Gecas - Eamonn O'Neill

l t u
::F{ 'ri
it
t
l t e l
! r t
*. a r li t |- 7 -z
e i ) | t

AZI-HUxTERS ruefully call it the
"Pinochet
Defence". lt's the tactic
whereby the dwindling number of the
worldt old Nazis, most now well into
'heir 80s,,uddenly - ljle rhe,ged Ch,lean
dictaror - r?ke ill ,round the rime a court
decision is made regarding tieir exradition to a
counrv which might try them for rheir crimes.
ln America in crses where that\ occurred, the
US Justice Departmentt Offic€ of Special
lnvesngations, which .o-ordrnates nrtionwide
Nazi hunts, appoints a teim ofdoctors to check
on the individual concerned. Ifth€s€ physicians
pdge the suspect to be finer than appearances
suggest. papers are srgned and the individual in
quesrion suddenly finds him.elfbeing wheeled
out the hosprt:l and transponed srraight onto a
plane to a less than hospitable count y.
This week, intens€ controversy surrounds the
nan at rhe centre ofScotland's own war crime
case: Artenas Cecevlous aka Arron Gecas. or Big
Ton) Gecas, '5 he was ldros'n to hi5 worknares
on the Nationrl Coal Boird. The 85-yeaFold
form€r mining engjneer rernains apparently ill
in Ed;nburgh's Uberton Hospital after suffering
a stroke a month or so before ScottishJustice
MinhterJirn Wallace finally hsued a warrant for
his arrest at the end ofJuly. Gecas was a healdry
man over a decade ago when he could have been
puton tdal: now he has failed in a physiol sense
bur succeeded legalJyin eudins iusrice. Ib dare,
he still mainteins his complete irurocence of any
w& crnnes: his lauyer Nigel Duncan, has stated
that his client c,nnot be extradited until his
frtness is no longer in doubt. Cecas will now
probably n€ver stand Fial for an)'thing.
However, the real controversy surrounds lihe
inacrion on th; case from $e early loo0., when
Gecas could have been put on trial in Scodand
Il's argued thar Nrzi collabor.tor..nd war
crimes suspects v,ho entered the UK after the
Second world War were protected from day
one. Afrer t-hey senled. some coniinued to enioy
'special
sratui. Anton Cecas is accused ofbeing
The time it rook $eJuitjce Mjnister to sigr $e
papers allowing Gecast extradition caused
protests not just from organisations like th€
Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Israel, which has
been hunting Cecas for l6 years, but also from
poliricians l.'.ke the SN?\ Lloyd Quinan. During a
June debate on the lntemational Criminal Coufl
bi passing drcugh the parli.ment, Qoinan went
one step irnher and actually caUed Gees a Nazi
and murderer in the chanber, saying:
"Antanas
Gecas, who lives in Edinburgh, is a Neziwer
diminal and murderer ofJevish and B€lorussian
citizens. I ref€r you to Lord Milligant 199?
deramacion casejudenenr, when he made h cled
tiat he believes ntr G€cas is guiltla"
In rhe case Quinan mentioned, Gecas had
su€d Scottish Television for libel after the
company transrnitted two documentries which
s€( out to prove Cecas was . w.r criminal. In
dismissing Gecas\ action, Lord Milligan said:
"I
Wilson had tearned up widl STVr€porter Bob
Tomlinson in the 1980s to collate the facts
scattered arouad the rvorld about the Gecas case.
Their programn€, Crine' of Wtr, told rhe
natjon that Scotland and probably England
roo
am clearly satnfied... he perticip.'ed in many
operations involving the kitling of innocent
Soviet citizens, includingJe$'s in particular i'
Belorussia (now Belans) durins rhe lrst thre€
mon$r of l04l. and in so doing comired war
c.imes ag"inst Soviet citizens inchdirg old nen,
women and children."
