First Prize: 150 Rubles

In 2024 Lithuania’s Genocide Centre placed Kazys Braželis in a genocide-victims register without stating the offense behind his 1962 sentence. A 1961 witness said he boasted of a 150-ruble ‘first prize’ for shooting people.

In 2024, the Lithuanian Genocide and Resistance Research Centre published an updated edition of Volume VI of Lietuvos gyventojų genocidas. Its main biographical section is headed “1954–1989 m. genocido aukų vardynas” — the register of genocide victims. It contains “Braželis Kazys, Prano,” born in 1918, a craftsman living in Kaunas.

The entry records his August 24, 1961 arrest, his March 9, 1962 sentence by the Supreme Court of the Lithuanian SSR to fifteen years in a labor camp and five years of exile, transfer to Vladimir, later imprisonment in Dubravlag and the Perm region, his August 23, 1976 release and return to Lithuania. It gives no conduct line and does not state the offense. A witness deposed in 1961 that this man had boasted of receiving a 150-ruble “first prize” for shooting people.

The same register contains Jonas Bakanavičius, born in 1900 and living in Kaunas. Arrested July 12, 1961, he was sentenced by the same court on March 9, 1962, to twelve years in a labor camp and three years of exile, transferred to Vladimir and then Dubravlag, where he died on February 25, 1967. A 1962 trial report names Bakanavičius and Braželis among four defendants in the same Rokiškis proceeding. Neither register entry states the offense.

Nearby entries record participation in the 1941 uprising, singing the Lithuanian anthem, raising the tricolor and anti-Soviet activity. Braželis and Bakanavičius carry no conduct line. The 2024 preface describes the 1954–1989 subjects as repressed “už pasipriešinimą sovietų okupaciniam režimui” — for resistance to the Soviet occupying regime. This is the Genocide Equalization Doctrine applied to named individuals: Soviet repression is displayed while the conduct preceding it disappears.

Both entries end with “BBK KGB.” The Centre defines BBK as the criminal-case card index and KGB as Soviet security criminal cases held at the Lithuanian Special Archives, fond K-1, apyrašas 58. Its publication list dates Volume VI to 2022, but I have not obtained those entries. No entry matching a March 9, 1962 conviction was located under Paškauskas or Kukuška in the current Volume VI; no claim is made about the full series.

The Rokiškis municipal events portal specifies that on September 23 the museum will hold a civic lesson in Rokiškis and an hour of remembrance and respect at the Antanašė Holocaust memorial. The museum’s tourism branch also publishes the 100-ruble bonus claim.

First prize

On September 11, 1961, Vladas Kriukelis gave a statement published as Document No. 158 on printed page 211 of Masinės žudynės Lietuvoje 1941–1944: Dokumentų rinkinys, Part II, compiled by G. Erslavaitė and edited by B. Baranauskas and E. Rozauskas (Vilnius: Leidykla “Mintis,” 1973). It identifies Kriukelis as the son of Petras, born in 1918 in Ulytėlė village, Rageliai subdistrict, Rokiškis district.

Kriukelis said he was imprisoned in Rokiškis after the occupation began. Detainees included Lithuanians, Russians and Jews; all the Jews, he said, were separated on the first day and taken away. He named the facility chief as Milaknis and Kazys Braželis as a white-armband guard who beat detainees.

After his release, Kriukelis said he met Braželis in Rokiškis. Braželis, “didžiuodamasis,” or proudly, boasted that he had received “pirmąją premiją — 150 rb.” for shooting people. The locator is ADSR fondas, r. 140, l. 69—70. The preface identifies this class as postwar testimony given to courts and investigative organs and preserved in the ADSR fund.

E. Rozauskas, one of the volume’s two editors, headed the Investigation Department of the Lithuanian SSR NKGB in 1941. LGGRTC itself records that he proposed separating the “most dangerous” prisoners in Kaunas Prison No. 1 and shooting them before the Soviet retreat. From 1960 he headed the Archives Administration under the LSSR Council of Ministers — one of the institutions named on this volume’s own title page. The testimony therefore has to be tested against the underlying protocols and independent records.

The excerpt does not identify Jews as the people for whose shooting the 150 rubles were allegedly paid, name a payer or identify a particular shooting. Premija can mean prize, premium or bonus; pirmąją premiją can be “first prize” or “first bonus.” The translations were machine-assisted and checked against the printed Lithuanian.

The courtroom

The Soviet-aligned Lithuanian-Canadian weekly Liaudies Balsas, published in Toronto, carried J. Varnas’s report from Rokiškis on April 13, 1962. It describes a visiting session of the Lithuanian SSR Supreme Court’s criminal collegium at the Rokiškis People’s Court, with crowds gathering outside.

The same V. Kriukelis appears in the courtroom account. He told Braželis that Braželis had beaten him with a rubber whip and beaten his father until the man went deaf. Another witness said Braželis had described three cartloads of children brought to Bajorai, thrown into pits, some shot and some buried alive. That is a reported boast in Soviet-aligned trial journalism. Bajorai is the area of the Velniaduobė killing site. The case file can test it.

The report quotes V. Braželis, identified as Braželis’s pusbrolis, his cousin, saying he saw Braželis march three detainees into fields near Rokiškis, make them dig a pit, shoot them and take their clothes. The cousin repudiated the relationship from the witness box.

