Rainiai massacre

Rainiai massacre, June 24-25, 1941 The killings of political prisoners in Telšiai prison by the USSR army and repressive institutions. June 22, 1941 when the USSR-German War began After the declaration of martial law in the areas of the front and the front (and in Lithuania), all cases of political prisoners were referred to military tribunals. Most prisoners were condemned to be shot and others evacuated to the depths of the USSR. Local offices of the NKVD and the People's Commissariat for State Security were given unrestricted freedom to deal with political prisoners at their own discretion. 162 prisoners were held in Telšiai prison (some of them political, interrogated by security guards under torture). Due to the increasing chaos in the USSR army, the prisoners of Telšiai prison were not evacuated on 22-23 June 1941. 06 24 Early in the morning, officials of the city executive and repressive structures fleeing Telšiai gathered in Tryškiai forest, where units of the USSR army were retreating. The prisoners (most of the staff - Lithuanians) remaining in Telšiai, the only state institution - started to demand their release. About 8 p.m. At the request of two prison officers in the morning, Soviet soldiers passing by surrounded the prison, tanks stood, and passers-by were forbidden to approach. Prison affairs were handled by the 8th Army Battalion Commissioner M. Kompanijec.

D. Rocius, Chairman of the Telšiai Executive Committee , NKVD and People's Commissariat of State Security in Telšiai County. division chief P. Raslan After meeting with the military prosecutor and the Chairman of the Military Tribunal in the Tryškiai Forest, he decided to kill the abandoned political prisoners. In the evening with the assigned USSR unit, 4 trucks and 2 tanks, they returned to prison. Here, on the initiative of Mr. Raslan, a commission was formed to review the files of political prisoners; it consisted of P. Raslan, his deputy Ždanov, M. Kompanijec, D. Rocius and Kretinga county. security officer Yermolayev. About 18 hours, 3 prison guards and 8 USSR troops were sent to the site of the massacre (Rainiai Forest, 3.8 km south of Telšiai) to dig for victims. In the evening, prisoners selected in the evening were tied with ropes, barbed wire (to prevent shouting), hands tied, prisoners thrown into trucks. Up to 24 hours 4 trucks and 2 tanks left the prison.

On June 25, 1941, the execution, which began at about 1h30min at night, was led by members of the commission, other NKVD and local security officials, and carried out by a squad of 40-50 Soviet soldiers, prison chief A. Vaitkus and several supervisors. Guards were set up, car engines turned on (to prevent victims' screams and shots being heard). The victims were thrown on fire, clattered with electric current, steamed with boiling water and cabbage, whipped with wrinkles, stabbed in the mouth, cut their genitals (for many), noses, tongues, pierced eyes, peeled skin, broken skulls. Execution was a manifestation of the most brutal sadism: the objective retrieval of the USSR's rapidly withdrawing army from tortured prisoners made no sense.

On the morning of June 26, 1941, a Telšiai municipal servant discovered a tractor, an electric generator, 3 car engines, a fire place, 4 pit marks, and cooked cabbage at the scene of the massacre. On June 28, the Telsiai Police Chief, who opened an investigation, found the corpses of tortured prisoners. About 17 h Commission arrived - Telšiai county a public prosecutor, county governor, doctors and other officers were invited and medical examinations of the victims were conducted. A total of 73 people were tortured and 3 shot dead while fleeing; 46 mutilated bodies unidentified (identified by lists of condemned prisoners). On July 1, 1941, the funeral of the murdered was commemorated, a part of the exposition of the Red Terror Exhibition opened in Telšiai, a chapel was erected on the site of the 1942 massacre (architect J. Virakas, destroyed during the USSR occupation, architect A. Zebriunas). On July 7, 1941, about 840 Telšiai Jews were killed near the former place of execution by order of the Nazi occupation authorities.

At the beginning of the Rebirth, on October 10, 1988, Raslan was prosecuted (1991, hiding in Russia, April 4, 2001, Siauliai Regional Criminal Division, sentenced to life imprisonment), 1988 11, a government commission to investigate the circumstances. To commemorate the Rainiai massacre, Rainiai Suffering Chapel (consecrated on June 23, 1991) was built in Rainiai (Viesvenai eldership).