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

Pre-1940: Babtai (Yiddish: Bobt), town, Kaunas apskritis, Lithuania; 1940–1941: Kaunas uezd, Lithuanian SSR; 1941–1944: Kreis Schaken, Gebiet Kauen-Land, Generalkommissariat Litauen; post-1991: Kaunas rajonas and apskritis, Republic of Lithuania

Babtai is located about 27 kilometers (17 miles) north-northwest of Kaunas. According to the 1923 population census, there were 153 Jews living in Babtai, comprising 20 percent of the total population. Owing to the migration of Jews away from the town in the 1920s and 1930s, the number of Jews had declined by June 1941.

Advance units of German Army Group North occupied Babtai on June 24–25, 1941. Immediately after the start of the occupation, the pre-1940 Lithuanian administration and police forces were restored. Justinas Janušauskas returned as head of the rural district, and Kazys Trebunivišius was appointed chief of police. A “partisan” squad commanded by Stanislovas Aniulis was organized from former riflemen (Šaulys), which took orders from the new Lithuanian administration.

During the first days of the occupation, a number of Russian citizens accused of being active Communists or Communist sympathizers were arrested, and several of them were shot. On July 17, 1941, a further Aktion took place. A detachment of Einsatzkommando 3 arrested and shot eight people, including six Jews, whom they also accused of being Communist activists.¹

Largely on their own initiative, the new Lithuanian authorities introduced a series of anti-Jewish measures. Jews were marked with the Star of David; were impressed into different forms of forced labor; and were subjected to robbery, assault, and humiliation by the local Lithuanian partisans. Jews were also forbidden to appear in public spaces or to have any relations with non-Jewish Lithuanians. On August 7, 1941, the head of the Kaunas District issued an order calling for the resettlement of Jews into ghettos by August 15. The same order also included instructions for the establishment of small Jewish police forces (5 to 15 people) and Jewish Councils (of 12 people) to manage the internal affairs of the ghettos. On August 11, the chief of the Babtai Rural Police reported that there were 93 Jews residing in the town.² A few days later, on secret instructions from V. Reivytis, 34 adult Jews were rounded up and incarcerated in the synagogues of Babtai. A number of male Jews from the nearby town of Vendžiogala, who had been arrested by Lithuanian activists while praying, were also brought to Babtai on carts and imprisoned in the synagogues.³

Apart from the above-mentioned order for the establishment of ghettos, the available sources do not otherwise refer to the imprisonment of the Jews in the Babtai synagogues as a ghetto; and it appears that not all of the Babtai Jews were confined together there. The initial aim of the arrests may have been rather that of hostage taking, as by August 25 the Jews had paid 9,000 rubles in response to a demand for “contributions.”⁴

At the end of August 1941, local partisans and Lithuanian police from the area rounded up the Jews in Babtai and also those remaining in Vendžiogala and escorted them to a site in the Babtai Forest about 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) outside the town, near the Nevėžis River. On the morning of the Aktion, several dozen local men had been requisitioned to dig a ditch about 50 meters long, 1 meter wide, and 2 meters deep (164 by 3.3 by 6.6 feet) at the killing site. Two trucks carrying about 50 soldiers of the Lithuanian 3rd Company (1st Battalion) also arrived under the command of officers B. Norkus, [End Page 1042] J. Barzda, and A. Dagys. The Jews were made to undress down to their underwear and were forced to go to the edge of the ditch, where the soldiers shot them in the back in groups. All the soldiers of the 3rd Company who arrived took turns shooting. Some women who refused to undress were separated from the rest and tortured before being shot. After the mass shooting, local people divided the clothes and more valuable items among themselves.⁵ According to the report of Karl Jäger, 83 Jews (20 men, 41 women, and 22 children) from Babtai together with 252 Jews (42 men, 113 women, and 97 children) from Vendžiogala (in total, 335 people) were shot.⁶ Very few Jews managed to escape from the roundup and survive to the end of the occupation.

For taking part in the murder of the Jews in Babtai and in other places in Lithuania, the Soviet authorities sentenced to death eight former policemen of the 3rd Company, following their trial in Kaunas in 1962. The mass grave for the Jews of Babtai is located about 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) outside the town on the right side of the road, in the direction of Memel, on the bank of the Nevėžis River. A memorial with an inscription in Hebrew has been placed to mark the site.