JONIŠKĖLIS
[End Page 1060] Pre-1940: Joniškėlis (Yiddish: Yanishkel), town, Biržai apskritis, Lithuania; 1940–1941: Joniškėlis/Ionishkelis, Birzhai uezd, Lithuanian SSR; 1941–1944: Johanischkehl, Kreis Birsen, Gebiet Ponewesch-Land, Generalkommissariat Litauen; post-1991: Joniškėlis, Pasvalys rajonas, Panevėžys apskritis, Republic of Lithuania
Joniškėlis is located about 32 kilometers (20 miles) north-northwest of Panevėžys. According to the 1923 census, there were 162 Jews (28 percent of the population) living in the small town. By 1940, the 210 Jews of Joniškėlis represented 21 percent of the population.1
German armed forces occupied the town on June 27, 1941. Immediately, Lithuanian nationalists formed a local authority and a police force, which began introducing anti-Jewish measures. All the Jews’ valuables were confiscated; they were assigned to various types of forced labor, during which the local antisemites subjected them to humiliation, mockery, and beatings; and they were forbidden to appear in public places and maintain relationships of any kind with other Lithuanians. Lithuanian activists also killed a number of Jews. Dr. Lichtenstein, the head of the Jewish community, tried to intervene, but his best efforts could do little to stop the beatings and killings.
In July 1941, all the town’s Jews were moved into a ghetto, for which 10 houses were set aside.2 The ghetto was liquidated on August 19, 1941, when all the Jews—some 200 people—were resettled into the Pasvalys ghetto, located in the synagogue there.3 They were shot on August 26, 1941, in the nearby Žadeikiai Forest, along with the other Jews gathered in the Pasvalys ghetto.
Only three Jews of Joniškėlis are known to have survived the occupation, having received shelter from local Lithuanian peasants.
SOURCES
Information on the fate of the Jewish community of Joniškėlis during the Holocaust can be found in these publications: “Joniškėlis,” in 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. 321–323; 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. 577; and “Ionishkelis,” in Rossiiskaia Evreiskaia Entsiklopediia, vol. 5 (Moscow: Rossiikaia Akademia Estestvennykh Nauk, Nauchnyifond “Evreiskaia Entsiklopediia,” “Epos,” 2004), p. 511.
Documentation regarding the murder of the Jews of Joniškėlis can be found in the following archives: GARF (7021-94-441); LCVA; and YVA.
NOTES
1. Levin and Rosin, Pinkas ha-kehilot: Lithuania, p. 321.
2. “Joniškėlis,” in Bronstein, Yahadut Lita, vol. 4, The Holocaust 1941–1945.
3. Report of the Biržai District Commission, May 26, 1945, published in B. Baranauskas and E. Rozauskas, eds., Masinės žudynes Lietuvoje (1941–1944): Dokumentu rinkinys, vol. 2 (Vilnius: Leidykla “Mintis,” 1973), p. 116.
