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

Pre-1939: Łyntupy (Yiddish: Lyntup), town, Wilno województwo, Poland; 1939–1941: Lyntupy, Vileika oblast’, Belorussian SSR; 1941–1944: initially Rayon Swir, Gebiet Wilejka, Generalkommissariat Weissruthenien, then from April 1, 1942, Kreis Swir, Gebiet Wilna-Land, Generalkommissariat Litauen; post-1991: Pastavy raen, Vitsebsk voblasts’, Republic of Belarus

Łyntupy is located 76 kilometers (47 miles) northeast of Wilno. In 1930, there were 70 Jewish families living in Łyntupy.

German armed forces had occupied the town by the start of July 1941. As soon as the Soviets retreated, a Lithuanian, pro-Nazi militia took over and started to persecute the Jews, killing two people.

In the summer of 1941, a German military commandant’s office (Ortskommandantur) exerted authority in the town. In September 1941, authority was transferred to a German civil administration. Łyntupy first was included in Generalkommissariat Weissruthenien (Gebiet Wilejka), and in April 1942, it became part of Generalkommissariat Litauen (Gebiet Wilna-Land).

In the summer and fall of 1941, a series of anti-Jewish measures was introduced in Łyntupy. These included marking the Jews with the Star of David, using them for forced labor, and [End Page 1087] placing a ban on their leaving the town limits. The local auxiliary police robbed and beat the Jews with impunity.

Murders of Jews, singly and in groups, took place intermittently from the start of the occupation. Soviet records indicate that in 1941, 22 Jews were shot in Łyntupy.¹ For example, Lithuanian policemen arrested Rabbi Judkovsky and his family for listening to the radio illegally in the house of the former mayor. They were then taken outside the village and shot.² In addition, several Jews were arrested and sent to Wilejka, where they were shot despite bribes paid to the head of the German Gendarmerie in Wilejka.³

At some time in the second half of 1941 or in early 1942, all the Jews of Łyntupy were moved into a small, run-down section of town, where a ghetto was established.⁴ On May 19, 1942, partisans killed two German Kreislandwirtschaftsführer (agricultural leaders) on the Święciany-Łyntupy road. In retribution, 400 “saboteurs and terrorists”⁵ were shot in Łyntupy and the surrounding villages. Soviet sources indicate that Jews may have been among those killed in reprisal, but available Jewish survivor testimony does not mention this event.⁶

According to the child survivor Irene Skibinski, at some point, in the spring or summer of 1942, the ghetto was divided in two, and part of the Jewish population was then resettled to the Święciany ghetto. A census taken by the German authorities, officially dated May 27, 1942, reported that there were 161 Jews residing in Łyntupy.⁷ This figure probably represents those that remained in Łyntupy, although it may have been taken just before this transfer.

More than 100 Jewish skilled and essential workers, such as an electrician, together with their families, remained in the town. These people were resettled into three houses in the town center, forming a small remnant ghetto or labor camp. They lived there in very crowded conditions, with four to five families sharing a room. Skibinski recalls that there was no school and a shortage of food. Her brother was able to sneak out and obtain food and medicine for her when she fell ill.⁸

Following a partisan attack on Łyntupy on the night of December 18, 1942, the remnant ghetto/labor camp was liquidated on December 22, 1942, when the 93 remaining inmates were rounded up and shot. Some were shot inside the town and the rest at the mass burial site on the town’s southern edge.⁹ During the roundup, Skibinski’s brother was shot by Lithuanian policemen, but she managed to hide in a cellar with her mother. When they emerged from hiding some time later at night, the doors of the ghetto buildings had already been boarded up. They went to the house of Catholic priest Father Pakalnis, who instructed his house keeper to hide them in the cellar until things quieted down.¹⁰

Basia Rudnicka also escaped successfully from the Łyntupy ghetto and found refuge with local people near Święciany. Some Jews from Łyntupy were active in the underground in the Święciany ghetto, where a group of Jews escaped to join the partisans in the spring of 1943.