Memorial to the murdered Jews of Alytus

In the Lithuanian town of Alytus, a memorial site in the Vidzgiris forest commemorates the Jewish inhabitants of the town and its surroundings who were murdered there by German and Lithuanian units between June and September 1941.

Alytus (German: Aliten, Russian and Polish: Olita), situated on the banks of the Nemunas, was founded at the beginning of the 14th century. Jews lived there since the 16th century. Thus the city had one of the oldest Jewish communities in Lithuania. In 1940 the Soviet Union occupied the country. Around this time, Alytus had 1,730 Jewish inhabitants, which corresponded to almost one fifth of the population.
The German Wehrmacht occupied the city on June 22, 1941, the first day of the invasion of the Soviet Union. Many houses were destroyed during the fighting. The Germans set up a militia of Lithuanian natives to whom they assigned many tasks. A short time later, the Germans and their Lithuanian accomplices confined hundreds of inhabitants of Alytus to the local prison, accusing them of having been Soviet collaborators. Many of them were shot in the next few days, including Jews.
In late July or early August, all Jews from Alytus and neighbouring cities Varėna, Butrimonys and Merkinė had to move to a ghetto in the poorest part of the city. The conditions in the ghetto were catastrophic, with the up to 1,500 Jews exposed to constant violence including murder. On August 13, 617 Jewish men and 100 Jewish women were shot dead near the city. Further »Aktionen« followed. According to German sources, the largest mass shooting in Alytus took place on September 9, 1941 when German and Lithuanian units murdered 352 Jewish children, 640 Jewish women and 233 Jewish men in previously excavated pits in the forest of Vidzgiris. The Jewish community of Alytus and the surrounding area had been obliterated.

On 13 August, Einsatzkommando (sub-group of Einsatzgruppe) 3a of Einsatzgruppe (mobile killing unit) A murdered 600 Jewish men and 100 Jewish women according to their own statements. When the ghetto was dissolved in September 1941, another 1,270 Jewish children, women and men were murdered. But there were other executions, so that probably more than 2,500 Jews from the district of Alytus were murdered by the end of 1941.
From early autumn 1941 to November 1942 there was a prisoner-of-war camp in Alytus. Up to 20,000 Soviet prisoners of war fell victim to hunger, thirst, disease or deliberate murder.

The Red Army conquered Alytus on July 14, 1944. Lithuania became part of the Soviet Union again. Only a few Jews from Alytus had survived the war elsewhere.
In the 1950s, relatives of the Jewish victims tried to erect a monument at the site of the mass shootings in the forest of Vidzgiris. In 1959 a monument was approved and subsequently erected. The inscription on the monument in the form of an obelisk did not mention the Jewish origin of the victims or the involvement of local Lithuanians in the murders; instead, it merely read: »Soviet citizens and prisoners of war are buried here, victims of the Hitler murderers«. In 1993 a new memorial complex with several memorials and memorial stones was erected in the forest of Vidzgiris. The Soviet obelisk remained. Nine white pyramid-shaped stones mark the mass graves there. The central monument is a broken metal Star of David. The plans for the memorial were drawn up by the architect Rasa Vasiliauskienė, the sculpture of the Star of David by the sculptor Aloyzas Smilingis.
The restoration of the former synagogue, built in 1911, began in 2016. During the Soviet era salt was stored in the building. In the future, the building will house a museum and the Jewish community of Alytus.

The memorial site in the forest is accessible at all times.