NOWE ŚWIĘCIANY
Pre-1939: Nowe Święciany (Yiddish: Nei-Sventzion), town, Wilno województwo, Poland; 1939–1940: Švenčionėliai, Švenčionys apskritis, Lithuania; 1940–1941: Švenčionėliai/Novo-Sventsiany, Sventsiany uezd, Lithuanian SSR; 1941–1944: Nowe Schwentschionys, Kreis Schwentschionys, Gebiet Wilna-Land, Generalkommissariat Litauen; post-1991: Švenčionėliai, Švenčionys rajonas, Vilnius apskritis, Republic of Lithuania
Nowe Święciany is located about 76 kilometers (47 miles) north-northeast of Wilno. According to unofficial data from July 1940, there were 966 Jews living in the town, comprising 20 percent of the total population.
Following the German invasion of Lithuania, nationalist riflemen (Šaulys) and (Lithuanian) Red Army deserters soon joined forces around Nowe Święciany to form a Lithuanian partisan unit of about 60 men, led by Jonas Kurpis. This force attacked retreating units of the Red Army, and some fleeing Jews were killed in the cross fire.1 The Lithuanian activists then began to arrest Jews and alleged Communists in Nowe Święciany, shooting a number of them in early July, after the arrival of German forces. Among the Jews murdered were Portnoj (mill owner), Epstein (turpentine factory owner), Gavenda (tradesman), and Dr. Kopelovitch (physician).
Bronius Gruzdys was appointed head of the local police in Nowe Święciany. In July the Jews suffered from looting and abuse at the hands of the Lithuanians. A Jewish Council (Judenrat) was established to organize forced labor detachments. Among the Jews involved on the council were the merchants Berl Guterman, Yeshayohu Katz, and Osher Butshunsky. They assisted the rabbi, who was in charge of setting up the council.2
On July 22, 1941, Lithuanian activists arrested and registered 50 Jewish men. These men were then taken to be killed in groups. When the final group arrived at the killing site and saw the graves, some of the Jewish men fled in different directions, and a few, including Fayve Khayet, managed to escape unscathed. Among the victims were also some Jewish refugees who had fled from other towns in Poland in the fall of 1939.3
At the end of July 1941 (or in mid-August, according to Khayet), all the town’s Jews were moved into a separate quarter (open ghetto) on Kaltanėnų Street. The Jews continued, however, to trade with local non-Jews illegally, despite the strict local regulations limiting their access to markets and stores. The Jews in the ghetto became increasingly resigned and desperate. However, rumors circulating about the murder of entire Jewish communities elsewhere in Lithuania encountered considerable skepticism.4
On September 26, 1941, the local police and former Lithuanian partisans surrounded the ghetto, and on the next day they transferred all the Jews (about 300 to 400 people) to an overcrowded barracks at the military camp (firing range), also known as the Poligon transit camp, located 1.6 kilometers (1 mile) outside the town.
The Jews were held in the Poligon camp for more than a week under atrocious conditions, together with thousands of Jews brought there from other towns in the region, including Ignalino and Podbrodzie. On October 6, the men were separated from the women, and on October 7 Fayve Khayet managed to escape, making his way to the enclosed ghetto in the nearby larger town of Święciany.5 In the meantime, the German Security Police had informed the mayor of Nowe Święciany, Karolis Cicėnas, and the police chief, Gruzdys, that all the Jews were going to be shot, and these officials organized the preparation of large ditches in the vicinity. Then on October 7–8, 1941, the Jews of Nowe Święciany were shot, along with several thousand other Jews from towns in the region, including from Święciany, where a number of craftsmen were selected out and kept alive in a remnant ghetto. The Jews were taken out of the barracks in groups of 50 and transported by truck to the killing site. The Aktion was organized by the German Security Police and implemented by the men of the Ypatingas Burys Lithuanian killing squad commanded by Juozas Šidlauskas, assisted by 120 local Lithuanian policemen and former partisans. According to the report of Karl Jäger, the commander of Einsatzkommando 3, the 3,726 Jewish victims included 1,169 men, 1,840 women, and 717 children.6 Other sources, however, indicate that as many as 6,000 to 8,000 people may have been killed at the site.7
SOURCES
Much of the information for this entry comes from 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. 83–118, here pp. 94–95; and Christoph Dieckmann, “Deutsche Besatzungspolitik in Litauen 1941–1944” (Ph.D. diss., Universität Freiburg, 2002), section F.1.2.6.
Documentation regarding the murder of the Jews of Nowe Święciany can be found in the following archives: LCVA (R 1548-1-1); LYA (K 1-58-P19224); and YVA (O-71/169.1).
NOTES
1. YVA, O-71/169.1, testimony of Fayve Khayet, recorded by L. Koniukhovsky, April 1948, p. 123.
2. Ibid., p. 126.
3. Ibid., p. 129. This source lists the names of 23 of the victims.
4. Ibid., pp. 132–133; for the restrictions on Jews visiting markets and shops, see LCVA, R 1548-1-1, p. 309, Order no. 25, issued by the Head of Kreis Schwentschionys, August 25, 1941.
5. YVA, O-71/169.1, p. 134.
6. Report of Einsatzkommando 3, December 1, 1941, RGVA, 500-1-25, p. 114. This report gives October 9, 1941, as the date of the killing, but other sources indicate it occurred on October 7–8, 1941.
7. Shimon Kanc, ed., Sefer zikaron le-esrim ve-shalosh kehilot she-nehrevu be-ezor Svintsian (Tel Aviv: Former Residents of Svintzian in Israel and the U.S., 1965), p. 1376, gives the figure of 8,000 victims at the Poligon camp. Dieckmann, “Deutsche Besatzungspolitik,” uses the phrase “at least 5,000.”
