Adolfas Ramanauskas

Life & Legacy

Adolfas Ramanauskas (6 March 1918 – 29 November 1957), code name Vanagas (lit. 'The Hawk'), was one of the leaders of the Lithuanian partisans and the anti-Soviet resistance. In 2018, the Seimas of Lithuania posthumously recognized him as the Head of state of Lithuania.
Ramanauskas was born in the United States to a family of Lithuanian immigrants who returned to Lithuania when he was 3 years old. He worked as a teacher during the Soviet and German occupations of Lithuania in World War II. When Lithuania was re-occupied by the Soviet Union in 1944–45, he joined the anti-Soviet resistance after the NKVD pressured him to spy on his students. Eventually, Ramanauskas climbed the ranks from a platoon commander to the chairman of the Union of Lithuanian Freedom Fighters. Betrayed by a classmate in 1956, he was arrested, brutally tortured, and eventually executed. He was the last known partisan commander to be captured.
The erection of Ramanauskas' memorial in Chicago on May 4, 2019 was protested as "offensive" by Russia, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the World Jewish Congress, and the Jewish Agency, which made allegations that he collaborated with the Nazis during the Holocaust. This was denied by the Lithuanian government, which summoned the Russian ambassador over these claims, while the Lithuanian Jewish Community stated that there was nothing offensive about the memorial to Ramanauskas "as there are no historical materials testifying to controversial facts, such as complicity in the Holocaust".