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

Pre-1940: Kupiškis (Yiddish: Kupishok), town, Panevėžys apskritis, Lithuania; 1940–1941: Kupiškis/Kupishkis, Panevėzhis uezd, Lithuanian SSR; 1941–1944: Kupischken, Gebiet Ponewesch-Land, Generalkommissariat Litauen; post-1991: Kupiškis, rajonas center, Panevėžys apskritis, Republic of Lithuania

Kupiškis is located 40 kilometers (25 miles) east-northeast of Panevėžys. In 1938, there were 1,200 Jews living in the town (42 percent of the population).

After the German invasion on June 22, 1941, approximately 40 families were able to flee into the interior of the Soviet Union. Many other Jews also escaped into neighboring villages, awaiting the end of the bombing of the town. In these villages, they were robbed and then sent back to Kupiškis.¹ Around 1,000 Jews remained in Kupiškis at the moment of occupation.

German forces captured the town on June 26, 1941. Some Jews from other places also became trapped in Kupiškis at [End Page 1080] this time. Immediately upon the town’s seizure, Lithuanian nationalists formed a local administration and police force. The head of the police was P. Graizunas, and his deputy was V. Gudialis. The occupying forces appointed Dr. Werner Loew, a recent German immigrant and a teacher in the local high school, to the position of commandant of the town,² a position he held until the start of September 1941. During the summer of 1941, Loew organized the annihilation of Communist activists and all the remaining Jews in the town.

On June 28, 1941, 78 Jews and Lithuanians were arrested and shot in a nearby forest, accused of being Communist activists and collaborating with the Soviet authorities.³ At the start of July 1941, Loew ordered all the Jews to be resettled into a ghetto, which consisted of a few dilapidated houses on Vilnius Street, near the synagogue, and in a large store house. The ghetto was fenced off with barbed wire. The overcrowding, hunger, and thirst for the Jews confined within the ghetto were unbearable.⁴

In July and August 1941, all the ghetto inmates were shot by the Lithuanian police, on Loew’s orders. The men were killed first, then the women and children, about two weeks later. The shootings were carried out at the Jewish cemetery. (There are 808 people on the list of murdered Jews. This list was compiled in 1946 by the midwife from the Jewish Maternity Hospital in Panevėžys and from several other sources. Further research is being undertaken to determine the exact origins of this list that supposedly names all those residents of Kupiškis who were killed during the summer of 1941. As there are only 808 people listed out of approximately 1,200 known residents, a number of people may have either escaped, been killed in other locations, or just been forgotten in the process of listing the names, which occurred several years after the fact.) The property of the murdered Jews was confiscated, placed in a warehouse, listed, appraised, and then distributed among the local population. Money was passed on to the town’s commandant.⁵

The shootings of the Jews were carried out by a special detachment subordinated to the commandant, which was allegedly headed by Lieutenant Antanas Gudialis (aka Gudeliavicius, who fled to Australia after the war). Also reportedly taking an active part in the shootings were Petras Bernotavišius, the adjutant of the town commandant (who migrated to the United States after the war), and Antanas Jokantas (who also escaped to Australia).

One of the first young Jews to offer resistance was I. Gershumet. Others included Ch. Yutin, H. Shoistevnia, Tzundel, and their friends. They rebelled against the Lithuanian students who aided the Nazis. They wounded two students, which only increased the hatred of Jews among the Lithuanians.⁶

A priest named Ragouskas, a teacher in the Kupiškis high school, tried in vain to save some Jews, but Loew and his followers found them. Dr. J. Franzkevich, a doctor in Kupiškis, tried to save Rabbi Pertzovsky’s wife and Mrs. Meyerovitz and her children, but they were discovered and killed about six weeks after the other women and children.⁷

Of all the Kupiškis Jews, only a small number survived the war. They consisted mainly of people who had managed to escape into the Soviet interior in time and a few who survived in the ghettos of Wilno and Kaunas.

On September 25–28, 1965, in a trial in Kupiškis, five former policemen were convicted of having taken an active part in murdering the Jews. Jonas Karalius and Stasis Grigas were each sentenced to 15 years in prison, and Kazis Šniukas, Aleksas Malinauskas, and Danelius Kriukas were sentenced to death by shooting. The German investigation of Dr. Werner Loew (born 1912) was closed due to ill health, and he died in 1990. The Australian Special Investigations Unit investigated two suspects between 1988 and 1992 regarding the murders of Jews in Kupiškis in 1941. Both cases were closed due to insufficient evidence.