ANYKŠČIAI
Pre-1940: Anykščiai (Yiddish: Aniksht), town, Panevėžys apskritis, Lithuania; 1940–1941: Anykščiai/Anikshchiai, Utena uezd, Lithuanian SSR; 1941–1944: Onikschten, Kreis Utena, Gebiet Ponewesch-Land, Generalkommissariat Litauen; post-1991: Anykščiai, rajonas center, Utena apskritis, Republic of Lithuania
Anykščiai is located 101 kilometers (63 miles) northeast of Kaunas in the Svėtė River Valley. The Jewish population in 1940 was about 2,000.
On the first day of the German invasion (June 22, 1941), a young Jewish girl was raped near Anykščiai and murdered by local peasants. On June 24, the Soviet forces abandoned the town, leaving it without any local authority. German forces of Army Group North captured the town on June 26, 1941. In the first days following the German invasion, numerous refugees arrived in Anykščiai from Lithuanian territories to the west. On the arrival of German forces, Lithuanian nationalist partisans rounded up a number of Jews, including many refugees, and locked them up. Over the following days, the Lithuanian partisans beat and abused them, killing dozens of Jews, alleging that they were Communists. Then the remaining imprisoned Jews were either sent to Utena or released and sent back to their hometowns.1
In these first weeks, gangs of Lithuanians also broke into Jewish houses, which had been marked with the word Jew, plundering Jewish property and raping Jewish girls. After two weeks, the Jews were forced to abandon their homes and move into the Bet Midrash and its courtyard (the Shulhof Square). The people were squeezed together in a very confined area, and soon many decided to leave town, seeking shelter with peasant acquaintances in the surrounding area. However, most were recaptured by the Lithuanian partisans and forced to return. The German authorities imposed forced labor on the Jewish men, and the Lithuanian guards beat them as they went out to work. [End Page 1040]
In mid-July 1941, the local Jews were sent to an improvised open-air camp in the forest near some summer houses for a couple of weeks. From here, local farmers collected them daily for agricultural forced labor. At the end of July, the authorities sent the Jews back to the town, together with other Jews from the surrounding villages. On July 28, 1941, the Germans and their Lithuanian collaborators selected a group consisting mainly of Jewish men and took them to the sand hill known as Hare’s Hill a short way outside the town. Some of the Jews were forced to dig a pit, while the others, including the rabbi of Anykščiai, Rabbi Kalman Yitzhak Kadeshwitz, had to do exercises to tire themselves out (reducing the chances of any resistance or escape). Then the Germans and their collaborators shot the Jewish men, throwing the bodies into the pit and burying them, including some who were only wounded.
The remaining Jews, mainly women and children, were subsequently imprisoned in an improvised and overcrowded ghetto in the town. The Jews were starving and begged the local inhabitants for food. On August 29, 1941, Lithuanian units under German authority shot the remaining 1,500 Jews of Anykščiai about 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) outside the town. Local Lithuanian nationalist activists (partisans) who participated in the mass murders also took the best houses in Anykščiai and other items of Jewish property for themselves.2
SOURCES
Information on the fate of the Jewish community of Anykščiai during the Holocaust can be found in these publications: Joe Woolf, “Anyksciai,” in The Holocaust in 21 Lithuanian Towns, available at www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/lithuania3/lit3; Dov Levin and Yosef Rosin, eds., Pinkas ha-kehilot. Encyclopaedia of Jewish Communities: Lithuania (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1996), pp. 151–155; Rabbi Ephraim Oshry, The Annihilation of Lithuania Jewry (New York: Judaica Press, 1995), pp. 181–184; and Rimantas Vanagas, Nenusigręžk nuo savęs: Gyvieji tiltai (Vilnius: Vyturys, 1995), pp. 45–52.
Documentation on the murder of the Jews of Anykščiai can be found in the following archives: GARF; LYA; USHMM (RG-50.473*0022 and *0056); and YVA.
NOTES
1. Testimony of V. Butenas, June 7, 1951, published in B. Baranauskas and E. Rozauskas, eds., Masinės žudynes Lietuvoje (1941–1944): Dokumentu rinkinys, vol. 2 (Vilnius: Leidykla “Mintis,” 1973), pp. 310–311.
2. Vanagas, Nenusigręžk nuo savęs, pp. 47–48; USHMM, RG-50.473*0022 (oral history interview with Ona Balaisiene, April 20, 1998); and RG-50.473*0056 (oral history interview with Jonas Uzdonas, August 16, 2000).
