The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945

Pre-1940: Alsėdžiai (Yiddish: Alshad), town, Telšiai apskritis, Lithuania; 1940–1941: Alsėdžiai/Ol’siadi, Tel’shiai uezd, Lithuanian SSR; 1941–1944: Alsedziai, Kreis Telsche, Gebiet Schaulen-Land, Generalkommissariat Litauen; post-1991: Alsėdžiai, Plungė rajonas, Telšiai apskritis, Republic of Lithuania

Alsėdžiai is located 13 kilometers (8 miles) west-northwest of Telšiai. According to the 1923 census, there were 199 Jews (19 percent of all inhabitants) living in the town. By June 1941, emigration had slightly decreased the number of Jews in Alsėdžiai.

German armed forces occupied the town on June 25, 1941. Immediately thereafter, Lithuanian nationalists formed a local administration and a police force, which soon introduced a series of anti-Jewish measures. For example, all Jews were registered; their valuables were confiscated; and they were forbidden to appear in public places or to associate in any way with non-Jewish Lithuanians. According to Jewish survivor Feiga Fish-kin, within only a couple of days of the Germans’ arrival, they told all the Jews to evacuate their houses and move into a ghetto, which consisted of just one street. Around 50 families lived together on this one street, with 3 or 4 families forced to share a house.¹

Pinkas ha-kehilot reports the establishment of a temporary ghetto on July 5, 1941, when all the Jews were forced to move into the synagogue, the bathhouse, and two other houses. There was a roll call every morning at which the male Jews were subjected to humiliation and beatings by local antisemites. After the roll call, the Jewish men were assigned to various types of forced labor, such as weeding parks and cleaning latrines.

After only a few days in the ghetto, the Jews of Alsėdžiai were moved to the Viešvenai and Rainiai camps near Telšiai. Jews from other towns and villages of the Telšiai district were also placed in these camps. On July 15 and 16, 1941, all the Jewish men from these camps were taken out to be shot, while the women and children were transferred to the Geruliai camp. In late August 1941, about 400 young women were selected in the camp and moved to the Telšiai ghetto; Lithuanian police shot all the remaining women and children.

On December 24, 1941, 30 women and children from the Telšiai ghetto were shot at the home of the priest Dumbrauskas in Alsėdžiai as a symbolic reprisal against him, as in late June or early July of 1941 he had intervened to prevent the murder of the town’s Jews. Dumbrauskas also helped to save the Torah scrolls from the Bet Midrash and subsequently returned [End Page 1038] them to the family of Reb Yosef Ber Factor, the ritual slaughterer of Alsėdžiai, who managed to survive the German occupation by hiding with a Lithuanian farmer.