas.