Six A.M. on Rosh Hashanah

Order No. 9 is dated September 19, 1941. Across the top: “Urgent – Secret.” Br. Draugelis, head of the Vilnius district, sent it to the district’s civil parish heads and the mayor of Naujoji Vilnia, with police station commanders copied. By 6 a.m. September 22 they were to collect every Jew and deliver them to Vėliučionys Manor, five kilometers from Naujoji Vilnia in Mickūnai civil parish. Joseph Levinson reproduces the order in The Shoah (Holocaust) in Lithuania from LCVA, f. 684, ap. 1, b. 4, l. 21; the underlying Lithuanian documentary collection, Masinės žudynės Lietuvoje 1941-1944, part 1, pp. 209-210, carries the same order. An English reproduction is online.

September 22, 1941 was 1 Tishrei 5702, the first day of Rosh Hashanah. On Friday evening, September 11, 2026, Jews will begin Rosh Hashanah 5787. The 1941 Jewish calendar fixes the date. Eighty-five years separate the two New Years. The paperwork from the first one still identifies who did what.

Vėliučionys is a state-protected Holocaust mass-grave site, unique code 11358; an official Vilnius District heritage inventory lists it as “Žydų žudynių vieta ir kapas” — the place and grave of the murder of Jews. As of August 28, 2026, the Vilnius District Municipality’s own history page is much more selective about perpetrators. The translations from Lithuanian that follow are mine.

The municipality knows how to name Lithuanian actors. At Bezdonys it names the Lithuanian Police 1st Battalion. At Nemenčinė it says local police summoned the Jews and “Nazis and policemen” drove the column; at Maišiagala it says “German soldiers and local police” killed the remaining Jews. The same page names Lithuanian rescuers as well.

Then comes Vėliučionys, the largest single killing described on that district page. SS-Standartenführer Karl Jäger is named. His figure of 1,159 murdered Jews is given. The people who carried out the verbs are not. The page says Jews were atvarė — driven or brought — to Vėliučionys, then: “Visus juos sušaudė Vėliučionių miške” — all of them were shot in the Vėliučionys forest. The German officer keeps his name and SS rank. The people who drove the Jews there and shot them are an unnamed “they.”

The municipality’s Šatrininkai eldership page removes even more. It says a Jewish-genocide monument stands in the eldership and that on September 22, 1941, “nužudyta 1159 gyventojų” — 1,159 residents were murdered. The victims become “residents.” The sentence has no grammatical subject. Nobody murdered them.

The names missing from the municipality’s 2026 account are present in Lithuania’s own 1941 file.

Draugelis said he acted “in compliance with the instructions of the Gebietskommissar.” Two leaves earlier is Horst Wulff’s September 19 instruction: Jews not yet confined were to be moved into ghettos, guarded by Lithuanian auxiliary police; firearms were to be used against escape attempts; vacated Jewish property was to be sealed by Lithuanian institutions and officials. The documentary reproduction is LCVA, f. 684, ap. 1, b. 4, l. 19.

A German SS authorization of September 19 fixed the hour. The Chief of the SS and Local Police in Vilnius authorized district police officers and self-defense soldiers for a “special action” at 6 a.m. on September 20-22. It placed district police stations and self-defense soldiers under Lithuanian mayors and civil parish heads for the operation. Draugelis made those officials personally responsible for “precise and strict compliance.” The document is signed by SS-Obersturmbannführer Krieg; the published English translation prints “SS Obersturmbahnführer,” an evident typographical error. It is LCVA, f. 659, ap. 1, b. 2, l. 10.

Order No. 9 called Vėliučionys a ghetto. The SS authorization called the synchronized operation a special action. Jäger’s entry for September 22 recorded 1,159 dead.

Draugelis had ordered possible ghetto sites inspected on August 26. Leonardas Palevičius, Balys Rasiulis and Jonas Abraitis reported on September 2 that Vėliučionys was close enough to Vilnius and Naujoji Vilnia to make Jewish labor convenient and was the most suitable site for winter. Their report is LCVA, f. 685, ap. 5, b. 4, l. 5. Seventeen days later Draugelis signed the delivery order.

Order No. 9 required every Jew to be collected, including those working for German military authorities. Wagons were ordered for children, the sick and elderly. Houses were sealed; Jewish property was inventoried and guarded, with guards to be “preferably Lithuanians.”

Police and local officials had to ensure that not one Jew remained. Anyone found later was to be seized; anyone hiding a Jew or Jewish property reported for punishment. Arrival at Vėliučionys was required by 6 a.m. September 22. Written reports were due to Draugelis at 11 a.m. September 23.

The Lithuanian Jewish Community’s account draws on participant and witness testimony preserved in the Lithuanian Special Archive, including the Vincas Sausaitis case. It says arrests in Naujoji Vilnia, Rudamina, Šumskas and nearby towns began in mid-September following an order from Lithuanian police chief Vytautas Reivytis and continued for a week. The prisoners were brought to the former manor at Vėliučionys.

The testimony names Vincent Dowgiallo, the source’s spelling for the local administrative chief, as the official who ordered six men to dig the pit at Bald Mountain. On September 21 the Second Auxiliary Police Battalion cordoned the area; the Ypatingasis būrys arrived and shot groups at the pit. Some guards joined the shooting. Lithuania’s Visuotinė lietuvių enciklopedija describes the Special Squad as a German Security Police/SD unit composed of Lithuanian volunteers and records its participation in killing Jews at Naujoji Vilnia.

Jäger supplies the number 1,159: 468 Jewish men, 495 Jewish women and 196 Jewish children at Novo-Wilejka on September 22. His September 20 entry for Nemencing lists 128 men, 176 women and 99 children, 403 in all. The figures appear in the standard Klee-Dressen-Riess edition and in an accessible English transcription. The sources differ on duration. Jäger, the 1951 plaque and the municipality put the 1,159 on September 22; the Lithuanian Jewish Community gives September 21-22. Norwilla’s 2016 table also gives September 22 and 1,159, while a later sentence in the same article says September 22-23 and transposes the total to 1,195.

Julius Norwilla’s September 18, 2016 examination of Vėliučionys reproduces the bilingual 1951 monument. The Yiddish says the Hitlerite murderers and their órtike míthelfer — local helpers — murdered 1,159 Jews: men, women, children. The Lithuanian drops “local” and drops “men, women, children.” Norwilla goes further than the plaque. The standard Lithuanian monument formula — vietiniai talkininkai, “local assistants” — is in his words “absolutely incorrect,” because in the Vilnius region the killings were accomplished mostly by special armed Lithuanian forces in partnership with Lithuanian police, primarily the Ypatingasis būrys. They were not assistants. At Vėliučionys the Lithuanian text does not even reach that formula. It drops “local” and leaves “assistants.” The word “local” survived Stalinist censorship; the municipality’s current account removes the assistants altogether.

Draugelis’s office later accounted for RM 49,562.24 received from sales of Jewish furniture and other property. The sheet names Šumskas, Rudamina, Mickūnai and Nemenčinė among the remitting parishes, along with the mayor of Naujoji Vilnia — places already present in the roundup and killing record. It records RM 31,602 paid to the Gebietskommissar’s cash office and RM 12,195.62 to his bank account. A later note records delivery of a gold ring, a watch, five silver teaspoons, an old shaver and two leather wallets on March 10, 1942. The signature at the bottom is Br. Draugelis. The same signature appears on the six-a.m. delivery order.

Lithuania’s punishment record is already documented. Algimantas Dailidė was convicted for persecuting Jewish civilians but released from criminal responsibility; the Court of Appeal upheld zero punishment in 2008. Kazys Gimžauskas was found guilty of genocide in 2001 and received no penalty. Aleksandras Lileikis died before judgment. Three men were tried for Holocaust crimes after independence; two were convicted, neither was punished, and the third died before judgment. The fuller record is in “No Punishment for Dailidė. Up to Two Years for Fridman”. The state has not punished any Lithuanian for the murder of Jews.

