RIETAVAS
Pre-1940: Rietavas (Yiddish: Riteve), town, Telšiai apskritis, Lithuania; 1940–1941: Rietavas/Retavas, Tel’shiai uezd, Lithuanian SSR; 1941–1944: Rietavas, Kreis Telsche, Gebiet Schaulen-Land, Generalkommissariat Litauen; post-1991: Plungė rajonas, Telšiai apskritis, Republic of Lithuania
Rietavas is located 34 kilometers (21 miles) southwest of Telšiai. According to the 1923 census, there were 868 Jews living in Rietavas. Emigration during the 1930s had probably reduced the number of Jews by June 1941.
On June 24, 1941, German armed forces captured the town. The night before their arrival, some Jews fled from Rietavas to neighboring villages. According to one account, local Lithuanians started to plunder Jewish property even before the Germans arrived.1 At this time, a number of homes, including Jewish residences, were destroyed either by the retreating Red Army or by German bombardments.
Immediately after the German takeover, Lithuanian nationalists formed a local administration and a police force, which introduced anti-Jewish measures. Jews were ordered to return to the town. Lithuanians were forbidden to hide Jews. All Jews were registered and ordered to turn over their valuable possessions. Jews were forbidden to use the town’s sidewalks; they were subjected to beatings, hard labor, and starvation at the hands of local antisemites. One of the first victims was Rabbi Shmuel Fundiler, who had half of his beard cut off. He was forced to burn holy books and then was harnessed to a wagon loaded with garbage before the Lithuanians shot him. At least six other Jews were also shot and killed, accused of having collaborated with the Soviet authorities. Among those allegedly participating in these murders were the brothers Kazys and Stasys Rimayke.2
On June 27, 1941, all the Jews in the town were arrested and resettled to the nearby Prince Oginski’s estate, which became a temporary ghetto or camp. Jews lived for three days in this ghetto without food or water. On the fourth day, they were given sugar and salted fish. The starving people devoured this food like animals. Some stuffed whatever they could get into [End Page 1110] dirty jars they had found in trash heaps. As a result, many developed diarrhea. Jews in the ghetto/camp were also compelled to perform physical exercises, despite their poor physical condition. From the ghetto/camp, five Jewish girls were sent back to Rietavas, where they had to clean out the Bet Midrash and burn the holy books kept there.3
On around July 10, 1941, the ghetto on the Oginski estate was liquidated.4 The Jews were sent to the Viešvenai camp, near Telšiai, where Jews from several other towns and villages also were concentrated. A few Jewish men from Rietavas were taken instead to the Heydekrug labor camp.5 On July 16, 1941, the remaining Jewish men were taken out of the Viešvenai camp, and after being forced to perform exercises and beaten, they were all shot. The women and children were taken one week later to the Geruliai camp. At the end of August 1941, around 400 young women were released from the Geruliai camp and were brought to the Telšiai ghetto. The remaining women and children at Geruliai were shot by Lithuanian policemen. Most of the 400 Jewish women relocated to the Telšiai ghetto were shot at the end of December 1941.
Two Jewish women and a Jewish girl from Rietavas are known to have escaped from the mass shooting Aktions. A mother and her daughter subsequently made their way to the Šiauliai ghetto. The other woman, Haya Movshovich, had fallen into the ditch unwounded and then fled naked to an elderly local peasant, who vowed to protect her despite German rewards for the betrayal of Jews. She survived the war.6
SOURCES
Information on the fate of the Jewish community of Rietavas during the Holocaust can be found in these publications: Alter Levite, ed., Sefer Ritova; gal-ed le-zekher ayaratenu (Ritova Societies in Israel and the Diaspora, 1977)—an English-language version is also available, Ritavas Community: A Yizkor Book to Riteve—A Jewish Shtetl in Lithuania (Cape Town: Kaplan-Kushlick Foundation, 2000), which includes a useful additional essay by Roni Stauber, “The Destruction of the Riteve Community,” pp. 149–152; “Rietavas,” in Shalom Bronstein, ed., Yahadut Lita: Lithuanian Jewry, vol. 4, The Holocaust 1941–1945 (Tel Aviv: Association of Former Lithuanians in Israel, 1984), p. 359; Rabbi Ephraim Oshry, The Annihilation of Lithuania Jewry (New York: Judaica Press, 1995), pp. 238–241; and “Rietavas,” in Dov Levin and Yosef Rosin, eds., Pinkas ha-kehilot. Encyclopaedia of Jewish Communities: Lithuania (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1996), pp. 636–639.
Documentation on the murder of the Jews of Rietavas can be found in the following archives: GARF (7021-94-430); LCVA; LYA; and YVA (e.g., M-1/Q/1322/136).
NOTES
1. YVA, M-1/Q/1322/136, testimony of Shaul Shenker, as cited by Stauber, “The Destruction,” p. 150.
2. Shaul Shenker, “Riteve,” in Levite, Ritavas Community, p. 157.
3. Zlatta Olschwang, “Thus the Town Was Destroyed,” in ibid., p. 164.
4. Stauber, “The Destruction,” p. 150, notes that accounts differ regarding how long the Jews were held in the ghetto/camp on Prince Oginski’s estate, but most survivors indicate that it was about 10 to 14 days.
5. Shenker, “Riteve,” p. 157.
6. Chana Borochowitz-Golany, A Childhood in the Storm (USA: A.I. Saeks, 2003), pp. 30–31.