In rhe nine years since, many have ask€d why
no war crimes case had been brought against
Gecas. The answer, it seems, is both cornplex
BAFIA-winning documentary maker Ross
- was hone to Nazi warcr;minals.
Dr David Cesarani, professor ofModern
Hjsroryat the University ofSouthampton and
aurhor of a book abour how Brirain becane a
retuge fo. Nazi vrr crimirals, told ne: "I think
it's unlikely Gecas \ri1l be extradited to
Lithuania - he's too old and infirn. Ard this
makes you wonder why action 1las not .aken
sooner.Ifhe dies in bed an old man, it will be
the seal on a pretty appalling record in this
country Scodand has no excuse. People rnight
breathe a sigh of relief when Gecas passes a\r"y
bnt the stain will not go {iom Scodand's record.
History ivill simply record that the United
Kingdom failed to reckon with Nazi
collaborators who nade homes in its donain."
As the Second World War drew to a bloody
close, it would appear Britein did little to
prevent known war criminals enterjng the
counny. They slipped into the UK among the
thousands of genuine Displaced Persons or
European Voluntary Worke$ who had come
here searching for new lives and new hope.
Although dre main drrust of the war effort had
been directed against Germany and its alli€s,
Churchill's gov€rnment recognis€d from the
outset the poteDtial for posFwar trouble hom
the Soviet Union. Although theywould never
say so publicly, nany old hands in MI6 rcgarded
Hitle.'s wer as litde more than an internption
in their longer cov€rt fight against Staiin. As a
result, MI6 turned a blind eye to war criminels
ftom Eastern Europe who turned up in British
Displaced Persons camps. They justified dLis by
srying that their vehemently anti-Communist
stance sometim€s meant being temporarily pro-
German oa in dris case, pro Nazi.Itwas avery
shalry def€nce, but certainly not the only time
th€ s€cret s€reices rould invoke the old "my
"lt's
unlikely
Gecas will be
extradited -
he's
lf he dies in
bed an old
man, it will be
the seal on an
-^^- i^^
record in this
country"
Holocaust histo.ian
Dr David Cesarani
en€my's €n€rny is my liiend" clause.
When Hider launched Operation Barbarossa
against the Sovies, he was also lauching a buely
concealed race war. His targ€tr were Communist
partisans, gypsies, social outcasts, political
activists, g!ys, the disebled and, ebove all, Je's.
12
too infirm.
Th€ invasion began with astounding ferocity on
22 June 1941. A[i€r the tenks had blitzed th€ir
v,ay across the landscape, the terror groups
know as rhe Einsatzgruppen followed in their
wake. These were the fast-moving killing squads
that used loc.l "ordinary men", as one author
chillingly labelled then, to do dte "cl€ansing" for
them. They found many willing acconplices.
Several Eastern European countri€s on the edge
of the Soviet empire embraced the Gernans:
Lithuania, where Antanas Gecevicius rvas born
in May 1916, for exampl€, had only just been
subje$ed to dle "Red Tenor" and nade a Soviet
r€public in 1940.
The political sjtuation was h ttrrnoil. Jews,
who made up a significant proportion of the
Communist party there, were regerded as
traitors to the homeland. When th€ Germans
marched in and overturned Soviet rule, the Jews
were targeted by the invaders via local partisans
who were only too willing to bloody their hands.
Sir Mertin Gilbert, author of Nex.r Agtilt: A
Hinory ofThe Hok.awt, dtplains: "The Gernans
undentood the complex make-up of the regions
through which they advanced: they knew and
exploited the tensions beween tbe local people
end theJews. tu a result, they were able ro cali
on Lithuanian, Latvian, B€lorussian and

in contrection with charges againsc a former
comrade, although this was never publicis€d at
the tine. He admitted to rhe OSI he was indeed
one Antanas Gecevicius and dnt he had sewed in
the Lithuanian 12th Au{illiary Police Battalion, a
fact he later confirmed during an STV intervi€w.
