Jaeger’s Einsatzkommando had duties additional to executing Jews and other presumed dangerous persons (Jaeger described the main operations as “the Jewish operations,” again ignoring the other victim categories in favor of the main target, Jews). Jaeger described one of these other duties, as inspecting overcrowded prisons and resolving cases of false imprisonment. He went into some detail about conditions in prisons and cited a case in Jonava where, in a crowded cellar, along with sixteen men, a number of teenaged girls were incarcerated “because they, in order to get work, had applied for admission to the Communist youth.” In this case, the EK had taken “drastic measures” to instill a proper attitude among the local population: “The inhabitants of the prison were assembled in the prison courtyard and checked on the basis of lists and documentation. Those who as a result of harmless offences had been locked up for no reason were assembled in a special group. Those whom we sentenced to 1-3 and 6 months because of their offences were also specially set off, as were those who were to be liquidated, such as criminals, Communist functionaries, politruks and other such riffraff. In addition to the announced punishment, some, according to the offence, especially Communist functionaries, received 10 to 40 lashes with the whip, which were meted out immediately. After completion of the examination, the prisoners were led back to their cells. Those who were to be let free were led in a platoon to the marketplace and there, after a short speech in the presence of many inhabitants, let go. The speech had the following content (it was immediately translated sentence by sentence by an interpreter into Lithuanian and Russian): ‘If we were Bolshevists, we would have shot you, but because we are Germans, we give you your freedom.’ Then followed a severe admonition to abstain from all political activity, to report to the German authorities any hostile activities that came to their attention and to intensively and immediately busy themselves in reconstruction, especially in agriculture. Should one of them again be found guilty of an offence, he would be shot. Then they were released. One cannot imagine the joy, gratitude and enthusiasm that our measures triggered in those who were freed and in the population. We often had to deflate the enthusiasm with sharp words, when women, children and men with tear-filled eyes sought to kiss our hands and feet.” I quote at length from this section because it occupies a significant portion of Jaeger’s report, representing a self-congratulatory moment in which German power and the occupation are celebrated, almost sentimentally, as both an example of educational uplift of the conquered savages of Lithuanian and a kind of German cultural triumph in the expansion of its power in the east. In the two Jonava actions listed in the report, only Jews are given as victims, with over 2,000 Jews killed, among them 244 Jewish children. In the case which Jaeger describes in depth, some of the local non-Jews were led back to their cells, whilst others, deemed less dangerous, were set free, after a stern lecture and serious warning (shooting for not adhering to the guidelines in the lecture. In the main, then, Jaeger was willing to allow moments of mercy for non-Jewish elements, even those duped or potentially dangerous, whilst continuing "systematically" to do away with the region's Jewish population, men, women, and children.
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