You may be curious about the main graphic for the Charlemagne Files website. What is that building and who is the guy depicted in the statue?
I took photos of both the building and the statue when I was in Lithuania in late 2021 researching Quiet Move and visiting friends.
The building houses the Klaipeda Drama Theater and stands behind a large, paved square in this Baltic port city once known as Memel. There is a story about this building.
In 1939, a German ultimatum forced Lithuania to cede the city to the Reich. On March 23, Hitler gave a speech from the balcony of this building. The square before it formerly held a statue of a young girl, Anike. Because the statue had its back to the balcony, the Nazis considered it disrespectful to Hitler and removed it.
In 1989, as the Soviet Union began to crumble, the people of Lithuania erected a replica and Anike once more inhabits the square with her back to the balcony.
The statue in my graphic is more in keeping with the Charlemagne Files series, but performs the same function as Anike. It is inserted with its back to that balcony in deliberate disrespect to its most infamous speaker.
The statue is of the celebrated Lithuanian hero, General Jonas Žemaitis. It stands in Vilnius near the Ministry of Defense. General Žemaitis fought for Lithuania until forced to surrender to Germany, dug peat rather than serve the Nazis during the war, and went back to battle toward the end of the war. When Lithuania fell under the yoke of a second fascist state, he led the partisan resistance to the Soviet occupying forces. He was captured, interrogated by Beria himself, and executed in the Butyrka prison, Moscow
In this graphic, I have reinforced Anike's disrespect to fascists with a fighting man of conscience, because the characters in the Charlemagne Files series, despite their violent skills, consider themselves to be warriors against the slaughter of innocents. (Cetus Wedge).
For a picture of Anike, click HERE.