Remembrance of the murdered Jews of Panevėžys

Panevėžio žydų paminklai

In the Northern Lithuanian city of Panevėžys (also Ponevezh) several memorials and a small museum commemorate the formerly significant Jewish community and their murder in 1941.

History

In 1939 the Jewish Community of Panevėžys, one of the largest cities in Lithuania, had about 6,800 members and was considered the second largest in the then-independent country. The deeply traditional Jewish community administration, the »Kahal«, consisted of twelve small prayer houses and synagogues, both a high school for girls and boys, a hospital, libraries, social welfare organisations, as well as the cultural association, »Kneset Israel«.
In 1940 Lithuania was occupied by the Soviet Union. Soviet state security murdered numerous opponents of the regime in Panevėžys and deported many of its inhabitants to Siberia.
Shortly after German Wehrmacht marched into Panevėžys on 26 June 1941, the occupiers issued an order to establish a ghetto. The Jews from the town and surrounding villages had to relocate to the ghetto by 11 July 1941. The ghetto was guarded by Lithunian police on German orders. Up to 8,000 people were crammed into the small area of the ghetto.
During the next 40 days, the inhabitants of the ghetto were subsequently murdered in mass shootings, above all in the forests of Pajuostė and Žalioji giria. On July 21, 1941, with the help of Lithuanian volunteers, German units shot 103 men, among them 70 Jews, in a forest near Staniūnai (formerly Kaizerlingas). The last and largest mass shooting was carried out on August 23 or 24 1941 by the German-Lithuanian »Rollkommando Hamann« (raiding squad) of the SS, assisted by Lithuanian helpers. The Jewish Community of Panevėžys was thus extinguished.

Panevėžys, Beginning of the 20th century, Street view, Alexandre Przopiorski

Pajuostė, 1941, Members of Lithuanian militia force Jewish women to undress before they are shot, USHMM

Victims

German and Lithuanian units murdered close to 13,500 Jews from the region around Panevėžys between June 1941 and 1944, for the most part in mass shootings. Approximately 8,000 of them were from the the Panevėžys ghetto. On 23 or 24 August 1941 alone 7,523 Jews perished according to SS accounts.

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

Today, the Jewish community of Panevėžys has about forty members. For many years they have been collecting materials on the regional Jewish history and the extermination of Lithuanian Jews in the Holocaust. The collected objects and documents have been displayed in a small permanent exhibition since November 2004. There is also a library and an archive. These institutions are located in the restored historic building which once housed the Jewish girls' high school of Panevėžys.
Today there are only a few traces of Jewish life left in Panevėžys. Some former synagogues are still standing but have been serving different functions for decades. The municipal bus station for instance is also a former synagogue. The Jewish cemetery survived the war, only to be destroyed under Soviet rule in 1966. Since 2009 the park on its former premises is also a memorial. The sculpture in its centre is called »Mourning Jewish Mother« and was created by the artist Vytautas Tallat-Kelpša. The wall behind the statue consists partly of stones originating from the old Jewish cemetery that had been used in construction works after its destruction.
Already in 1993, a memorial was erected on the site of the former ghetto. The memorial symbolized the entrance to the former ghetto. The outline of the ghetto is engraved in the granite stone. The Yiddish and Lithuanian inscription reads: »Here existed a Jewish ghetto from 7 July 1941 until 17 August 1941.« The sculpture was created by the artist V. Zigas.
One of the most important Jewish institutions before the war was the »Ponevezh Yeshiva«, one of the best known talmudical academies of ultra-orthodox Judaism. There is a memorial plaque on its former building. The Yeshiva itself was founded anew in Israel in 1944.
On the sites of the mass shootings in the Pajuostė und Žalioji giria forests memorials were unveiled already shortly after the war to commemorate the murdered Jews. At the site of the first mass shooting in the Staniūnai (Kaizerlingas) forest, a memorial site was opened in 1979 consisting of traditional Lithuanian wooden sculptures. It was complemented in 1984 when another sculpture was added to mark the entrance.

Panevėžys, 2004, Monument at »Gate to the Panevėžys Jewish Ghetto«, Stiftung Denkmal, Nerijus Grigas

Panevėžys, 2016, Memorial »Mourning Jewish Mother«, Panevėžio apskrities Gabrielės Petkevičaitės-Bitės viešoji Biblioteka, Asta Rimkūnienė

Open

The monuments are accessible at all times.
»Ghetto Gates«-Memorial : corner of Klaipėdos/Krekenavos gatvė
Memorial »Mourning Jewish Mother«: Park Atminimo skveras

Contact

http://www.jewishpanevezys.lt

genavta@ahoo.com

+370 611 20882

Ramygalos g. 18
36236 Panevėžys

Panevėzys, 2004,The former »Ponevezh Yeshiva,« Stiftung Denkmal, Nerijus Grigas

Panevėzys, 2004, Memorial plaque on the former »Ponevezh Yeshiva«, Stiftung Denkmal, Nerijus Grigas

Žalioji giria, 2008, The memorial at the site of mass shootings, Genadiy Kofman

Panevėžys, 2004, Museum of the Jewish Community of Panevėžys, Stiftung Denkmal, Nerijus Grigas

Panevėžys, 2004, Gable of the Museum in the former girls' high school »Javneh«, Stiftung Denkmal, Nerijus Grigas

Panevėžys, 2004, Bus station - a former synagogue, Stiftung Denkmal, Nerijus Grigas

Panevėžys, 2016, Memorial »Mourning Jewish Mother« at the former site of the jewish cemetery, Panevėžio apskrities Gabrielės Petkevičaitės-Bitės viešoji Biblioteka, Asta Rimkūnienė

Pajuostė, 2003, The memorial at the site of shootings, Genadiy Kofman

Pajuostė, 1946, Shortly after the dedication of the memorial stone, survivors honour the memory of the victims, Panevėžio žydų bendruomenė

Forest near Staniūnai (Kaizerlingas), 2018, Since 1979 wooden sculptures commemorate the victims of the mass shooting of July 21, 1941, Panevėžio apskrities Gabrielės Petkevičaitės-Bitės viešoji Biblioteka, A. Veličkienė

Forest near Staniūnai (Kaizerlingas), 2018, A wooden sculpture added to the complex at its entrance in 1984, Panevėžio apskrities Gabrielės Petkevičaitės-Bitės viešoji Biblioteka, A. Veličkienė

Panevėžys, 2004, Building which was a synagogue until 1940, Stiftung Denkmal, Nerijus Grigas

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