Bruno Kittel (born 1922 in Austria – disappeared 1945) was an Austrian Nazi functionary in the German SS and Holocaust perpetrator who oversaw the liquidation of the Vilna Ghetto in September 1943. Kittel became known for his cynical cruelty. He disappeared after the war. Early life Kittel graduated from a theater school. He was an actor and a singer. He played saxophone and piano; on Sundays he played for Vilnius Radio. SS career Kittel joined the SS and reached the rank of Oberscharführer. Before the appointment to Vilnius, he worked at the Commissariat-General for Jewish Affairs in France and Riga. Kittel was transferred to Vilnius in occupied Lituania in June 1943. Effectively, he replaced Martin Weiss and Franz Murer. Kittel supervised the massacre of Jews in Kena and Bezdonys on 8–9 July: while Kittel addressed the Jews gathered inside a large building and promised them better food and security for good work, Lithuanian collaborators cordoned off the building and, once the speech was over, they set the building on fire and shot anyone who tried to escape. About 240 Jews were killed in Kena and 300–350 in Bezdonys. In Bezdonys, he offered a cigarette to a Jewish barber who had just given him a shave and asked him if he needed a light. The barber replied yes and Kittel gave him the light by shooting him. That was the signal to start the massacre. When Yitzhak Wittenberg, a leader of the Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye (FPO), escaped from the custody of the Jewish ghetto police, Kittel issued an ultimatum stating that if Wittenberg did not surrender, the whole ghetto would be liquidated. Wittenberg turned himself in and was found dead (possibly due to a suicide by cyanide) on July 16. On 24 July, a group of 21 FPO members, the so-called Leon Group, left the ghetto to go wood cutting in a nearby labour camp in Naujoji Vilnia (they were trying to escape the ghetto). Nine men were killed in a German ambush. The Germans retaliated by executing 32 relatives of the nine men on 27 July and liquidating the labor camp on 28 July. Kittel further announced that collective punishments would be imposed in order to prevent such escapes: The Germans would execute the family members and even the neighbors of anyone who escaped. The order to liquidate the ghetto was given by Rudolf Neugebauer, the commander of Einsatzkommando 3.