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

Pre-1940: Jurbarkas (Yiddish: Yurburg), town, Raseiniai apskritis, Lithuania; 1940–1941: Jurbarkas/Iurbarkus, Raseiniai uezd, Lithuanian SSR; 1941–1944: Georgenburg, Kreis Raseinen, Gebiet Schaulen-Land, Generalkommissariat Litauen; post-1991: Jurbarkas, rajonas center, Tauragė apskritis, Republic of Lithuania

Jurbarkas is located 72 kilometers (45 miles) west-northwest of Kaunas and 120 kilometers (75 miles) west of Wilno. A census conducted in 1940 recorded a population of 4,439, of whom 1,319 (29.7 percent) were Jews, although other sources put the number of Jews at about 2,000 or more.¹

Following the annexation of Lithuania by the Soviet Union in 1940, all large companies and banks were taken over by the state, and Jewish cultural and political organizations were banned. In mid-June 1941, the Soviets deported at least 60 people from Jurbarkas, including several Jewish families (almost half of those deported).²

In 1941, the town was only 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the border with Germany. On the morning of the German invasion of Lithuania, June 22, the German army marched into the town. A local government was established immediately. The German military commandant (Ortskommandant), Hauptmann Baar, announced that the mayor had to obey his orders and that acts of sabotage and plundering would be punishable [End Page 1062] by death. Officials who had served in the interwar Lithuanian Republic returned to their previous posts. Jurgis Gepneris again became mayor, and Mykolas Levickas became chief of police, serving until the middle of July, when he resigned to direct the local branch of the Lithuanian Nationalist Party. Levickas organized a regular police force, but an auxiliary police company (Lithuanian partisans) was also established for self-defense purposes.³

Jurbarkas lay within the border region of Lithuania assigned to the Tilsit Gestapo. Among those agents of the German SD who operated in Jurbarkas were Grigalavicius, Voldemaras Kriauza, Richardas Sperbergas, Oskaras Sefleris, and Karstenis.⁴ The Germans organized the massacres of the Jews, but the direct responsibility of the local Lithuanian perpetrators is not in doubt. German SS men began killing individual Jews during the first days of the occupation.

The first massacre of Jews occurred on July 3, when a group of about 40 men from the Security Police in Tilsit arrived in town and, together with local Lithuanian policemen, began to round up Jewish men from their houses and workplaces on the basis of lists prepared beforehand. A column of more than 300 people was assembled, including about 70 Lithuanians believed to have supported the Soviets. They were escorted to the Jewish cemetery, shot, and buried.⁵

After the July 3 Aktion, Kriminalsekretär Carsten of the Gestapo in Tilsit put the policeman Urbonas in charge of guarding the surviving Jews: the families of the men who had been shot and about 50 male Jews who had been kept alive as workers and their families. From the second day of the occupation, Jews had been compelled to perform various work tasks. For example, Jewish women had to sew and repair German uniforms.⁶

According to eyewitnesses, the second series of mass killings took place at the end of July and the beginning of August. First, 45 men over the age of 50 were shot along with other Jews from neighboring places. At this time the Jews in Jurbarkas were also ordered to tear down the historic wooden synagogue, and Jewish books and pictures were burned, as well as a bust of Stalin. The Jews also were ordered to dance and sing while Germans photographed the spectacle.⁷ Then, on August 1, 105 older women and children were marched in the direction of Smalininkai, where they were shot and buried in pits.⁸

In mid-August 1941, the Gebietskommissar in Šiauliai ordered the establishment of Jewish ghettos in the larger towns of the district, but in Jurbarkas such “ghettos” existed well before this order was given.⁹ In Jurbarkas, the term ghetto was used to mean a few buildings where Jews were held under guard. According to postwar testimony by Levickas (chief of the police), “after the first shootings in June, mass arrests were carried out by a group of the police and the auxiliary police. The arrested Jewish men were transferred into the ghetto…. I think that there were two ghettos, both in Dariaus and Gireno Streets, being guarded by police and auxiliary police.”¹⁰

Further testimony from a member of the Jurbarkas police states:

The Jews with their children and the el derly were placed in the ghetto, which was a building surrounded by barbed wire…. There the Jews lived under prison conditions. The diet was poor, consisting of cabbage soup and a little bread. They were driven to work under guard and had to clean rubbish from the houses and the streets and do other disgusting and difficult work, with food being scarce.¹¹

On August 21, there were still 684 Jews in the Jurbarkas ghetto, of whom 64 were engaged in forced labor.¹² From September 4 to 6, those Jews deemed unfit for work, about 400 women and children, were driven into the yard of the “Talmud-Torah,” which served as the women’s ghetto. They were then escorted to pits near Kalnėnai and murdered in cruel circumstances by Lithuanian police under German direction. On September 12, only 272 Jews were still alive in Jurbarkas, including 73 who were working.¹³ These Jews were murdered shortly afterwards by a small killing squad from Kaunas, again assisted by the local police.¹⁴

In a letter dated October 6, the mayor informed the Lithuanian Office of Statistics in Kaunas that “on October 1 of this year there were no more Jews within the borders of the town of Jurbarkas, and such is the situation today.”¹⁵ Local Lithuanians profited from the murder of their neighbors. In Jurbarkas, 208 houses had lost their owners and inhabitants.¹⁶ The names of 76 survivors from Jurbarkas have been documented.