Juozas Vitkus-Kazimieraitis

Juozas Vitkus, also known by his partisan codename Kazimieraitis (10 December 1901 – 2 July 1946) was an anti-Soviet Lithuanian partisan commander.

He was an officer in the interwar Lithuanian army and a lector in the War School of Kaunas. After the Soviet occupation of Lithuania, he was head of the apartments and property department in Vilnius. From 1942 he was involved in the Lithuanian Front, an underground anti-Nazi resistance movement. In 1945 he got involved with the anti-Soviet partisan movement and joined the partisans in the Varėna District of southern Lithuania, where he was appointed its commander. He died fighting in an ambush in 1946. During this time he published the newspaper Laisvės varpas (bell of freedom). He modeled the partisans in the form of the Lithuanian army, enforcing strict discipline as well as the use of codenames, uniforms, as well as creating a mobilization plan. In 1946 he was heavily wounded in fights against the Soviet Army in a forest in the Lazdijai District. He was later taken into custody but died while being driven to headquarters in Leipalingis. The death of Juozas Vitkus-Kazimieraitis was reported to Stalin himself. His body was not discovered until 2022 in the yard of former MGB headquarters in Druskininkai. Vitkus's son has created a series of memoirs about his father entitled Pulkininkas Kazimieraitis.