LYGUMAI
[End Page 1086] Pre-1940: Lygumai (Yiddish: Ligum), village, Šiauliai apskritis, Lithuania; 1940–1941: Lygumai/Ligumai, Shauliai uezd, Lithuanian SSR; 1941–1944: Lygumai, Kreis Schaulen, Gebiet Schaulen-Land, Generalkommissariat Litauen; post-1991: Pakruojis rajonas, Šiauliai apskritis, Republic of Lithuania
Lygumai is located 22 kilometers (14 miles) east-northeast of Šiauliai. According to the 1923 census, there were 240 Jews living in Lygumai, representing 32 percent of its population. In the 1930s, the number of Jews declined to 120.
In the first days of the war, Aleksandras Keniausis, head of the local detachment of Šaulys (marksmen), organized a squad of Lithuanian partisans, which was later reorganized into an auxiliary police detachment.1 At this time a number of Jews attempted to flee Lygumai, but most were turned back at the Latvian border and forced to return home.
German troops captured the village on June 28, 1941. Immediately after its capture, Lithuanian nationalists seized power in Lygumai and soon introduced a series of anti-Jewish measures. All Jewish refugees were ordered to leave without delay. On the pretext of searching for weapons, Lithuanian activists robbed many Jewish homes. They arrested a number of Jews on a charge of collaboration with the Soviet authorities in 1940–1941 and sent them to Šiauliai, where they were killed. Several Jews were murdered in the nearby Benaraitsiu Forest.
In the second half of July, all the remaining Jews were rounded up and confined at two separate sites. The Jewish men were taken to a farm in the Juknaišiai Forest, about 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) outside Lygumai. The women and children were placed in the synagogue. These two sites served as a temporary ghetto for the Jews.
In early August, a squad of about 30 Lithuanian partisans assembled in Lygumai, where they were issued with weapons. They then went to the Juknaišiai Forest, where they escorted the Jewish men to a pit that had been prepared nearby. Under the command of four German officers from Šiauliai, the local partisans, reinforced by a squad of about a dozen men from Linkuva, carried out the shooting of the male Jews. The next day, or according to other sources, a few days later, the women and children from the synagogue were also escorted into the Juknaišiai Forest to be shot.
After each Aktion, the possessions of the victims were brought back to Lygumai on carts, and the participants congregated in the local government building to drink alcohol.2
SOURCES
This account of the fate of the Jewish community of Lygumai during the Holocaust is based mainly on two publications: Arūnas Bubnys, “The Fate of Jews in Šiauliai and the Šiauliai Region,” in Irena Guzenberg and Jevgenija Sedova, eds., The Siauliai Ghetto: Lists of Prisoners, 1942 (Vilnius: Valstybinis Vilniaus Gaono žydu muziejus, 2002), pp. 228–259, here p. 245; and Dov Levin and Yosef Rosin, eds., Pinkas ha-kehilot. Encyclopaedia of Jewish Communities: Lithuania (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1996), pp. 352–354—an English translation is available at jewishgen.org.
Documentation on the murder of the Jews of Lygumai can be found in the following archives: BA-L (ZStL, II 207 AR-Z 104/67); GARF (7021-94-436); LCVA; LYA (e.g., K 1-58-P18194-LI and K 1-58-45022/3); and YVA (M-9/15[6], Leyb Koniukhovsky Collection [O-71, file 109]).
NOTES
1. LYA, K 1-58-P18194-LI, p. 16, testimony of J. Barššiauskas, April 4, 1947, as cited by Bubnys, “The Fate of Jews,” p. 245.
2. Available sources diverge somewhat on the precise chronology of events. For example, B. Baranauskas and E. Rozauskas, eds., Masinės žudynes Lietuvoje (1941–1944): Dokumentu rinkinys, vol. 2 (Vilnius: Leidykla “Mintis,” 1973), p. 404, indicates that about 190 Jews were shot in July 1941. The testimony of Nisn Goldes (YVA, Leyb Koniukhovsky Collection, O-71, file 109) also mentions an execution by shooting in July 1941. German investigative sources, i.e., BA-L, ZStL, II 207 AR-Z 104/67, Concluding Report, April 26, 1971, p. 10, as cited by Wolfgang Curilla, Die deutsche Ordnungspolizei und der Holocaust im Baltikum und in Weissrussland 1941–1944 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2005), p. 297, reports that about 500 Jews were shot on August 1, 1941.