This cleared the firsc major hurdle ol
identification, a problen on which manyNazihunting
cases founder. There was no doubt th€
man in Edinburgh and the men in th€
investigltort documents w€re one and the same.
But he denied a[ charges ofwar crimes.
The STV filmmakers started to dig deeper.
They found docunents fiom the forner Soviet
Union which showed thar G€cas had execut€d
innocent p€ople byhims€lfand wirh others. His
name had first com€ to lightjn 1962 during*ar
crimes trials ag"inst sever.l other Lithuanians.
people. Gecevicius was the officer. He himselt
rves not only giling orders but he was also
carrying a revolver And there were cases where
he would shoot people himself."
He denied being involved in any of this, but
for such acts ofhorror, Anianas G€cevicius was
awrded dre Iron Cros. This was highly unusual
- the nedal was normally reserved for Gernan
nationals and ev€n then only ror having eng:ged
in hand-to-hand combat vith the enemy. He was
also promoted to tull lieutenent and awarded a
police rnedal for keeping local partjsans in line.
tu the Allies began to gain the upper hand, he
made his way to ltaly and into a Polish uniform
before giving himself up and, ev€ntually,
arriving in the UK in 1947.
Frorn then until 1982, when the accusations
began to surhce, he was known as Tony Gecas,
Uk.aini.n volunteers to participate in mass
murder. In some instances, especielly in
Lithuania, local gangs took the initiative in
seeking outlews and killing them, even before
the German armyand killingsquads arrived."
One report Foln th€ time stared thrt "The
Lithusnians oft€n distinFished thernselves with
displays of uusual cruelty and sadism."
The number ofpeople slaughtered by these
squads nakes gaim reading: by December 1941,
.n SS colon€l reported to his superiors that in
the former Baltic States ofEstonia, Latvia and
Lithuania, his men had murdered 200,000Jews.
Only 34,000 temained alive, and th€y were
being used as slave labourers.
Wilson and Tomlinson's docum€ntaries
revealed that Artanas Gecevicius was part ofall
rhis. Their information came straighi ftom the
mouth of, Simon Wi€senchal spokesman who
stated bluntly, "Mr Indeed, the name Gecevicius surfaced in court
transcripts no fewer tlan 40 times. Executions
had talen place at Kaunas in Lidruania in l94l .
Gecas had been involved, it eas seid, at a tim€
when 8,000 Jews were murdered there. In
October of the same year, his battalion was sent
to Mirsk in Belorussia. A captured German
communiqu6 proves this:
CRIMES OF WAR
clockwlse horn top l.tt:
Edlnhurgh Jews In
Nazl-held Slobodka,
Llthuanla. The
photogEph w.s taten
ceorge r,Edlsh uslnq .
other.s they are led to
theh executlon In Ponan
Llthu.nla; B.lk n Je$s
are round.d up In the
streee a Uthunlan
Gecas k accused ofmass
murder. H€ has.dm'tted that his battalion
srEstlka leads Jews to
parricipated itr the mxss liquidation ofJevs
only he claims he was always on the side, on
guard duty. Our information is that th€ rvhol€
unitdid nothing for e living but killciviUans and
thrr he was a platoon commander."
Gecas had in facc been intewjewed as e.rly as
1982 by America's Of6ce of Special Inv€stigrtions
"The Commandant
ofKaunas orders the battalion on 6 October, at
0500hrs, to march toMinsk, Borisov and Slutsk
provinces to cleanse the area ofthe remaining
Bolshevik and Bolshevik partisans."
By this time among the officers in command
was Sub-Li€utenant Gecevicius. Eventually, in
the Minsk gheao alone, 42,000Jews were killed.
