PASVALYS
Pre-1940: Pasvalys (Yiddish: Posvol), town, Panevėžys apskritis, Lithuania; 1940–1941: Panevėžys/Panevezhis uezd, Lithuanian SSR; 1941–1944: Kreis Birsen, Gebiet Ponewesch-Land, Generalkommissariat Litauen; post-1991: rajonas center, Panevėžys apskritis, Republic of Lithuania
Pasvalys is located 32 kilometers (20 miles) north of Panevėžys. About 700 Jews lived in the town on the eve of the war.
German armed forces captured the town on June 26, 1941. Immediately after the occupation, Lithuanian nationalists formed a town administration, which actively took measures against the Jewish population. On June 27, four Jews—Sheina Kretzmer, Nehemiah Millin, Chanan For-man, and David Shapiro—were arrested and accused of being Communist activists and having collaborated with the Soviet authorities. On July 4, on this same pretext, more Jews were arrested. Some of them were put in the local prison, and some were held in Joel Farber’s granary. After a few days, the arrested Jews were transported to Šiauliai. Sometime later, a number of Jewish women were released and returned to Pasvalys.1
In mid-July 1941, the Lithuanian administration ordered all remaining Jews into a ghetto. Parts of Biržai Street and Polivan Street were cordoned off for this purpose.2 The town council provided food to the internal ghetto administration, which operated under the leadership of the town rabbi, Rav Yitzchok Agulnik. In the meantime, the Lithuanian guards subjected the inmates to repeated abuse. Conditions were so bad that Rabbi Agulnik even wrote to the head of the Šiauliai ghetto, [End Page 1103] begging him to try to influence the Germans to rescue the Jews of Pasvalys from the clutches of the Lithuanians.3
Jews from outlying villages, including Joniškėlis, Pumpėnai, Vaškiai, Krinšinas, Daujėnai, Salošiai, and Vabalninkas, were subsequently brought into the Pasvalys ghetto after the middle of August. At this time the ghetto was surrounded by barbed wire.4 The Jews from Joniškėlis were reportedly transferred on August 19. According to Sheina Sachar Gertner, a survivor from Vabalninkas, she was transferred to the Pasvalys ghetto on August 20, 1941, where she was held in very overcrowded conditions.5 Among these new arrivals were at least 40 Jews from Vabalninkas, who had converted to Catholicism. These people were interned separately from the other Jews in Pasvalys.
The ghetto in Pasvalys existed for about one and a half months. Following a meeting by the town council, it was decided to liquidate the ghetto. On August 26, 1941, the Jews were informed that they would be transferred to a camp, and the men were separated from the women and children in the town. The separate groups were then escorted to two pits prepared in the Žadeikiai Forest, 4.5 kilometers (3 miles) outside Pasvalys. The converts to Catholicism were taken along with the rest of the Jews from the ghetto. According to a Lithuanian woman bystander, some of the Jews attacked their captors with their bare hands on the way to the pits, but the Lithuanians responded brutally, killing some of them on the way and dragging the others to the killing site. According to the report of Karl Jäger, in charge of Einsatzkommando 3, on August 26, 1941, 1,349 Jews (402 men, 738 women, 209 children) were shot in Pasvalys.6
Before and during the Aktion, a number of Jews managed to escape, including Sheina Gertner, who was warned by an elderly priest the night before and fled with her husband.7 However, most of the escapees were captured and killed shortly after the mass shooting; only a handful managed to escape successfully.
Participating in the mass shooting were members of the 3rd Company, Lithuanian Auxiliary Battalion 1 (later Schutzmannschafts-Bataillon 13), which arrived from Kaunas in two trucks. A unit member, Balys Labeikis, claims that the local police and the men of his company only guarded the victims and herded them to the pits. After the Aktion, the Lithuanian participants returned to Pasvalys, where they celebrated with a large dinner, and many of them got drunk.8
Among the small number of Lithuanians in the region who risked their lives and saved Jews was a man named Baniolis. He hid three Jewish girls for three years in a stable and provided them with food.9
SOURCES
Information about the persecution and murder of the Jews in Pasvalys can be found in the following publications: B. Reinus, “Oysrot fun di yidn fun Posval un fun di derbeyike shtetlekh (Yanishkel, Vashki, Linkuva, Salat, Vabalnik),” in Mendel Sudarsky and Uriah Katzenelenbogen, eds., Lite, vol. 1 (New York: Jewish-Cultural Society, 1951), pp. 1859–1861; B. Baranauskas and E. Rozauskas, eds., Masinės žudynes Lietuvoje (1941–1944): Dokumentu rinkinys, vol. 2 (Vilnius: Leidykla “Mintis,” 1973), pp. 116–118; “Pasvalys,” in Dov Levin and Yosef Rosin, eds., Pinkas ha-kehilot. Encyclopaedia of Jewish Communities: Lithuania (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1996), pp. 466–470; Rabbi Ephraim Oshry, The Annihilation of Lithuania Jewry (New York: Judaica Press, 1995), pp. 230–232; Joseph Levinson, ed., The Shoah in Lithuania (Vilnius: Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum, 2006), pp. 112–114—translated from Shalom Bronstein, ed., Yahadut Lita: Lithuanian Jewry, vol. 4, The Holocaust 1941–1945 (Tel Aviv: Association of Former Lithuanians in Israel, 1984), p. 332.
Relevant documentation can be found in these archives: GARF; LCVA; LYA; RGVA (500-1-25); and USHMM (RG-02.002*12).
NOTES
1. Reinus, “Aysrot fun di yidn fun Posval,” pp. 1859–1861.
2. Ibid.
3. Letter of August 23, 1941, as quoted in Levinson, The Shoah in Lithuania, p. 113.
4. Report of the Birzai uezd commission, May 26, 1945, published in Baranauskas and Rozauskas, Masinės žudynes Lietuvoje (1941–1944), pp. 116–118. On August 19, 1941, around 200 Jews were sent to Pasvalys from Joniškėlis, 90 families (around 300 people) from Vaškiai, 90 Jews from Vabalninkas, 13 Jews from Salošiai, 21 Jews from Krinšinas, and 11 Jews from Daujėnai; see Barbara Armoniene et al., Leave Your Tears in Moscow (New York: J.P. Lippincott, 1961), p. 19.
5. USHMM, RG-02.002*12, pp. 1–4, testimony of Sheina Sachar Gertner, 1984.
6. Report of Einsatzkommando 3, September 10, 1941, RGVA, 500-1-25; and report of Einsatzkommando 3, December 1, 1941, p. 113. Also see B. Baranauskas and K. Ruksenas, Documents Accuse (Vilnius: Gintaras, 1970), p. 234.
7. USHMM, RG-02.002*12, pp. 1–4.
8. Alfonsas Eidintas, Jews, Lithuanians and the Holocaust (Vilnius: Versus Aureus, 2003), p. 289.
9. Reinus, “Aysrot fun di yidn fun Posval.”
