The outbreak of communal violence against Jews catalysed by the German invasion of the USSR was long neglected by scholarship due to biases against eyewitness testimony and the opacity of local events to outside observers. A growing number of studies on the topic have recently emerged, drawing from the eyewitness testimonies of Jewish survivors and previously inaccessible Soviet archives. This article analyses the lesser-known audio-visual recordings of interviews with non-Jewish witnesses to communal violence in provincial towns and villages of Lithuania. Collected decades after the events, they relate the same cruelty and destruction as recalled by Jewish survivors. As insider accounts from the local, non-Jewish community, they disclose manifold and divergent subject positions in the face of extreme violence. Marked by a forensic mode of discourse that accentuates individual agency and responsibility, they diverge from the prevailing apologetics of national narratives of the period. Instead, they reflect an immediacy of apprehension rooted in the intimate topographical setting of rural Lithuania under German occupation, a local memory not yet assimilated to national narratives of heroism and suffering. Finally, they express the memory of mutual surveillance, intimidation, and coercion that would endure for decades after the end of the war in these locales.

由于对目击者证词的偏见以及当地事件对外部观察者的不透明性，由德国入侵苏联催化的针对犹太人的社区暴力的爆发长期以来一直被学术界忽视。最近出现了越来越多关于该主题的研究，这些研究来自犹太幸存者的目击证词和以前无法访问的苏联档案。本文分析了鲜为人知的采访非犹太人目击者对立陶宛省级城镇和村庄社区暴力事件的视听录音。在事件发生几十年后收集，它们讲述了与犹太幸存者所回忆的同样的残忍和破坏。作为来自当地非犹太社区的内部人士，他们在面对极端暴力时披露了多种不同的主体立场。以强调个人能动性和责任的法医话语模式为标志，它们与当时流行的国家叙事的道歉不同。相反，它们反映了一种直接的忧虑，这种忧虑植根于德国占领下立陶宛农村的亲密地形环境，一种尚未被民族英雄主义和苦难叙事吸收的当地记忆。最后，他们表达了对在这些地区的战争结束后持续数十年的相互监视、恐吓和胁迫的记忆。当地的记忆还没有被民族英雄主义和苦难的叙述所吸收。最后，他们表达了对在这些地区的战争结束后持续数十年的相互监视、恐吓和胁迫的记忆。当地的记忆还没有被民族英雄主义和苦难的叙述所吸收。最后，他们表达了对在这些地区的战争结束后持续数十年的相互监视、恐吓和胁迫的记忆。