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

Pre-1940: Kaišiadorys (Yiddish: Koshedar), town, Trakai apskritis, Lithuania; 1940–1941: Kaišiadorys/Kaishadoris, Trakai uezd, Lithuanian SSR; 1941–1944: Koschedaren, Kreis Traken, Gebiet Wilna-Land, Generalkommissariat Litauen; post-1991: Kaišiadorys, Kaunas rajonas and apskritis, Republic of Lithuania

Kaišiadorys is located about 39 kilometers (24 miles) northwest of Troki (Trakai). According to the 1923 census, 596 Jews were residing in Kaišiadorys (31 percent of the total). The Jewish population fluctuated during the 1920s and 1930s due to emigration. By mid-1941, the number of Jews in the town had declined somewhat. Under Soviet occupation in 1940–1941, a number of Jewish businesses were nationalized and Jewish organizations dissolved.

German armed forces entered the town on June 24, 1941. Immediately following the Germans’ arrival, Lithuanian nationalists organized a local administration under the leadership of Povilas Gabe and an auxiliary police unit under Antanas Paškauskas. The new local authorities soon introduced a series of anti-Jewish measures. The Jews of Kaišiadorys were ordered to wear a Star of David on their outer clothing, and a Jewish Council (Judenrat), consisting of six members under the leadership of Aronas Jofanas, was established. The Jewish population was forced to perform a variety of labor tasks. While doing these unpleasant and arduous tasks, the Jews faced derision, humiliation, and beatings at the hands of local antisemites. In addition, Jews were forbidden to appear in public places or have any kind of direct contact with non-Jews.

During the first days of the German occupation, Lithuanian partisans murdered four local Jews. Shortly afterwards, local police auxiliaries maintained that they had “found” some machine guns and ammunition in the Bet Midrash and arrested the rabbi and the shochet (ritual slaughterer). The local police then chased the two men through the streets of the town, beating them until elderly Rabbi David-Aharon Yaffe died.¹

On August 10, 1941, all the Jews of Kaišiadorys were resettled into an improvised ghetto, which consisted of a large grain storage building near the railway station that had been built under Soviet rule. A total of 105 Jewish families (375 people) were forced to live in the ghetto. Jews were taken out of the ghetto every day for forced labor, working in the town, digging peat, or performing agricultural work for local farmers. Lithuanian auxiliaries, assigned to guard the ghetto, beat and robbed the Jewish inmates.

On August 17, 1941, additional Jews from Žasliai (263 men and 85 women) and from Žiežmariai (193 men and 89 women) were transferred to the Kaišiadorys ghetto. These individuals were primarily male Jews older than 14 and Jewish women, who were accused of having worked for the Soviet authorities in 1940–1941.² The overcrowding in the ghetto and the lack of food and medication led to the outbreak of disease among the ghetto inmates. Noting the deteriorating situation in the ghetto, the head of the Kaunas police department, Reivitis, asked SS-Obersturmführer Joachim Hamann to remove the Jews to prevent the spread of disease to the local non-Jewish community.³

On August 26, 1941, the German authorities liquidated the Kaišiadorys ghetto, killing a total of 1,911 Jews in a major Aktion.⁴ The shootings were conducted by members of Einsatzkommando 3, assisted by members of the Lithuanian auxiliary police. The killing took place in the Strošiūnai Forest about 5 kilometers (3 miles) outside the town. The German authorities subsequently shot one Lithuanian for giving shelter to a Jewish family who had evaded the mass killing.

Between 1943 and 1944, a labor camp existed in Kaišiadorys (Koschedaren), which was also a subcamp of the Kauen concentration camp. [End Page 1064]