The Lithuanian battalions qnickly earned a
reputation for terrirying brutality - so much so
that the local SS even petitioned their officer in
October l94l to complain directly to Hitler
about their ind€scribable actions.
cecas insisred Lithuanians weren't allowed to
carry out any hangings and that h€ was there lo
protect the Germans. But this contradicted
evidence from a 1962 trial in which luosas
Knirimas, e soldier in Gecas's baitalion, had
stated,
"On our way Lt. Gecevicius assigned the
soldiers who were to actas hangmen. He chose
Varnas, Samonis and me. I sawVarnas placing
ropes around the necks ofthe condenn€d. One
of chem broke loose. I plcked him up and we
held him while Varnas ti€d the loot agrin. After
this we went to the other place. Here people
were hanged from the beams of two telegraph
poles. I nyself hanged a woman."
Odrer eyewitresses caced by STV testiffed to
cecas's involvement in the killings. One, ralking
about a massacre atMinsk, stated' "Groups of
soldiers *ere filed up close to the pit. Our group
was commanded by Gecevicius. He gave us the
orders: 'Attention and Fire'. Gecevicius used his
pistol to finish offthe victins who were still
alive. When we sewed toge$ef in the battalion,
he was my direct cornmafld€r. So I think that
during these sin rnonths, I ftnew him quitewell."
Awitness called Moitjejus Migonis, who had
already seFed a longs€ntence jn Sibe.a for his
war crim€s against the Sodet state, recalled:
"I
a self-made nining engineerwith dte National
Coal Board. He acted swiftly against anyone
cleiming he was awarcriminal, initially winning
defamacion damages against Tbe Timcs.
But folloving his failed 1992 libel acrion
against STV lhe station managed to unearth
even more documents and wihesses in Eastern
Europe to support lheir allegxtions.
By then the documentary, first screened in
1987, had already generated a po$'€rtul Iobby
for the cr€ation of a British War Crimes Act.
The Home Secretary, Douglas Hurd,
commissioned a report on ihe situation. Coauthored
by Sir Thomas Heatheringron in
England and w;llian Chalmers in Scotland, it
was delivered in June 1989. They'd plodded
around the globe retracitrg much ofthe work
done bySfi eventually concluding that Britain
should a€c against war criminals.
The next step was legislation. This wasn't
without its problems. During a bizarre passage
backward, and forwards berween rhe House of
Commons and d1e stubborn anti-ActLords, the
supporters of dle War C.imes Aci were accused
of being ir the srip of a so-called
rememberlews being nass executed in Slursk.
Thxt was at the €nd ofO€tober 1941. Officers
and soldiers ofthe 12th battalion, and some
Gernan soldiers, executed several chousand
'Jewish
lobby". Th€ Aci had gained *id€spread cro$party
and cross-religion snpport, yet its
opponents suggested that only the Jews pusued
vengeance -sonething they regarded as a non-
Christian (and rherefore non-British)
characceristic. Eventually, however, the War
Crimes Act came into being on l0 May 1991.
Everyone's hopes were high, no.leasr Crucr
af l4'ff dfte.tor P.oss Wllsont: "\ 4ren the Act
came through, '€ thought, 'You've had tbe
reason for changing the Iaw, the law is now
chang€d and the criminel ection will follow.'
And then, iust as ir hed done for th€ pr€vious
four decades, it [the case] disappeared into the
mists ofnothingress."
And that!where itseems to have remained.
There are sever.l th€orie, about why no criminal
case ws ever btought against G€crs. Sir Thomas
Heatherington and William Ch?lmers both
characterised the evidence they'd gathered as
"good"
but emphasised that their report was
independent.It was, theysaid, up to the sp€cial
Scottish war Crimes Unit, which *as established
wirh the police, to ascertain whether enough
evidence existed to pros€cute Gecas. Then it)
t3

) wrs up to hoth r}l" Lord {dvocires Office and baitalion currendy residing in the UK. These
the Crom Office whether to proceed to E:ial. ln nen could have provided damning evidence
the end, dre war Crimes Unitwas secredyshut against him, bur English investigators retused
down in I9o I llhe deci