KRAŽIAI
Pre-1940: Kražiai (Yiddish: Krozsh), town, Raseiniai apskritis, Lithuania; 1940–1941: Kražiai/Krazhai, Raseiniai uezd, Lithuanian SSR; 1941–1944: Kraziai, Kreis Raseinen, Gebiet Schaulen-Land, Generalkommissariat Litauen; post-1991: Kražiai, Kelmė rajonas, Šiauliai apskritis, Republic of Lithuania
Kražiai is located 37 kilometers (23 miles) northwest of Raseiniai. In 1923, there were 660 Jews residing in Kražiai.
German armed forces occupied the town on June 24, 1941. Right after the arrival of German troops, Lithuanian nationalists set up a local administration and organized an auxiliary police force. In Kražiai the head of the local police was named Jurevišius, and the leader of the partisan headquarters was Vytautas Sakalauskas. These new local authorities soon launched a series of measures against the Jewish population. All Jews who had fled the town and taken refuge in the nearby villages were ordered to return to Kražiai. Next, the Jews, numbering about 400, were concentrated and held in local storage buildings and in horse stables. Soon after their confinement in these facilities, Jews brought from the surrounding villages were placed with them. A short time later, all these individuals were assembled on the town’s market square. They had to surrender all the valuables they were carrying. Then the victims were escorted to the Siuksta Manor about 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) from Kražiai and locked in a large storage barn. This barn, surrounded and guarded by armed Lithuanians, became a ghetto. Those Jews who were able to work were taken from the barn-ghetto each day, guarded by Lithuanians, and forced to perform heavy manual labor.
On July 22, 1941, a small squad of about 12 German policemen, assisted by around 80 Lithuanian partisans, carried out an Aktion. They transported on trucks about 250 to 300 Jews, consisting of most of the adults over the age of 14, to the Kuprė Forest about 9 kilometers (5.6 miles) east of Kražiai on the pretext of a forced labor assignment. In the forest, the Germans and Lithuanian partisans shot the Jews into a predug trench. The Germans tried to ensure that all the Lithuanians took part in the shooting; two who refused were beaten but suffered no further punishment. Jonas Vladiška testified that with the help of Sakalauskas he was able to get his fiancée, Lėja Aronaitė, out of the ghetto.1
Following this killing, about 60 to 80 Jewish children and five adults remained alive in the barn-ghetto. About two weeks later, local Lithuanian women came to the barn to take home the children of particular Jewish friends, informing the Jews that the children’s parents had already been murdered. However, Rabbi Kramerman, who was among the remaining adults, intervened and ensured that all but two sisters were returned, as the Lithuanian women intended to convert the children to Catholicism.2 According to the account written by Antanas Jonynas, “The Hill,” some of the Jewish children in the barn suffered from dysentery, but the Jewish doctor in Kražiai, who also had been spared from the initial Aktion, was not permitted to treat them.3
Among the children in the barn was Yoseph Ben-Yaakov, who recalled that some time after the first Aktion, “[a]ll of a sudden there were guards again. Two days later security was reinforced. We were guarded by Lithuanian partisans…. I understood that something bad was about to happen.” In response Yoseph went and hid in a pile of hay in the attic of a nearby barn. After three days he emerged and sought refuge with Lithuanian acquaintances of his father.4
In the meantime, on September 2, 1941, the remaining Jewish children and adults were taken out to the Medžiokalnis Forest 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) northwest of Kražiai and were shot. Only a few of the youths managed to escape.
One of the Lithuanians who allegedly participated in the killing of the Jews, Bronius Kaminskas, went to the United States as a refugee after the war.5 A number of others were tried by the Soviet authorities.
SOURCES
Information about the persecution and murder of the Jews of Kražiai can be found in the following publications: B. Baranauskas and E. Rozauskas, eds., Masinės žudynes Lietuvoje (1941–1944): Dokumentu rinkinys, vol. 2 (Vilnius: Leidykla “Mintis,” 1973), p. 401; “Kraziai,” in Dov Levin and Yosef Rosin, eds., Pinkas ha-kehilot. Encyclopaedia of Jewish Communities: Lithuania (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1996), pp. 607–608; and Guy Miron, ed., The Yad Vashem Encyclopedia of the Ghettos during the Holocaust (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2010), p. 367.
Relevant documentation can be found in the following archives: LYA (3377-55-2, pp. 9, 22, 24, 26, 48); and MA (A.401). A short story by Antanas Jonynas, “The Hill,” was published in the Soviet Union in 1966. It is reportedly based on real events surrounding the murder of the Jews of Kražiai. An English translation of the story is located at USHMM (Acc.2006.22).
NOTES
1. LYA, 3377-55-2, pp. 9, 22, 24, 26, 48, as cited by Alfonsas Eidintas, Jews, Lithuanians and the Holocaust (Vilnius: Versus Aureus, 2003), p. 279.
2. MA, A.401, testimony of Yoseph Ben-Yaakov, as cited by Efraim Zuroff, Occupation Nazi-Hunter: The Continuing Search for Perpetrators of the Holocaust (Hoboken, NJ: KTAV Publishing House, 1994), pp. 102–103.
3. This detail is reported by Antanas Jonynas, “The Hill,” (USHMM, Acc.2006.22). According to this source, the Jewish doctor was murdered some time later.
4. MA, A.401, as cited by Zuroff, Occupation Nazi-Hunter, pp. 102–103.
5. David S. Wyman, The World Reacts to the Holocaust (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), p. 351.
