Jonas Žemaitis
Jonas Žemaitis
Officer who founded the Union of Lithuanian Freedom Fighters in 1949 and led the partisan resistance as its chairman
Born in Palanga, he graduated from the War School of Kaunas in 1929 as an artillery officer and studied at the School of Applied Artillery in Fontainebleau, France, in 1936–1938. In the deportations of June 1941 his sister’s whole family was sent to Siberia; under the German occupation he retired rather than serve the Nazis. In 1944 he joined the Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force, and when the Red Army returned he joined the Lithuanian Liberty Army and the partisans, rising to the leadership. In February 1949 he founded the Union of Lithuanian Freedom Fighters and became its chairman, working to unify the partisan units and give their struggle a legal framework. Paralysed by a cerebral haemorrhage in December 1951, he was arrested on 30 May 1953, interrogated in Moscow by Beria and executed in Butyrka prison in 1954. In 2009 he was officially named the fourth President of Lithuania.
Career timeline
- 1929Graduated from the War School of Kaunas; artillery officer
- 1936–1938School of Applied Artillery, Fontainebleau
- 1944Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force, then the partisans
- 1949Chairman of the Union of Lithuanian Freedom Fighters
- 1953Arrested
- 1954Executed in Butyrka prison, Moscow