Old Jewish Cemetery, Klaipėda

Klaipėdos Senosios žydų kapinės

A memorial wall with grave stones on the old Jewish cemetery - originally established under Prussian-German rule - in the port city of Klaipėda commemorate the annihilation of the city's Jewish community under National Socialism and the destruction of the complex by the Soviets after 1945.

History

Klaipėda (German: Memel) was founded in 1252. It was the oldest city in East Prussia and the northernmost city in the German Reich. Jewish life began to blossom at the beginning of the 19th century, in part due to the immigration from neighbouring tsarist Russia. In 1910, the Jewish community had 900 members. When the Treaty of Versailles came into effect in January 1920, Memel and the Memel Territory (Klaipėdos kraštas) were separated from the German Reich. At first administered by France, the city was occupied by Lithuanian troops - after a feigned uprising by Lithuanian nationalists - on January 10, 1923. The annexation to the Republic of Lithuania was internationally recognised, and in effect the number of Jews in Klaipėda rose to 4,000 due to migration from other parts of the country. At the beginning of the 1930s, there were several synagogues in the city, a Jewish hospital and a Jewish school; a quarter of all businesses and factories was owned by Jews. The Jewish community of Klaipėda had a cemetery and mortuary in the former Wallstraße.
The rise of the National Socialists in Germany led to increased support for the German nationalist movement also in the Klaipėda Region. Under severe pressure by the government in Berlin, the Lithuanian authorities were forced to return the Klaipėda Region to the German Reich. Many Jews left the area in panic, heading mostly for Lithuania. Jewish property was devastated in Memel (Klaipėda) and the cemetery transferred to the German National Trust.
In October 1944, the authorities evacuated the all civilians due to the approaching Red Army; in early 1945, the Wehrmacht surrendered the city. Soviet troops took the city on January 19, 1945, and the Klaipėda Region was incorporated into the Lithuanian Soviet Republic; the practically empty and severely damaged city was settled anew. The new authorities destroyed the German cemeteries in the area; the Jewish cemetery of Klaipėda was levelled and a jamming station built on the site.

Klaipėda, undated, The no longer existent mortuary on the Jewish cemetery, with an inscription which reads »Beit Olam« (House of Eternity), Mažosios Lietuvos Istorijos Muziejus

Klaipėda, 1934, Jewish engineer Alfred Wittenberg (1877 Memel – 1940 Sachsenhausen concentration camp) with family in front of the city's silhouette, Ostpreußisches Landesmuseum Lüneburg

Victims

A memorial wall and a park complex on the old Jewish cemetery in Klaipėda honour the expelled, missing and murdered Jews of the German-Jewish community of Memel and commemorate the annihilation of Jewish communities in Lithuania under National Socialism; they also recall the destruction of graves and buildings by the Soviets after the end of the war.
One of the photographic icons of the Holocaust was taken in Memel: It depicts print shop owner Aron Puhn with his wife Ella and their daughters Civa and Aviva fleeing from Memel, probably on March 23, 1939. In the background are grinning SA paramilitaries. The Puhn familiy escaped to the Lithuanian city of Šiauliai and later perished there.

