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

Pre-1940: Panevėžys (Yiddish: Ponevezsh), city and apskritis center, Lithuania; 1940–1941: Panevėžys/Panevezhis, uezd center, Lithuanian SSR; 1941–1944: Ponewesch, Kreis and Gebiet center, Generalkommissariat Litauen; post-1991: Panevėžys, rajonas and apskritis center, Republic of Lithuania

Panevėžys is located 97 kilometers (60 miles) north-northeast of Kaunas. In 1923, there were 19,147 people living in Panevėžys, among them 6,845 Jews (36 percent). The town’s population had risen to 26,000 (among them more than 7,000 Jews) by 1939. Under Soviet rule between June 1940 and June 1941, a number of Jewish businesses were expropriated, and at least 27 Jews were exiled into the Soviet interior.

German armed forces captured the city on June 26, 1941, but attacks on local Jews likely began two days earlier. The Lithuanian activists who took the initiative in the persecution of the Jews included the gymnasium director Elisonas, his inspector Kasparavišius, the assistant prosecutor Grigaitis, the district court secretary Jasaitis, and others under the leadership of Lieutenant Ižiūnas. Immediately after the occupation, Lithuanian nationalists formed a city administration and police force, which introduced a number of anti-Jewish measures. Jews were ordered to wear Stars of David on their clothing and forced into various kinds of heavy labor. At the same time, the Jewish population was required to register, and non-Jews were strictly forbidden to sell them food. The Jews were also subjected to humiliation, degradation, and assaults by local antisemites. A rumor spread in the town that a Lithuanian physician had been murdered by Jews, and this served as the pretext for attacks on the local Jewish population. Groups of young Jewish men were marched out of the city and ordered to dig peat. These men never returned to Panevėžys.¹

Jews were ordered to settle into a ghetto before the night of July 11, 1941. The ghetto area incorporated three streets—Klaipėda, Krekenava, and Tulvišius (J. Tilvytis)—and the city’s slaughterhouse. The ghetto borders were closed on July 17, 1941, at 6:00 p.m. It was surrounded with barbed wire and guarded by armed Lithuanian policemen. Non-Jews who moved out of the ghetto area were given Jewish houses outside the ghetto in exchange. The Jews Avraham Riklys and Moshe Levit were appointed to administer the ghetto. To discourage escape attempts, 70 Jews were taken hostage and imprisoned.² At the end of July, the ghetto contained 4,457 Jews, of whom 1,250 were still without any accommodation.³ The overcrowding, filth, and terrible shortage of all items necessary for living led within a few weeks to the outbreak of disease. The Jewish doctors had no medicine or other materials to cope with it. Dr. T. Gutman received permission to open a small hospital, but under these conditions, there was little that could be done for the sick.

Jews from the ghetto were taken for forced labor, for example, digging pits for rubbish or carrying heavy barrels at the local railway station, during which they were severely beaten and humiliated by the Lithuanian overseers. On one occasion a group of Jews was reportedly forced into a scalding [End Page 1102] lime pit, causing severe wounds, before most of the men were shot.⁴ Up to the middle of August, Einsatzkommando 3 and the Lithuanian police carried out four large Aktions in Panevėžys, on July 21 and 28 and on August 4 and 11, in which they shot more than 1,220 Jews. Apart from 115 women, all of these victims were Jewish men.⁵

The ghetto in the city existed for about six weeks before it was liquidated. In mid-August 1941, a German Gestapo official informed the Jews that they would be moved to a former military barracks at Pajuostė, about 5 kilometers (3 miles) from Panevėžys, which would serve as a labor camp with better conditions than in the overcrowded ghetto. The ghetto residents, however, suspected that this was a trap, intended to lure them to their deaths, and had to be forced to leave the ghetto.⁶ A few days later, the majority of the Jews were marched under armed guard to Pajuostė. The elderly, the sick, and small children were transported on peasant carts. After arriving there, the Jews were taken in groups of 200 and shot in a nearby forest by men from Einsatzkommando 3, with the help of the Lithuanian police. The last to be shot were the elderly and infirm, accompanied by Dr. Gutman. Some people, including small children, were only wounded and were buried alive. The pits were filled in by Soviet prisoners of war (POWs), who discovered one Jewish child who was still alive. While they tried to conceal the child, the Lithuanian policemen soon discovered and shot the child. The next day, participants in the murder rummaged through the piles of clothes and shoes at the pits, taking any items they fancied.

According to the Jäger report, on August 23, 1941, 7,523 Jews (1,312 men, 4,602 women, and 1,609 children) were shot in Panevėžys.⁷ These numbers may include Jews from nearby villages, including Raguva, Ramygala, and Krekenava, who were also brought to Pajuostė on carts with their property and were murdered there in the second half of August.