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

Pre-1940: Kybartai (Yiddish: Kibart), town, Vilkaviškis apskritis, Lithuania; 1940–1941: Kybartai/Kibartai, Vilkavishkis uezd, Lithuanian SSR; 1941–1944: Kibarten, Kreis Wilkowischken, Gebiet Kauen-Land, Generalkommissariat Litauen; post-1991: Kybartai, Vilkaviškis rajonas, Marijampolė apskritis, Republic of Lithuania

Kybartai is located 79 kilometers (49 miles) west-southwest of Kaunas. According to the 1923 census, there were 1,253 Jews living in the town (20 percent of the total population). In the 1930s, emigration caused a decline in the size of the Jewish population.

German armed forces captured the town on June 22, 1941, the first day of Germany’s invasion of the USSR. Consequently, the Jews were unable to evacuate, and almost all of them remained in the town at the start of the German occupation.

Immediately following the German capture of Kybartai, the Germans freed all the prisoners from the jail, including some who had been accused of resistance to Soviet rule. A few of the released prisoners, together with other Lithuanian nationalists, soon formed a town authority and a local police force. The head of the Lithuanian activists was the veterinarian Zubrickas, who had been among those imprisoned. The chief of police was a man named Vailokaitis.

Initially the German army remained in control of the town and did not take any measures against the Jews. However, soon the local Lithuanian authorities announced a series of anti-Jewish measures. Jews were forbidden to leave the town or to change their place of residence. They were dismissed from all positions working for government- and state-run business institutions. They had to hand over any weapons and radios in their possession, and they were forbidden to maintain relationships of any kind with non-Jews. A curfew was enforced for the Jews from 6:00 p.m. until 6:00 a.m., and they also were required to wear yellow patches on the front and back of their outer clothes. Murders of the Jews began, primarily of those who had cooperated with the Soviet authorities, during the 1940–1941 Soviet occupation, including members of the Komsomol, a Communist youth organization.¹

In July 1941, on the orders of the Tilsit Gestapo, members of the Grenzpolizei (Border Police) office in Eydtkau (headed by Kriminalobersekretär Tietz), along with Lithuanian police, arrested all male Jews over the age of 16 and placed them in a barn in the village of Gudkaimis, 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) north of the town. A number of Jewish women and Lithuanians accused of having collaborated with the Soviet authorities were also arrested and taken to the same barn. There they stayed for several days without food or water. The guards turned back relatives who attempted to bring them food. On July 10, 1941, the prisoners from the barn were escorted by Lithuanian policemen to a meadow, where they were forced to enlarge existing Soviet antitank ditches. The male Jews then were made to undress, and the Germans took away any valuables from them. The Lithuanian police herded the prisoners under severe blows to the ditch, where a squad of German Security Police (Sipo) shot each of them with a bullet fired into the nape of the neck. In total, 185 Jews and 15 other Lithuanians were executed. The shooting was carried out by a detachment of the Sipo and SD based in Tilsit, under the leadership of SS-Sturmbannführer Hans-Joachim Böhme, with the assistance of Lithuanian policemen. After the mass shooting, the participants ate a large dinner together, paid for from the money that had been collected from the victims.²

After the execution of all the men, the remaining Jewish women, children, and old people were placed in several redbrick buildings, formerly barracks, which became a ghetto for them. They remained in this ghetto for approximately one month, then they were moved to the Virbalis ghetto, having to leave most of their belongings behind. On September 11, 1941, the Virbalis ghetto was liquidated by shooting all of the inmates.³

On August 29, 1958, a court in Ulm, Germany, sentenced several persons, including Hans-Joachim Böhme, to various terms of imprisonment for participation in the execution of Jews in Kybartai, among other places, in July 1941. On October 12, 1961, a court in Dortmund, Germany, sentenced Gerke, another former official of the Tilsit Gestapo, to three years and six months in prison, also for participation in the Kybartai Aktion in July 1941.

After the war, several Lithuanian collaborators were convicted by Soviet courts for the murder of Jews and Communists from Kybartai. One of the last to be tried received a seven-year sentence, as it could only be proven that he had escorted the victims to their deaths.