His godmother

Document No. 159 begins below Kriukelis’s statement on printed page 211 and runs through page 213. Emilija Braželienė gave it on August 17, 1961. Her husband Jonas and Kazys Braželis’s father Pranas were brothers. She was Kazys’s godmother.

Braželienė said that by 1958 Kazys was living in Kaunas under the name and biographical details of her missing son Jonas, his cousin. She described Jews being abused on Respublikos Street in Rokiškis and identified Braželis among armed Lithuanian nationalists who forced them into a muddy bog, kicked them and struck them with rifle butts.

She then described a visit to the Braželis family home in approximately August or September 1941. Kazys returned from Rokiškis in a uniform she could not identify. His mother placed fresh butter on the table. According to Braželienė, he pushed it away and said it reminded him of the brains of people who had been shot.

She said he talked about shooting Jews and complained that his shoulder hurt from firing so much. She attributed to him an account of shooting a mother holding two small children. When they emerged from beneath her body, the source quotes him calling them “kaip driežai raudoni” — “like red lizards.” She said he told them he killed the children with the rifle butt, then displayed rings and watches while boasting about Jewish property.

Kriukelis said his father was killed in 1946 by people the collection calls “bandits.” Braželienė said her son Ričardas, his wife, his wife’s father and their five-month-old daughter were killed in Ulytėlė that year by people described the same way. Kriukelis was from Ulytėlė.

The list and the payroll sheet

Braželienė said Kazys Braželis came to see her in Rokiškis in late December 1958. She told him he would have to answer for the crimes she attributed to him. According to her statement, he answered that no one would prove it.

She then mentioned the Rokiškis district newspaper Po Spalio vėliava. She said it had published an article and a photograph of a list of nationalists “kuriems išmokėjo premijas” — to whom bonuses had been paid. She said Kazys Braželis was named and that his own signature appeared on the list. He became interested, she said, asked where he could get the newspaper, and then fell silent.

Braželienė did not date the article. The paper carried that title from November 1950 until April 1962, so the issue could fall anywhere between November 1950 and December 1958. A targeted search of indexed 1958 material for Braželis and payment terms did not locate it; the earlier years remain unsearched, and the archive is not reliably full-text searchable. The Rokiškis municipal library points to a digitized pre-1960 archive. The issue has not been found. That does not establish nonexistence.

The 1962 report describes a different signed payment document involving co-defendant Bakanavičius. It says the judge took a document from the case file and asked one question: “Jūsų parašas?” — “Your signature?” The correspondent then characterizes the paper as an algalapis, a payroll or wage sheet, under which a premija was paid to Bakanavičius in 1941 for shooting people. Trial journalism does not authenticate the paper. It identifies an exhibit to demand from the case file.

They are different documents about different men from different sources. Both concern the same district, both are described as bearing signatures and both use the word premija. Only the algalapis is said to have been in the 1962 case file.

Premija

The present-day Rokiškis Tourism Information Centre page says auxiliary policemen received “po 100 rublių premijas” for participation in the Antanašė killings: 30 from Obeliai town, 23 from the Obeliai railway station, 13 from Aleksandravėlė and 12 from the Kriaunos unit. Those four figures total 78 men, 100 rubles each. The page states no total and identifies no archival source for the payment figures.

A 1941 Merkinė police list in the same volume accuses a man of receiving 1,200 rubles and a bicycle as a premija for gathering deportation information. It has no connection to Braželis, but shows that premija was ordinary administrative vocabulary for an award or payment in Lithuanian paperwork in 1941.

For Antanašė, the Rokiškis page cites Karl Jäger: 112 Jewish men, 627 Jewish women and 421 Jewish children murdered at Obeliai on August 25, 1941 — 1,160. The 1973 site register, entry No. 105 on printed page 402, gives the same date and total, spelling the village Antanošė. For August 15–16 at Rokiškis, Jäger recorded 3,200 Jews plus seven others, totaling 3,207; entry No. 108 on the same page gives 3,207 at Velniaduobė without a breakdown.

Produce the documents

Under the current consolidated text of Lithuania’s Law I-180, Article 1 restores civil rights to people repressed “for resistance to aggression and the occupying regimes.” Article 2(1) excludes persons who participated in Chapter XV crimes against humanity or war crimes for which, under Criminal Code Article 95(9), there is no limitation period, as well as those who participated in killing or torturing unarmed civilians. The Centre’s register uses materially the same resistance criterion. If the criminal file confirms that Braželis and Bakanavičius were convicted for participation in killings rather than resistance, the entries do not meet the register’s own criterion, and they do not meet the statute’s either.

Whether independent Lithuania restored, refused to restore or never reviewed their civil rights has not been established. Under Article 3 of the same law, the Lithuanian Supreme Court issues certificates for people repressed by judicial bodies, while the Prosecutor General handles non-judicial repression.

On August 28 I wrote to the Genocide Centre, Rokiškis Regional Museum, Supreme Court and Prosecutor General seeking the case-file basis of the entries, the source and names behind the 100-ruble payments, and any post-1990 rights-restoration record. As of August 28, all four requests were pending. I asked for replies by September 4, or confirmation that more time is required.

Braželis served a Soviet sentence. Soviet punishment is not Lithuanian accountability. Independent Lithuania has punished no one for the murder of Jews.

Publish the 1961–1962 criminal case and its exhibits. Publish the names behind the 30, 23, 13 and 12 payments. Locate and scan the newspaper page and the photographed list.

Produce the list.