People of the Revolution and the USSR

Nationalism 1918–1957 ✕ Executed

Partisan commander “Vanagas” who led the Union of Lithuanian Freedom Fighters from 1952, the last commander to be captured

Born to a Lithuanian immigrant family in New Britain, Connecticut, he came to Lithuania at the age of three. He graduated from the War School of Kaunas in 1940 and worked as a teacher, and after the NKVD pressured him to spy on his students he joined the partisans in early 1945 under the nom de guerre Vanagas (“Hawk”). He commanded the Dainava military district and the Southern Lithuania Region, published underground newspapers, and in 1949 became first deputy chairman of the Union of Lithuanian Freedom Fighters. Succeeding Jonas Žemaitis as its leader in 1952, he ordered an end to armed struggle in favour of passive resistance. Betrayed by a former classmate, he was arrested in October 1956, tortured and executed in November 1957. The Simon Wiesenthal Center has alleged that a unit he commanded in the June 1941 uprising took part in killing Jews; the Lithuanian government denies this.

Nationalism 1921–1951 ✕ Killed by the MGB

Lithuanian partisan leader who crossed the Iron Curtain in 1947 to seek Western support and was killed by the MGB after returning

Born to a farming family in the village of Juodbūdis near Kaunas, he joined the Catholic youth organisation Ateitis and the far-right, antisemitic and anti-Soviet Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF) at secondary school, and was imprisoned by the NKVD during the Soviet occupation of 1940–1941. After the Red Army returned in 1944 he worked in the Kaunas underground, joined the armed resistance in 1946 and commanded the Birutė brigade of the Tauras military district. At the end of 1947 he crossed the Iron Curtain with partisan documentation for the West, was trained by French intelligence and the CIA, and wrote Fighters for Freedom. Parachuted back by the CIA in 1949–1950, he was killed by the MGB near Pabartupis in the autumn of 1951. According to several witnesses he took part in the Lietūkis garage massacre in Kaunas in 1941; the Lithuanian government denies this.