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

Pre-1940: Ariogala (Yiddish: Eyragula or Ragala), town, Raseiniai apskritis, Lithuania; 1940–1941: Eiragola, Kaunas uezd, Lithuanian SSR; 1941–1944: Ariogala, Kreis Kedahneh, Gebiet Kauen-Land, Generalkommissariat Litauen; post-1991: Raseiniai rajonas, Kaunas apskritis, Republic of Lithuania

Ariogala is located 48 kilometers (30 miles) northwest of Kaunas. According to the census of 1923, there were 456 Jews (38 percent of the total population) living in Ariogala.¹ Emigration in the 1930s slightly reduced the Jewish population.

German armed forces occupied the town as early as June 23, 1941. Immediately after the town’s occupation, Lithuanian nationalists set up a local administration and a police force, which soon introduced a series of anti-Jewish measures. The Jews were used for various types of forced labor, during which the local antisemites subjected them to humiliations and beatings. Arrests and killing of Jews began, especially targeting those who had collaborated with the Soviet authorities in the period 1940–1941.

On July 30, 1941, a detachment of Einsatzkommando 3 shot 27 Jews and 11 Lithuanian Communists in Ariogala.² The remaining Jews were herded into a ghetto, and their property was stolen by Lithuanians. According to local witness Juozas Palšauskas, who was 18 years old in 1941, the ghetto existed for about one month. It was guarded by Lithuanian auxiliaries known as “white-stripers” for the armbands they wore. The Jews were not allowed to leave the ghetto or to have contacts with non-Jews, but Palšauskas recalls a local woman named Švelnienė, who brought food to the Jews in the ghetto.³

In about mid-August 1941, hundreds of Jews from Josvainiai also were brought into the Ariogala ghetto, escorted by Lithuanian collaborators.⁴ A few days later, all the Jewish men (more than 200) were arrested in the ghetto, along with 80 Jewish women, who were suspected of collaboration with the Soviet authority in 1940–1941 and of “communist activity.”⁵ These men and women were placed in the synagogue and were the first in line to be shot. The shooting took place on August 30, 1941, and all the remaining Jews in the town were shot along with them. German records indicate that in total 662 people were shot: 207 men, 260 women, and 195 children. The shooting was carried out by members of the 3rd Company of the 1st (13th) Lithuanian Police Battalion, assisted by members of the local Lithuanian police.⁶

Some details of the mass shooting are given by the witness Palšauskas. Before they were taken away, the Jews were told that they would be transported to Palestine. They were taken out of the town on trucks escorted by only one German and about 30 Lithuanian collaborators. However, when the trucks turned into the forest, the Jews realized their fate, and there was a great uproar. Local Lithuanians were requisitioned to dig one or two large pits to form the mass grave. At the killing site, the Jews were made to undress down to their underwear. Then men were shot first, followed by the women and children. Two of the Jews attempted to escape, but both were chased down and killed. Those who were only wounded by the initial shots were finished off by machine guns fired into the pit. After the Aktion, the local collaborators involved celebrated for the rest of the day, drinking, singing, and firing off their [End Page 1041] weapons. The property of the Jews was auctioned off the next day in Ariogala. Palšauskas says that he forbade his mother to buy any of the property, as he was still affected badly from witnessing the mass shooting.⁷

For participation in the murder of the Jews in Ariogala, as well as in other towns and villages of Lithuania (especially in Kaunas in July and October 1941), eight former policemen from the 3rd Company were sentenced to death in a trial held in Kaunas from September 27 to October 4, 1962.