„Varniai, Dimitravas, Pabrade: Concentration and Labor Camps in Lithuania in 1927-1940“ 

Concentration and labor camps, which existed in Lithuania in the interwar period (1927 - 1940), are relatively poorly researched, but controversially assessed as a domestic historical phenomenon of the Republic of Lithuania. The preventive isolation camps of persons potentially dangerous for national security and public order were not new in the world, but they, though having a bad reputation, were not yet perceived as the Nazi death camps of World Was II, which especially horrified mankind.

This book describes concentration and labor camps in Varniai, Dimitravas and Pabrade, discusses prisoners’ living conditions, the status of the camps and their place in the state system of coercion. It analyzes the means of suppressing opposition, the mechanism of societal control, the practice of imposing penalties in Lithuania in those years, and goes deep into the legal regulations in the establishment and work of the concentration and labor camps as well as revealing the structure of such institutions. There are the peculiarities of the personnel, administration of the camps, the categories of the internee, the activity of political groups, interpersonal relations and relations of the camps’ personnel. Besides all this, it analyzes society’s point of view on how the authoritarian regime discharged its repressive politics in Lithuania.