Artur Fridman is innocent. The prosecution against him is illegitimate. His May 9, 2024 Facebook post followed a visit to Antakalnis Cemetery and the grave of his grandfather, Aron Fridman, a Jewish Red Army soldier who fought Nazi Germany. On October 30, 2025 prosecutor Kristina Minko signed charges in Criminal Case No. 02-2-00512-24 under Articles 170² §1 and 313 §2. The controlling formulation is a 12-page indictment within a roughly 220-page pre-trial file¹. Trial opened March 5, 2026. After the August 26 hearing, Fridman reported that the next hearing was set for October 26. As of August 28, the case is pending.

The prosecution service’s February 22, 2021 Rakutis decision names Article 170²(1). Faina Kukliansky asked prosecutors to investigate MP Valdas Rakutis’s Holocaust Remembrance Day article. A Vilnius District Prosecutor’s Office prosecutor refused, finding no direct intent. The current staff directory, observed August 28, 2026, lists Kristina Minko and Šarūnas Šimonis in the same First Division. Different prosecutors handled the cases. The office refused Rakutis under Article 170²(1); Minko later charged Fridman under Article 170²(1). That is the Rakutis Standard.

Švenčionienė shows the same prosecution structure enforcing the state’s historical memory in the other direction. On July 31, 2024, the 33rd anniversary of the Medininkai killings, she wrote on Facebook that the tragedy was the consequence of Lithuania’s special services and that “žudikai buvo iš savų tarpo” — the killers were “from among our own.” An LRT text report reproduces the post. She was convicted on February 26, 2026. The Prosecutor’s Office’s June 17 appellate release — which identifies the defendant by the initials “E. Š.” — states that the conviction was under Article 170²(1), that Vilnius District prosecutor Šarūnas Šimonis led the pre-trial investigation and maintained the prosecution, and that he appealed because the €3,750 fine was too lenient. He sought eighteen months’ restriction of liberty with intensive electronic supervision. The Vilnius Regional Court partly granted the appeal: eighteen months’ restriction of liberty without intensive supervision and an order to remove the post. The defense appeal seeking to overturn the conviction was rejected, and the appellate judgment became final on the day it was announced.

Švenčionienė is a pro-Russian activist, and the appellate court considered her earlier punishment. She is not Fridman. The comparison concerns institutional capacity: when a post challenged the state’s accepted account of a Soviet crime against Lithuanian officers by saying the killers were “from among our own,” prosecutors pursued the case, obtained a conviction and appealed for more punishment. On the district website, the murder of 1,159 Jews at Vėliučionys is still attributed to no named Lithuanian killer.

When Rosh Hashanah 5787 begins on September 11, 2026, the Vilnius District Municipality will still, unless it corrects its pages, be publishing a history that names Lithuanian police, Lithuanian rescuers and SS-Standartenführer Karl Jäger, then reaches Vėliučionys and leaves the people who drove and shot 1,159 Jews unnamed. Its Šatrininkai page turns the victims into “residents” and supplies no killer. Lithuanian archives preserve the orders and signatures; Lithuanian testimony and the national encyclopedia identify the formations. The municipal history does not.

That repeated selection is consistent with institutional whitewashing of Lithuanian perpetrator responsibility. The inversion is documented in the state’s own 2026 conduct. Lithuania upheld a conviction under Article 170²(1) for a post saying the Medininkai killers were “from among our own,” and its prosecutor appealed because the original punishment was too light. In the same year, an official district history of 1,159 murdered Jews names the German SS officer and omits the Lithuanian killers identified by Lithuanian sources. Eighty-five years after the six-a.m. order, the state has not punished any Lithuanian for the murder of Jews. It can criminally police an attribution of killing to Lithuanians when that attribution challenges the national memory of 1991. At Vėliučionys, the municipality still publishes the number without their names.

1  Correction note — August 28, 2026: Earlier articles described the roughly 220-page pre-trial file as a 220-page indictment. The controlling formulation is a 12-page indictment within a roughly 220-page pre-trial file, as documented in “Show the File” (August 18, 2026).