Kazys Škirpa

Kazys Škirpa
Kazys Škirpa
Born	18 February 1895; Namajūnai, Kovno Governorate, Russian Empire
Died	18 August 1979 (aged 84); Washington, D.C., United States
Burial place	Petrašiūnai Cemetery (reburied in 1995)
Nationality	Lithuanian
Alma mater	Institute of Technology in Zurich ; Higher Military School in Kaunas ; Royal Military Academy (Belgium)
Occupation	Military officer, diplomat
Employer	Lithuanian Army ; Government of Lithuania ; University of Dublin ; Library of Congress
Known for	Leader of the Lithuanian Activist Front

Kazys Škirpa (18 February 1895 – 18 August 1979) was a Lithuanian military officer and diplomat. He is best known as the founder of the Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF) and his involvement in the attempt to establish Lithuanian independence in June 1941.

Army career

During World War I, he was mobilized into the Imperial Russian Army and attempted to form Lithuanian detachments in Petrograd. After Lithuania declared independence in 1918, he returned and volunteered during the Lithuanian Wars of Independence. In January 1919, Škirpa was commandant of Vilnius and men under his command raised the flag of Lithuania on Gediminas' Tower on 1 January 1919.[1] It was the first time the flag was raised in Vilnius, the historical capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and 1 January is commemorated as the flag day in Lithuania.[2] In 1920, as a member of the Lithuanian Peasant Popular Union, he was elected to the Constituent Assembly of Lithuania. After that he decided to pursue a military education in Institute of Technology in Zurich, Higher Military School in Kaunas, and Royal Military Academy (Belgium).[3] Upon graduation in 1925, he worked as chief of the General Staff, but was forced to resign after the 1926 Lithuanian coup d'état, because he was actively refusing it and was trying to gather military force to protect the government.

Political career

Later he served as a Lithuanian representative to Germany (1927–1930), League of Nations (1937), Poland (1938), and again Germany (1938–1941). After Soviet Union occupied Lithuania in 1940, Škirpa fled to Germany and formed the Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF), a short-lived resistance organisation whose goal was to liberate Lithuania and re-establish its independence by working with the Nazis.[4] According to Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, he was a primary source of the secret part of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact which he sent to the Latvian foreign minister Vilhelms Munters in 1939.[5] When Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, many members of LAF cooperated with the Nazis and killed thousands of Lithuanian Jews (see the Holocaust in Lithuania).[4] He was named prime minister in the Provisional Government of Lithuania; however, the Germans placed him under house arrest and did not allow him to leave for Lithuania.[6] He moved from Berlin to southern Germany and was allowed a short visit to Kaunas only in October 1943.[3] In June 1944, he was arrested for sending a memorandum to the Nazi officials asking to replace German authorities in Lithuania with a Lithuanian government. He was first imprisoned in a concentration camp in Bad Godesberg and in February 1945 was moved to Jezeří Castle.[3]

Later life

After the war, he went to Paris and from there to Dublin, where he taught Russian at the University of Dublin.[3] In 1949, he emigrated to the United States. He worked at the Library of Congress.[3] His memoir about the 1941 independence movement was published in 1975. Originally interred in Washington, D.C., his remains were returned to Kaunas in June 1995, where he was reburied in Petrašiūnai Cemetery.[3] The state-sponsored ceremony included honor guards at Vytautas the Great War Museum and speeches by then Lithuanian Prime minister Adolfas Šleževičius and Defense Minister Linas Linkevičius.[7]

Controversy

In 1991, a street in Eiguliai district of Kaunas was renamed after Škirpa. In 2001, a memorial plaque was affixed to the building where he worked in 1925–1926.[8] In 1998, an alley in Vilnius near the Vilnius Castle Complex was also named after Škirpa commemorating his raising of the flag of Lithuania in 1919.[1] In 2016, a memorial stone was installed at Škirpa's birthplace in Namajūnai.[9] These dedications have caused controversy in Lithuania due to his anti-Semitic writings. The issue of the plaque in Kaunas was raised in 2015.[10] However, the government-funded Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania denied his role in the Holocaust in Lithuania but acknowledged anti-Semitism in his writings, and the plaque remained.[6][9] Public discussions about the alley in Vilnius were initiated in 2016.[11] After a national debate and controversy, the city council led by mayor Remigijus Šimašius voted to rename the alley in Vilnius to "Trispalvė" ("Tricolour", a reference to the flag of Lithuania) in July 2019.[12] The street in Kaunas was not renamed.[13]

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References

Levickytė, Paulina (9 August 2019). "Parlamentarai sukilo dėl galimai pažeistos Škirpos alėjos pervadinimo procedūros" (in Lithuanian). ELTA via Delfi.lt. Retrieved 1 July 2020.
ELTA (31 December 2015). "Gedimino pilies bokšte vyks tradicinė Lietuvos vėliavos pagerbimo ceremonija" (in Lithuanian). Delfi.lt. Retrieved 1 July 2020.
Ignatavičius, Stasys; Tamulaitis, Gintautas (20 February 2015). "Pirmasis Lietuvos kariuomenės savanoris" (PDF). Tremtinys (in Lithuanian). 7 (1125): 5. ISSN 2029-509X.
Snyder, Timothy (2012). Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. Basic Books. p. 192. ISBN 978-0-465-0-3147-4.
"Chekhov's Gun: The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in the Baltics". Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. 23 August 2017. Retrieved 13 May 2019.
Burauskaitė, Teresė Birutė (2016-01-05). "Kazio Škirpos veiklą Antrojo pasaulinio karo metais" (PDF). Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania. Retrieved 22 October 2016.
Šepetytė, Danutė (23 February 2020). "Buvo Kazys Škirpa antisemitas ar nebuvo" (in Lithuanian). Respublika. Retrieved 30 May 2020.
"Škirpa Kazys". Žymūs Kauno žmonės: atminimo įamžinimas (in Lithuanian). Kauno apskrities viešoji biblioteka. Retrieved 1 July 2020.
Baronienė, Daiva (30 November 2016). "Pasvalys įamžino K. Škirpos atminimą" (in Lithuanian). Lietuvos žinios. Archived from the original on 8 February 2019. Retrieved 1 July 2020.
Baltic News Service (6 August 2015). "Kaune – sujudimas dėl gatvės pavadinimo" (in Lithuanian). Delfi.lt. Retrieved 1 July 2020.
Baltic News Service (29 November 2016). "Vilniuje rengiama diskusija dėl K. Škirpos" (in Lithuanian). Delfi.lt. Retrieved 1 July 2020.
Jačauskas, Ignas (27 July 2019). "Sostinės taryba apsisprendė: Škirpos alėją pervadina į Trispalvės". lrt.lt (in Lithuanian). Retrieved 27 July 2019.
Sabaliauskaitė, Brigita (9 August 2019). "Ar verta sekti Vilniaus pavyzdžiu ir pervadinti K. Škirpos gatvę Kaune?" (in Lithuanian). Kas vysta Kaune. Retrieved 1 July 2020.