PRIENAI
Pre-1940: Prienai (Yiddish: Pren), town, Marijampolė apskritis, Lithuania; 1940–1941: Prienai/Preny, Mariiampole uezd, Lithuanian SSR; 1941–1944: Prienai, Kreis Mariampol, Gebiet Kauen-Land, Generalkommissariat Litauen; post-1991: rajonas center, Kaunas apskritis, Republic of Lithuania
Prienai is located 31 kilometers (19 miles) south of Kaunas. According to the 1923 census, there were 954 Jews living in the town. By mid-1941, emigration, particularly in the 1920s and 1930s, had somewhat reduced the size of the Jewish population in Prienai.
German armed forces captured the town on June 24, 1941. Immediately, Lithuanian nationalists formed a local administration and a police force, which instituted a series of anti-Jewish measures. Jews had to wear Star of David patches on the front and back of their clothing, had to perform various kinds of compulsory labor, and were robbed and beaten by local antisemites. Jews were also prohibited from walking on public sidewalks and from having any relations whatsoever with non-Jewish Lithuanians. A special decree even forbade the Jews from lighting fires in their own hearths, so that they could not cook food—the sight of smoke from a Jewish chimney was enough to bring the authorities.
The Lithuanians also started killing Jews almost immediately after the Germans’ arrival. First they arrested and shot a group of Jewish intellectuals. Then they arrested another group of Jews, accusing them of collaboration with the Soviet authorities, and imprisoned them in Marijampolė, where they subsequently were killed.
On August 14, 1941, the Lithuanians established a ghetto for the town’s Jews in a few unfinished barracks nearby. By order of the police administration in Kaunas, Jewish men and women who had collaborated with the Soviet authorities, and had been arrested in nearby localities, also found themselves in the Prienai ghetto. On August 16, 1941, 63 Jewish men and 26 Jewish women from Jieznas were sent to the Prienai ghetto.1 Another 100 Jewish men and 6 Jewish women were brought there from Balbieriškis.2 Others came from Veiveriai, Stakliškes, and other nearby localities. In all, 493 Jews were resettled into the ghetto from neighboring localities.3 The population of the ghetto in Prienai, as a result, exceeded 1,000 Jews.
Conditions in the ghetto were ghastly. There was no food, water, or sanitation. The barracks were horribly overcrowded. Diseases soon began to spread.
After nearly two weeks of this torment, the Prienai ghetto was liquidated. On August 25 the Lithuanians forced men from the ghetto to dig two large pits behind the barracks. The next day, with help from a German police unit, the Lithuanians marched approximately 1,100 Jews to the pits in groups and shot them with machine guns.4 A layer of lime was spread over each group. Witnesses reported that the piles of bodies heaved from the people who were only wounded. One woman even managed to crawl out of the pit and beg for her life, but the Lithuanian partisan Juozas Maslauskas shot her.5
Only about five Jews from Prienai managed to survive the war; most of them had been able to flee deeper into the Soviet Union in time. A few Jews found refuge with Lithuanians or fled into the forests around Prienai when the Jews were collected in the ghetto. However, almost all of these people gave themselves up, were thrown out by their protectors, or were denounced after a time. Peninah Binyaminovitz-Levitan managed to survive, as she was concealed successfully with the aid of a Lithuanian priest.
SOURCES
Information about the elimination of the Jews in Prienai can be found in the following publications: B. Baranauskas and E. Rozauskas, eds., Masinės žudynes Lietuvoje (1941–1944): Dokumentu rinkinys, vol. 2 (Vilnius: Leidykla “Mintis,” 1973), pp. 86, 164, 176–177; Josef Levinson, ed., The Shoah (Holocaust) in Lithuania (Vilnius: Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum, 2006), pp. 122–123, 211; “Prienai,” in Dov Levin and Yosef Rosin, eds., Pinkas ha-kehilot. Encyclopaedia of Jewish Communities: Lithuania (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1996), p. 502; and Alfonsas Eidintas, Jews, Lithuanians and the Holocaust (Vilnius: Versus Aureus, 2003), pp. 289–290.
Relevant documentation can be found in the following archives: GARF; LCVA (e.g., 683-2-2, p. 77); LMAB (RS, f. 159, b. 46, l. 22); LYA; RGVA (500-1-25); and USHMM.
NOTES
1. Report of the chief of the police precinct in Jieznas, August 16, 1941, published in Baranauskas and Rozauskas, Masinės žudynes Lietuvoje (1941–1944), vol. 2, p. 86.
2. Ibid., p. 164.
3. Letter of the director of the police precinct in Kaunas to “Obersturmführer Mr. Hamann,” August 23, 1941, published in B. Baranauskas and K. Ruksenas, Documents Accuse (Vilnius: Gintaras, 1970), p. 216.
4. See the report of Einsatzkommando 3 from September 10, 1941, RGVA, 500-1-25, p. 106.
5. See the testimony of Marė Brasokienė to the Special State Commission, in Levinson, The Shoah, pp. 122–123.
