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

Pre-1940: Merkinė (Yiddish: Meretsh), town, Alytus apskritis, Lithuania; 1940–1941: Merkinė/Merkine, Olita uezd, Lithuanian SSR; 1941–1944: Merken, Kreis Kauen, Gebiet Kauen-Land, Generalkommissariat Litauen; post-1991: Merkinė, Varėna rajonas, Alytus apskritis, Republic of Lithuania

Merkinė is located 84 kilometers (52 miles) south-southeast of Kaunas. According to the 1923 census, there were 1,430 Jews living in the town. By June 1941, the population had decreased, [End Page 1091] owing to the out-migration of Jews, and stood at fewer than 1,000 people (350 families).

German forces captured the town on June 22, 1941. Merkinė endured severe bombardment, and many Jewish homes were destroyed. A few local Jews attempted to escape, but they were soon forced to return to Merkinė.¹

Immediately after the seizure of the town, Lithuanian nationalists, led by Matuleitis, the head of the local detachment of Šaulys (marksmen), formed a town administration and a police force, which soon implemented a series of anti-Jewish measures. Jews were marked with Stars of David, ordered into compulsory labor, and subjected to robbery and assault (including rape) by local antisemites. On June 24, 1941, the first group of Jews was murdered. On the grounds of the Jewish cemetery, Lithuanian partisans shot several Jews whom they accused of being Communists and having collaborated with the Soviet authorities.

According to the account in Rabbi Ephraim Oshry’s The Annihilation of Lithuania Jewry, in early July, the German commandant in Merkinė took 50 Jews hostage in an attempt to force the return of Rav Shtoppel, the town’s rabbi, who had gone into hiding. As no one was willing to betray the rabbi’s whereabouts, the commandant then threatened to kill all the Jews. When word of this reached the rabbi, he surrendered voluntarily. He was then forced to dance and sing before being brutally killed.² Other Jews were taken to the Niemen River and drowned there.

In the first half of July 1941, all the Jews in the town were ordered to resettle into a ghetto. The area around the synagogue, the Bet Midrash, and its courtyard was designated for the ghetto. The men resided in the Bet Midrash, separated from the women and children. The ghetto was surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by armed Lithuanian police. A Judenrat with a few members was formed to oversee internal ghetto affairs. Local Lithuanians were permitted to requisition Jews for work. Some selected Jews against whom they had a grudge to take their revenge. From the ghetto, several groups of Jewish men were taken away in the direction of Alytus, then shot.

The Merkinė ghetto remained in existence for about two months. At the end of August, the Jews were made to prepare long trenches in the Jewish cemetery, which allegedly were needed for military purposes. Then a few days later, armed Lithuanians surrounded the ghetto and guarded it closely during the night to prevent anyone from escaping. The next morning, the Jews were driven out of the ghetto to the Jewish cemetery, leaving all their possessions behind.³

According to German documentation, the Germans and their collaborators shot the Jews from the Merkinė ghetto on September 10, 1941. A detachment of Einsatzkommando 3, assisted by Lithuanian policemen, shot 854 Jews (223 men, 355 women, and 276 children) in the Jewish cemetery.⁴ A few Jewish girls who managed to escape at the time of the roundup were subsequently captured and killed.