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

Pre-1940: Krakės (Yiddish: Krok), town, Kėdainiai apskritis, Lithuania; 1940–1941: Krakės/Krakes, Kaunas uezd, Lithuanian SSR; 1941–1944: Krakes, Kreis Kedahnen, Gebiet Kauen-Land, Generalkommissariat Litauen; post-1991: Krakės, Kėdainiai rajonas, Kaunas apskritis, Republic of Lithuania

Krakės is located 62 kilometers (39 miles) north-northwest of Kaunas. According to census data, there were 659 Jews living in Krakės in 1923; in 1930 the Jewish population numbered 550, or 165 families. By June 1941, emigration during the 1930s had further reduced the number of Jews, most of whom lived in the center of town.

German military forces entered Krakės soon after the start of the German invasion, probably on June 23, 1941, the same day that nearby Kėdainiai was captured.¹ Before the Germans arrived, local Lithuanians, the so-called activists, seized power within the community and arrested a number of Jews and alleged Communists. Some of those taken into custody were transferred to Kėdainiai and never seen again. Initial measures taken against the Jewish population included abuse, torture, and shootings, which were carried out mainly in the Jewish cemetery. The town’s doctor, Dr. Alperovitch, was among those murdered at this time.²

Witnesses told postwar investigators that the situation calmed down somewhat once the main German forces had passed through Krakės. But in the wake of the German troops, Lithuanian activists carried out the first systematic measures against the Jews. They forced Jews to wear the yellow Star of David on their outer clothing and banned Jews from using the sidewalks. Property and valuables belonging to Jews were seized and often sold to the local population. The activists also carried out the first killings.

A few weeks after the German occupation of Krakės, probably in the first half of August, a ghetto was established in the town on a single street. A wooden fence about 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) high, topped with barbed wire, surrounded the ghetto area, and Lithuanian activists or members of the local police guarded the perimeter. The Jews suffered from overcrowding, with 10 people sharing a single room. The witnesses also remembered that some of the local Lithuanian residents aided the ghetto population, providing them with food in spite of the orders forbidding them all contact with the Jews.³ The Jewish men and some women capable of work were soon separated from the others in the ghetto and taken to a building described in some sources as a monastery situated on the edge of the town. These Jews performed a variety of work tasks on a short-term basis.⁴ Pinkas ha-kehilot indicates that in August the Jews of Dotnuva, probably around 100 people, were also sent to the monastery near Krakės, which was used as a ghetto.

The ghetto existed for approximately one month. According to an August 17, 1941, letter from the chief of the local police, A. Kuviotkus, a total of 452 Jews were residing in the Krakės ghetto at that time: 337 men and 115 women. The number of people held in the ghetto had increased considerably by the end of August 1941, as Jews from Kėdainiai, Ariogala, Baisogala, Gudžiūnai, Grinkiškis, Pociūnėliai, Dotnuva, and other nearby villages were moved into it.⁵

In the middle of August 1941, the 3rd Company of the 13th Lithuanian Self-Defense Battalion, consisting of approximately 30 armed men under the command of Juozas Bardza, arrived in Krakės. The battalion brought with it a note in German, stating that it was tasked with murdering all the Jewish inhabitants of the town. Precinct Police Chief Teodoras Kerza then selected a site for the killings in the Peštinukai Forest, 1.6 kilometers (1 mile) outside Krakės, and ordered local inhabitants to prepare large pits there about 2 or 3 meters (6.6 to 9.8 feet) wide. The members of the battalion carried out the mass shooting on September 2, 1941, assisted by six members of the local Lithuanian auxiliary police and 10 to 12 Lithuanian activists, who were also issued with weapons. The Jews were marched from the ghetto to the killing site, suffering brutal beatings from the Lithuanian guards on the way. On nearing the pits, the victims had to undress to their underwear and enter the pits, lying down on top of the bodies of the previous victims, in groups of 20 to 25. The Lithuanians then shot them from the edge of the pits. A number of Jews tried to escape, but most were shot by the guards, with only a few successfully evading their pursuers. The elderly and children were taken from the ghetto in trucks and were killed at the same spot after the Jews brought from the monastery had been shot.⁶ Only one or two accounts mention the presence of a German official at the killing site; but there is no doubt about the participation of a number of Lithuanian policemen and activists from Krakės and its vicinity.⁷

The number of Jewish victims is not mentioned specifically by eyewitnesses, but it is likely that the ghetto liquidation was the incident reported by Karl Jäger in his report dated December 1, 1941. Jäger noted that between August 28 and September 2, 1941, a total of 1,125 Jews (448 men, 476 women, and 201 children) were shot in Krakės.⁸ After the murders, the participants got drunk in celebration, having traded the clothes of the victims with local people for home brew.⁹ A primary school teacher made a speech giving thanks for the “cleansing” of the settlement of its Jewish population. The remaining valuables belonging to the local Jewish population were gathered in one house in the former ghetto and distributed among the killers or sold to locals.¹⁰

For participation in the murder of Jews in Krakės, as well as in other localities in Lithuania, eight former policemen of the 3rd Company, Lithuanian Police Battalion 13, were sentenced to death at a trial held in Kaunas between September 27 and October 4, 1962.