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13 Nation State, Ethnic Conflict, and Refugees in Lithuania 1939–1940 Tomas Balkelis Introduction Hitler’s attack on Poland in September 1939 following the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact destroyed the last illusions of peace and stability in Europe. The rapid two-pronged destruction of the Polish state by the Nazi and Soviet armies precipitated a humanitarian crisis which spilled over into neighboring East European states. Hundreds of thousands of Polish civilians , government officials, and military fled the path of the invading armies into neighboring Slovakia, Romania, Hungary, and Lithuania in the hope of finding a safe haven. The first weeks of the war thereby rendered them homeless refugees. This chapter explores the refugee crisis in eastern Lithuania, where around 27,000 refugees from Poland sought sanctuary.1 For the small and truncated Lithuanian state—in March 1939 Germany had annexed the region of Klaipėda (Memel)—the influx of so many refugees presented a considerable challenge.2 The government in Kaunas faced a humanitarian crisis because these refugees had to be fed and accommodated. It had to deal simultaneously with international pressure from the Polish government-in-exile and its Western allies, and from Germany. While the allies demanded full protection for the refugees, Germany wanted to curb all anti-German political and military activities among the Polish population in Lithuania.3 Having emerged as an independent state from the mayhem of World War I, Lithuania had inherited an ethnically mixed population. During the interwar years its two largest ethnic minorities, Jews and Poles, officially had been protected by the minority protection re- 244 Tomas Balkelis gime imposed by Versailles. Yet by the mid-1920s their minority rights were being seriously eroded by the country’s swing toward right-wing politics and the growing competition between ethnic Lithuanian and Jewish economic interests.4 Meanwhile, the relations with Poles remained poisoned by the conflict with Poland, a hostility derived from the military coup led by Lucjan Żeligowski in October 1920 and Poland’s occupation of Vilnius. Lithuania never recognized this annexation, which damaged relations between the two states throughout the interwar years. Lithuanians based their claims to Vilnius on its role as the historical capital of the medieval Grand Duchy of Lithuania, whereas Poland staked its claim on the grounds that the city and surrounding area were predominantly ethnically Polish. The two states failed to develop diplomatic relations, attempts to settle the Vilnius dispute internationally having come to nothing.5 Throughout the interwar and early war years, the Vilnius region, traditionally a multiconfessional and multiethnic area, thus, remained a borderland of encounter where competing political interests clashed with each other (see chapter 4). Needless to say, these conflicts had a destabilizing effect on the states involved and forms of coexistence in the region. After the Soviet-backed transfer of the Vilnius region from Poland to Lithuania in October 1939, the Lithuanian government attempted to integrate the region politically, economically , and culturally. This was marked by a sustained campaign of Lithuanization, requested by many members of the Lithuanian public. The Lithuanian government attempted to steer a course through this volatile domestic and international situation. However, the unpopular authoritarian regime, seriously weakened by the Polish ultimatum of March 1938 and the loss of Klaipėda in March 1939, was able to produce only a series of short-lived governments. The government attempted to regain its popularity by claiming the return of Vilnius as a diplomatic victory, but the refugee crisis contributed to further destabilizing the political scene. Lithuania embarked on contradictory policies that ranged from attempts to assist the refugees by involving international relief agencies to measures to control their movement. Refugees were enumerated, classified, controlled, isolated, forcibly employed, resettled , or even jailed. In other words, compulsory “rooting” and “sifting” of the population went hand-in-hand with relief efforts. In practice, as we shall see, the relief measures also served to achieve the state’s political objectives. Yet the refugee crisis provided the backdrop to a new critical development in the region , which is another focus of this chapter. For those Polish citizens who fled into Lithuania the onset of war entailed physical displacement. For the many thousand Poles who lived in the Vilnius region and found rather that borders had shifted, the onset of war brought about their political disenfranchisement. In March 1940, Lithuania denied citizenship rights to around 83,000 Poles who had settled in the Vilnius region between 1920 and 1939. This group of people became officially labeled as “newcomers...

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