PAŠVITINYS
Pre-1940: Pašvitinys (Yiddish: Pashvitin), village, Šiauliai apskritis, Lithuania; 1940–1941: Pašvitinys/Pashvitinis, Shauliai uezd, Lithuanian SSR; 1941–1944: Poswitenen, Kreis Schaulen, Gebiet Schaulen-Land, Generalkommissariat Litauen; post-1991: Pašvitinys, Pakruojis rajonas, Šiauliai apskritis, Republic of Lithuania
Pašvitinys is located 39 kilometers (24 miles) northeast of Šiauliai. According to the 1923 census, there were 274 Jews living in Pašvitinys. By June 1941, the Jewish population had declined slightly, as a result of emigration in the 1930s.
German forces captured the village on June 28, 1941. In the first days of the war, Lithuanian partisans, led by Leonas Balšiūnas, arrested up to 50 people alleged to have supported the Soviet regime, including a number of Jews. These prisoners were interrogated in Pašvitinys by the head of the local police, Povilas Pilka, and were then sent to the Šiauliai prison. [End Page 1104] Some were executed, others were subsequently deported to Germany for forced labor, and a few were released.1
In Pašvitinys the local Lithuanian authorities introduced a series of anti-Jewish measures. Jews were forbidden from having contacts with non-Jews, and their property was confiscated. Non-Jewish local inhabitants physically abused Jews. In one incident, a Jewish girl was molested, and her grandfather, who tried to protect her, was shot to death. Some Jews tried to leave the village, but on at least one occasion they were stopped by Lithuanian activists and forced to turn back.
Soon after the start of the occupation, all the Jews were rounded up and locked in an old horse stable next to the flour mill, called the “Magazine,” which served as an improvised ghetto. They remained there for approximately one month, and during this time the able-bodied Jews were sent out of the ghetto every day to perform agricultural work on neighboring farms. Those who were not physically strong and healthy were murdered, together with a group of Jews from Linkuva, along the road to Šiauliai; among the victims were the village’s last rabbi, David Nachman Dodman, and all his sons. In late August 1941, the remaining 70 or so Jews were transported in carts to the Žagarė ghetto, where they were shot on October 2, 1941, along with the other Jews gathered there.2
SOURCES
Information on the fate of the Jewish community of Pašvitinys during the Holocaust can be found in these publications: “Pašvitinys,” in Shalom Bronstein, Yahadut Lita: Lithuanian Jewry, vol. 4, The Holocaust 1941–1945 (Tel Aviv: Association of Former Lithuanians in Israel, 1984), p. 334; 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. 228–259, here p. 250; Dov Levin and Yosef Rosin, eds., Pinkas ha-kehilot. Encyclopaedia of Jewish Communities: Lithuania (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1996), p. 506; and “The Holocaust in 21 Lithuanian Towns,” compiled by Joe Woolf, available at www.jewishgen.org/Yizkor/lithuania3/lithuania3.html.
Documentation on the murder of the Jews of Pašvitinys can be found in the following archives: GARF (7021-94-436); LCVA; LYA (K 1-58-P19196LI); and YVA.
