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.
Activities and affiliations
- 1946–1951 Military command
- 1948–1950 Ideology and propaganda
Career Timeline
- 1940–1941Imprisoned by the NKVD
- 1946Joined the armed resistance; commander of the Birutė brigade
- 1947Crossed the Iron Curtain to the West
- 1949–1950Parachuted back by the CIA
- 1951Killed by the MGB