DARSŪNIŠKIS
Pre-1940: Darsūniškis (Yiddish: Darshunishok), village, Trakai apskritis, Lithuania; 1940–1941: Darsūniškis/Darsunishkis, Trakai uezd, Lithuanian SSR; 1941–1944: Darsunischkis, Kreis Traken, Gebiet Wilna-Land, Generalkommissariat Litauen; post-1991: Darsūniškis, Kaišiadorys rajonas, Kaunas apskritis, Republic of Lithuania
Darsūniškis is located 77 kilometers (48 miles) west-southwest of Wilno. According to the 1923 census, 120 Jews were living in Darsūniškis (14.7 percent of the total population). By June 1941, as a result of out-migration in the 1930s, the Jewish population had decreased significantly.
German armed forces occupied the village on June 24, 1941. Immediately afterwards, Lithuanian nationalists formed a local administration and police force, which agitated against the Jewish population and implemented a series of anti-Jewish measures. Valuable items were confiscated from the Jews, and the Jews were prohibited from engaging in trade or other relations with non-Jews.
On August 7, 1941, the head of the Kaunas district ordered all Jews to be moved into ghettos by August 15.1 Possibly in compliance with this order, or perhaps before this, all the Jews from Darsūniškis and neighboring villages, including those of Kruonis (Yiddish: Karon) and Pakuonis (Yiddish: Pakun), were resettled into a ghetto. The Jews were required to perform forced labor and were severely beaten by the Lithuanian guards.2
On August 15, 1941, the first killings took place; dozens of Jewish men were shot in the nearby Komenduliai Forest.3 On August 28, 1941, the ghetto was liquidated. On that day, Einsatzkommando 3 shot 99 prisoners: 10 men, 69 women, and 20 children.4 The killings were carried out in the Jewish cemetery in Darsūniškis. Some of the victims were reportedly buried alive. In 1991, a monument was placed at the site of the shooting.
SOURCES
Information on the elimination of the Jews in Darsūniškis can be found in the following publications: Shalom Bronstein, ed., Yahadut Lita: Lithuanian Jewry, vol. 4, The Holocaust 1941–1945 (Tel Aviv: Association of Former Lithuanians in Israel, 1984); and “Darsuniskis,” in Dov Levin and Yosef Rosin, eds., Pinkas ha-kehilot. Encyclopaedia of Jewish Communities: Lithuania (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1996), pp. 212–214. The ghetto in Darsūniškis is also mentioned in: Shmuel Spector and Geoffrey Wigoder, eds., The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life before and during the Holocaust (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem; New York: New York University Press, 2001), p. 295; and Rossiiskaia evreiskaia entsiklopediia, vol. 4 (Moscow: Rossiiskaia akademiia estestvennykh nauk, Nauchnyi fond “Evreiskaia entsiklopediia,” “Epos,” 2000), p. 368.
NOTES
1. B. Baranauskas and E. Rozauskas, eds., Masinės žudynes Lietuvoje (1941–1944): Dokumentu rinkinys, vol. 2 (Vilnius: Leidykla “Mintis,” 1973), pp. 290–291.
2. “Darsuniskis,” in Levin and Rosin, Pinkas ha-kehilot: Lithuania, pp. 213–214.
3. Ibid.
4. RGVA, 500-1-25, report of Einsatzkommando 3, December 1, 1941.