After World War One Lithuania gained independence from the Russian Empire. In June 1940 it was occupied by the Red Army as the result of a German-Soviet agreement – the so-called Hitler-Stalin (or Molotov-Ribbentrop) Pact. Many Catholic Lithuanians blamed the Jews as a whole for the loss of sovereignty and for the Soviet terror. Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, the Wehrmacht soon gained control of Lithuania. Just two days later German units carried out the first mass shooting of Jews during this campaign in the border region of Garsden. In the first days of the war Lithuanian nationalists killed hundreds of Jews. Subsequently, the German-Lithuanian mobile killing unit »Rollkommando Hamann« launched daily attacks on Lithuanian towns and villages. By the end of 1941 they had shot almost all of the Jews living in the countryside and in small towns. Lithuanian SS units and police battalions were also involved in killing operations, particularly in Belarus. By summer 1944, between 140,000 and 150,000 Lithuanian Jews had been murdered – almost 99 percent of the Jewish population of the country in the interwar period. There were also around 70,000 Jewish victims from Vilnius and its surroundings, which had again become part of Lithuania following the destruction of Poland in autumn 1939. After 1941, these acts of terror were also directed against mainly communist critics and other minorities. In addition, this period saw the start of deportations of forced labourers into the Third Reich. A total of around 170,000 non-Jewish Lithuanian civilians died in the process. After the Red Army had regained Lithuania in 1944, the country once again became part of the Soviet Union. Thousands of Lithuanians emigrated, whilst thousands more engaged in partisan combat against the Soviet occupation until the late 1950s (these partisans were also known as »Forest Brothers«). The Soviet secret service NKWD deported a total of around 500,000 Lithuanians to the Soviet Union. During the Soviet period, official memory in Lithuania focused above all on the heroes of the »Great Patriotic War« and on pro-Soviet Lithuanian patriots, but the murdered »peace-loving Soviet citizens and communists« were also commemorated. In 1958, a museum was opened at the former IX. Fort in Kaunas, one of the most significant mass murder sites in the country. An ensemble of monumental concrete memorials was erected on the site in 1984. In 1990-91, Lithuania fought for independence from Moscow. The associated struggle with Soviet troops cost 14 lives. Many monuments from the Soviet period were subsequently dismantled and the decades of occupation and resistance became the main feature of national memory. The Soviet annexation of Lithuania in 1940-41 and between 1944 and 1990 was placed on an equal footing with the German occupation. As in Latvia and Estonia, occupation museums were established with a focus on the years of Soviet terror. A broad discussion of Lithuanian involvement in the Holocaust did not emerge until the 1990s. In 1998, an international committee was founded to investigate crimes during the National Socialist and Soviet occupation regimes. In the decades since then, Lithuania’s memorial landscape has become much more diverse. One of the most important institutions is the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum. At the former mass shooting site Paneriai on the outskirts of Vilnius a new museum building is being planned to complement the number of memorials and monuments already there. Already since 2014, there is a new permanet exhibition in Fort IX in Kaunas, while the internet project »Holocaust Atlas of Lithuania« is providing in-depth information on the mass shooting sites all over the country.

Remembrance

Klaipėda is today the third-largest city in Lithuania. In May 1989, still under Soviet rule, a small Jewish cultural association was founded on the initiative of Jakob Rikler. When Lithuania regained its independence, the old German-Jewish cemetery came under the care of this association. The area was henceforth remodelled as a park. The association has set up its community centre in the former administrative building of the jamming station - on the site where the mortuary once stood - which it uses for prayer and other religious ceremonies. Commemorative ceremonies are held annually.
The memorial wall, which was erected in the 1990s, consists of flush-mounted German gravestones on which the inscriptions can still be read. The base of the jamming station mast with embedded grave slabs has also been preserved. On the premises, an avenue of trees has been planted for Lithuanian Righteous Among Nations who saved Jews during the Holocaust. Affixed at the entrance to the fenced-in complex is a memorial plaque with the following inscription in Lithuanian, Hebrew and English: »Located on these premises until 1939 was a Jewish cemetery.«

Memel, 1939, Print shop owner Aron Puhn and family flee from Memel, b p k

Klaipėda, 2009, The Jewish community centre. It is located on the same site on the cemetery on which the mortuary once stood, Peter Bork

Open

The cemetery is accessible at all times.

Contact

lavana@takas.lt

+37 (0)46 493 758

Žiedų skersgatvis 3
91227 Klaipėda

Klaipėda, 2001, Jakob Rikler, founder of the Jewish community in 1989 and initiator of the revitalistion of the community premises standing at the memorial wall, Stiftung Denkmal

Klaipėda, 2011, Entrance gate of the cemetery, Stiftung Denkmal

Klaipėda, 2011, Memorial wall with gravestones, Stiftung Denkmal

Klaipėda, 2011, Gravestone on the memorial wall, Stiftung Denkmal

Klaipėda, 2011, Trees planted in honour of Lithuanian »Righteous Among Nations«, Stiftung Denkmal

Klaipėda, 2011, Base of a jamming station mast, Stiftung Denkmal

Klaipėda, 2011, View of the cemetery's premises, Stiftung Denkmal

Klaipėda, 2001, Entrance to the former Jewish cemetery, Stiftung Denkmal

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