ERŽVILKAS
Pre-1940: Eržvilkas (Yiddish: Erzhvilik), town, Tauragė apskritis, Lithuania; 1940–1941: Eržvilkas/Erzhvilkas, Taurage uezd, Lithuanian SSR; 1941–1944: Erschwilki, Kreis Tauroggen, Gebiet Schaulen-Land, Generalkommissariat Litauen; post-1991: [End Page 1051] Eržvilkas, Jurbarkas rajonas, Tauragė apskritis, Republic of Lithuania
Eržvilkas is located 83 kilometers (52 miles) north-northwest of Kaunas. According to the 1923 census, Eržvilkas had a Jewish community of 222. Emigration in the 1930s reduced the Jewish population, and in mid-1941 there were only around 150 Jews living in Eržvilkas.
German forces occupied the small town on June 23, 1941. Many Jews fled the town at the time of the invasion. On their return a few days later, most found that their homes had been robbed. Immediately after the capture of Eržvilkas, Lithuanian nationalists formed a local administration and a partisan detachment. The new authorities introduced a number of anti-Jewish measures. All the Jews’ valuables were confiscated. They were assigned to perform various types of forced labor, and they were subjected to humiliation and beatings by local antisemites. Jews were forbidden to appear in public places and to maintain relationships of any kind with other Lithuanians.
According to Alan Goldstein, a Jewish child survivor, shortly after the Germans arrived, all the Jews were herded initially into the synagogue and were told to pack their things. The Jews were then resettled to another street where the baths were located. Here about four houses were converted into a ghetto. Goldstein remembers the presence of the Germans in the town but recalls that it was the Lithuanian police who did all the dirty work.1
The ghetto was liquidated in mid-September 1941. The Jews were instructed to prepare for a three-day journey and were then taken out to the Griblauskis Forest, where they were shot. Goldstein’s family received a tip-off from the wife of the chief of the Lithuanian police and were able to flee into the countryside in time.2 There were 22 Jews from Eržvilkas who survived, hidden by Lithuanians.
SOURCES
Information on the fate of the Jewish community of Eržvilkas during the Holocaust can be found in these publications: Shalom Bronstein, ed., Yahadut Lita: Lithuanian Jewry, vol. 4, The Holocaust 1941–1945 (Tel Aviv: Association of Former Lithuanians in Israel, 1984); Dov Levin and Yosef Rosin, eds., Pinkas ha-kehilot. Encyclopaedia of Jewish Communities: Lithuania (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1996), pp. 157–158; 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), pp. 368–369; and Guy Miron, ed., The Yad Vashem Encyclopedia of the Ghettos during the Holocaust (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2010), p. 195.
Documentation regarding the murder of the Jews of Eržvilkas can be found in the following archives: GARF (7021-94-427); LCVA; LYA; VHF (# 44072); and YVA.
