The Blogs: ‘Marginal’ Auctions

The Commission Chair Bought the Beds. Lithuania Calls It Marginal.

According to the 2020 volume of Lithuania’s Genocide and Resistance Research Centre, in 1941 Bronius Semaška bought a wardrobe, a table, two beds, and four chairs in Čekiškė. He chaired the commission that inventoried and valued confiscated Jewish property. The sales brought in roughly 50,000 rubles, deposited at the township municipality’s cashier’s office. The Centre published his name, the furniture he bought, and where the money went. The Centre’s account of Čekiškė

Arūnas Bubnys wrote that paragraph. He is now the Centre’s acting Director General, and he signed the refusal described below.

The word “marginal” comes from that same volume. On page 40, Darius Furmonavičius writes, “If there were Lithuanians who took part in these events,” examination of the SS command structure would show that their contribution was “as supporting cast and thus essentially marginal.” The Centre published the passage in 2020 and declined my request to correct or annotate it on November 3, 2026, in decision 55R-1130. Page 40 of the Centre’s volume

I attribute the Centre’s claims to the Centre and give the archival references its authors cite so readers can trace the evidence. The Centre’s name adds no evidentiary weight of its own.

In the Marginal series

Each installment tests the Centre’s description of Lithuanian participation as “essentially marginal” against the historical record.

The auctions put the same claim to a different test. The SS chain of command can tell us who authorized a policy under German occupation. To see what Lithuanian officials and residents did with Jewish property, we have to look at the inventories, the sale rules, the names of the buyers, and the accounts that received the money. The Centre’s own book provides a place to start.

The commission chair bought the furniture

The Centre’s volume identifies Semaška as one of the initiators of the Lithuanian administration in Čekiškė in June 1941: a farmer with 103 hectares, a member of the Nationalist party, and a member of the Kaunas County Board. The Centre’s volume, p. 299

On September 5, 1941, German district commissar Arnold Lentzen issued instructions allowing Jewish household goods to be sold at auction. He excluded certain valuables from sale and required them to be registered and reported. In Čekiškė, the local commission inventoried and valued the goods. Its chair acquired furniture, and the township municipality received the proceeds. Before the shootings, 144 Jewish residents had already been made to pay a separate levy of 15,000 rubles. The officials who handled those transactions knew whose property they were taking. The Centre’s volume, p. 301 · Bubnys’s study, pp. 25–26 · Čekiškė town report

A pass to the front of the queue

In Rokiškis in July 1941, confiscated Jewish property was stored in three synagogues. The county chief approved Vladas Minkštimas as chairman of the commission overseeing its disposal. Three other civilians sat on the commission, and the county commandant’s office delegated two military representatives with voting rights. Goods were sold on July 15, 16, and 18 to town and county partisans and to some civilians. The sales brought in nearly 50,000 rubles, which went into the county chief’s current account. The Centre published this account in its 2011 collection Holokaustas Lietuvoje 1941–1944 m., the book its 2020 English volume translates. Brandišauskas’s study of Jewish property, pp. 479–480

The commandant’s office issued certificates that let partisans buy up to a fixed sum and priority passes that let holders bypass the queue. Its representatives reported that so many partisans and civilians turned up that they could not keep order. The certificates and priority passes failed to achieve their purpose. On July 20, the commission halted the sale and proposed a plan for disposing of what remained. The plan reserved a later chance to buy for commission members and commandant staff who had missed the earlier sales. Three synagogues had become warehouses, and the authorities were deciding who could go to the front of the line. Rokiškis sales and priority passes

The sales resumed. By the end of August, the commission had sold more than 61,000 rubles’ worth of goods. The file of applications it could not satisfy runs to 92 sheets. The first sales preceded the August massacre by a month. Jäger’s report records the murder of 3,200 Jews in the Rokiškis operation on August 15 and 16. Rokiškis town report

