Gecas - Eamonn O'Neill

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)
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