The Twelfth (previously Second) Battalion

This bloodthirsty group was responsible for the largest number of murders of Jews, far more than any of its counterparts. It started as a company of the First Battalion and then split to become a separate unit named the Second Battalion later renumbered the Twelfth. Its commander was the infamous Lithuanian major Antanas Impulevicius who was originally deputy commander of the First Battalion and became infamous as a vicious sadist and the executor of the bloody orders issued jointly by the Provisional Government and SS. He remained commander of the unit until it disbanded shortly before the Red army reoccupied Lithuania.

At the peak of its activities the battalion had a complement of more than 1,000 men, 80 of who were officers. Impulevicius was born in 1907 and served in the staff headquarters of the Lithuanian army during the Smetona regime, reaching the rank of major. As soon as it had been formed, the battalion began its murderous killing spree against the Jews of Kaunas, carrying out mass murders at the Fourth, Seventh and Ninth Forts.

After approximately three months, during which it murdered thousands of Jews and gained experience in conducting organized acts of genocide, the battalion was transferred to Minsk in Belarus. Its mission there was to conduct ‘secret operations’ beginning October 6, 1941. By this time the battalion comprised 487 men, including 23 officers. On October 4, before they left Lithuania, Impulevicius issued a directive to his men, which read as follows:

“Soldiers, I address you, as former partisans. On the instructions of our great leader Adolf Hitler, you will participate in the final solution and the liquidation of the Jewish Bolsheviks. On October 6, you will be stationed in the region of Minsk-Borisov-Slutzk where you will represent the people of Lithuania.”

The first mission of the battalion was the murder of the Jews of Minsk who had been arrested and imprisoned in the city ghetto. The work was carried out with extreme cruelty and within a number of days, 11,000 Jews had been murdered. The battalion did not waste time and once its work in Minsk was complete, several companies moved on to other towns and cities in Belarus (although the battalion headquarters remained in Minsk).

On October 8, they murdered the Jews of the town of Doker (Pukhovitz District); on October 10-11 they murdered around 1,300 Jews in the town of Smilvitz. They then moved on to murder almost 1,000 Jews in Keidanova on October 21 and moved on from there to the ghetto at Slutzk, where on October 28-29, they murdered around 5,000 Jews. They then moved on to the town of Nasviz where over the following two days, they murdered around 1,500 local Jews. On November 10, they murdered nearly 8,000 Jews at the Borisov Ghetto (in the Minsk region) and then went on to murder a further 3,000 Jews at the Kletzk Ghetto and 1,000 Jews from the town of Berezin (both in the Minsk region). 

In addition to murdering Jews, the battalion also killed more than 2,000 communists, prisoners of war and partisans, hanging scores of them. According to documents introduced at war crimes trials held at the end of the war, during the five weeks from October 6 through November 15, 1941, the battalion murdered 34,401 men, women and children. These murders were carried out with such extreme cruelty that even local German officers were nauseated by them and objected to the battalion’s presence, complaining profusely to their superiors. The German commissar wrote a strongly worded letter to the German high command describing the barbaric behavior of the battalion during the murder of Slutzk Jews and concluded his letter with a request, “in future, I beg you, keep this battalion away from me.”

Despite these protests, the work of the Lithuanian battalions, particularly the Twelfth Battalion, was a source of great satisfaction to senior officials in Berlin, especially Himmler and Heydrich who ordered that the battalions be expanded and integrated into the framework of SS and German security units. Having already achieved notoriety in Germany for its “efficiency” the Twelfth Battalion was cited for its work and transferred from the local command of Captain Lecthaler to the direct command of General Engel, head of the German security service in Lithuania.

The battalion spent more than a year outside Lithuania, leaving a trail of devastation throughout the cities of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.  Eventually, it was stationed permanently at Minsk where the Germans continued to bring thousands of Jews from countries across Europe to be killed. This was a task for the “experienced” executioners of the Twelfth Battalion who went about their task with a gruesome efficiency, murdering everyone down to the last man.

Most of the officers and soldiers of the battalion never stood trial for their horrendous crimes.  Some were killed in clashes with Soviet partisans and others were tried in Soviet Lithuania. The rest fled with retreating German forces and made their way to countries in the West after the war. Among them was the arch murderer Impulevicius. He eventually settled in the United States and despite attempts by the Soviet Union to extradite him, he lived undisturbed in comfort for many years until his death of old age.