The sale calendar

In Rumšiškės, sales began on August 19. On August 23, 78 Jews were made to pay a levy of 8,000 rubles, held at the township municipality’s cashier’s office. More sales followed on August 25 and 26. On August 29, the town’s remaining Jews were shot, including the local pharmacist’s family. Another auction took place on September 20. The four sales brought in 30,123 rubles. The sale calendar began while the owners were alive and continued after they were murdered. The Centre’s volume, pp. 305–306 · Bubnys’s account of Rumšiškės, p. 29 · Rumšiškės town report

In Veliuona, officials inventoried valuables and sealed Jewish homes. The township mayor, Benadas Cvirka, who held the keys to the sealed houses, put together eight commissions to value and sell the property. By the time the scheduled sales began, no Jews remained in Veliuona. The town’s poor bought on September 18, white-armband “partisans” and civil servants on September 19, and farmers on September 20 and 22. Bubnys records roughly 200,000 rubles in sales. He identifies the municipal cashier’s office that received a separate levy of 16,000 rubles from 160 Jews on August 22. Historian Alfredas Rukšėnas reports that the sale proceeds went to a German bank in Kaunas, and that officials and members of the armed squad bought goods. The Centre’s volume, pp. 308–309 · Bubnys’s account of Veliuona, pp. 31–32 · Veliuona town report · Rukšėnas’s 2003 study, note 77

The shooting as a credential

In Musninkai, the township chief and police station chief oversaw the storage, registration, valuation, and auction of confiscated goods. The Centre’s account of Musninkai

Historian Stanislovas Buchaveckas’s study of the sale records, cited in my Musninkai town report, describes residents paying in Reichsmarks for tables, lamps, blankets, wagons, blacksmiths’ tools, cows, and horses. Musninkai town report

The sale records name several buyers. Policeman Pranas Mažeika bought eleven objects for 60 Reichsmarks. Juozas Marcinkevičius paid 36 Reichsmarks for a bellows, an anvil, and a hammer. A teacher bought a bed, a food cupboard, a lamp, and a bowl for 3 Reichsmarks. On October 26, 1941, seven weeks after the massacre, twelve teachers asked for priority in buying Jewish furniture and dishes.

Auxiliary policeman Ipolitas Žvirblys asked the property commission to let him buy Haja Levinsonaitė’s chaff cutter at the set price. As grounds, he cited his participation in shooting Jews at Ukmergė. The goods that changed hands included the tools and animals with which families had earned their living. Musninkai town report

A market beside the killing ground

At Ponary on November 21, 1941, a Friday market day, Kazimierz Sakowicz heard gunfire in the forest. He recorded a Lithuanian shooter, whom he called a “Shaulist,” coming out to the road with women’s clothes to sell. Two coats, one navy blue and one brown, went for 120 rubles. The shooter threw in a pair of galoshes. When Wacław Tankun, a local peasant, asked whether he could get something for his wife, the shooter said “Let them wait” and offered to choose a Jewish woman her size. Sakowicz’s November 21 diary entry

In Utena, a photograph shows a public auction in the central market. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum identifies the auctioneer as a Lithuanian auxiliary policeman who had just returned from taking part in the mass shooting of the local Jews in the Rašė Forest. He was selling their belongings. The museum’s Utena photograph, #25736 · Utena town report

Whose account received the money?

In Čekiškė, the Centre’s own volume supplies enough detail to ask a precise question. A German official authorized the sale of Jewish household goods. A Lithuanian commission inventoried and valued them. Its chair bought furniture. The municipality took in roughly 50,000 rubles. In Rokiškis, the documents show a different commission, a different account, and an authority that decided who could buy first. In Musninkai, a policeman offered his part in the shooting as a reason to sell him a Jewish woman’s machine. Those are the decisions an account of Lithuanian participation has to explain. Čekiškė · Rokiškis · Musninkai

I have a question for the Lithuanian government. When the commission chair bought the beds and the municipality took the money, which part of their work was “essentially marginal”?