Humanitarian crisis in German occupied Vilnius, 1916-1917

Abstract

ABSTRACT Based on newly published witness accounts, the article gives an insight into the civilian experiences of the humanitarian crisis that took place in the Ober Ost in 1916–1917. Vilnius, a city of 140,000, became an epicentre of famine and an epidemic of typhus that resulted in the death of several thousand civilians between November 1916 and October 1917. The article explores causes and dynamics of the crisis, survival strategies of local population and the emergence of a vast network of local relief agencies among Poles, Jews, Lithuanians and Belarusians. The author argues that the humanitarian disaster in Vilnius was part of the broader home front crisis of Central Powers. The food shortages that hit Germany and Austria-Hungary from mid-1916 led to the tightening of the exploitative occupation policy in the Ober Ost. Increasing requisitions, including confiscations of full harvests, food rationing, restrictions on free trade and population movement produced the famine that German authorities were able to control only with great difficulties. The humanitarian crisis destroyed the political credibility of the occupation regime in the eyes of the city’s population which had to rely for help mostly from their own relief agencies. It was during this crisis that numerous relief societies that have emerged among Poles, Jews, Lithuanians and Belarusians grew and extended their influence among city’s residents. Eventually they also helped to set the stage for nationalist and revolutionary political agendas of the city’s ethnic groups. These relief structures became early vehicles for their political aspirations and provided an early organizational setup for their post-WWI political programmes.