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

Pre-1940: Rokiškis (Yiddish: Rakishok), town, apskritis center, Lithuania; 1940–1941: Rokiškis/Rokishkis, uezd center, Lithuanian SSR; 1941–1944: Rokischken, Kreis center, Gebiet Ponewesch-Land, Generalkommissariat Litauen; post-1991: Rokiškis, rajonas center, Panevėžys apskritis, Republic of Lithuania

Rokiškis is located about 80 kilometers (50 miles) east-northeast of Panevėžys. In 1939, on the eve of World War II, there were about 3,500 Jews living in Rokiškis, 40 percent of the total population. A number of Jewish refugees arrived in the town, following the German invasion of Poland.

On the outbreak of war between Germany and the USSR in June 1941, many Rokiškis Jews attempted to flee east with the retreating Soviet forces. However, most were turned back at the Latvian border and returned towards Rokiškis. In the meantime, a large Lithuanian partisan force had been organized in the region, which attacked the retreating Soviet forces and also robbed, beat, and killed Jews it encountered on the roads.

German forces took Rokiškis on June 27, 1941. Immediately after the occupation, Lithuanian nationalists in the town formed a civil administration and a police force. Lieutenant Žukas became town commandant, and Lieutenant Petkunas headed the guard company attached to the commandant’s office. Their first order of business was to initiate antisemitic measures. Jews were required to wear Stars of David, and they were assigned to various kinds of compulsory labor in the course of which local antisemites subjected the Jews to humiliation and beatings.

At the beginning of July 1941, the town authorities confined all the Jews in two separate ghettos. They put the Jewish men into Count Pzezdetski’s stone stables, and the women and children up to the age of eight were moved to the Antanašė estate, between Rokiškis and Obeliai.¹ One of the local collaborators, Zenonas Blynas, noted subsequently in his diary: “Interesting, Germans give a written order to herd Jews into a ghetto. Later German officers participate, as they are shot to death.”² For a short period a Jewish Council (Judenrat) operated in Rokiškis, which was headed by Ozinkowitz and Jacob Kark.

On August 4, 1941, Lieutenant Žukas ordered all Jewish inhabitants of Rokiškis to give up their valuable property such as furniture and other movable items. The items had to be registered at the office of the military administration by August 28, 1941. At the same time, he announced officially that all Jews able to work had to conduct labor for the community.³ On August 6, 1941, Žukas issued a further order that any local inhabitants who collected Jews for work but then allowed [End Page 1111] them to move to other places or to avoid work by paying a bribe instead would be severely punished.⁴ This reflected the common practice of local farmers requisitioning Jews to work on their land.

As soon as German troops occupied Rokiškis, Lithuanian partisans began shooting Jewish men, as well as Lithuanians and Russians, who were believed to have collaborated with the Soviet authorities in 1940 and 1941. By August 14, 1941, they had killed 493 Jews, 432 Russians, and 56 Lithuanians.⁵ They carried out the shootings in the woods near the village of Steponai.

On August 15 and 16, 1941, a detachment of Einsatzkommando 3, with the participation of “Lithuanian partisans,” shot 3,200 Jewish men, women, and children, although the vast majority were probably men, including a number of men brought in from the surrounding villages, including Obeliai. Besides those victims, the firing squad shot five Lithuanian Communists, one “partisan,” and one Pole.⁶ Among the approximately 80 Lithuanian partisans who participated, more than 60 were detailed to escort the victims to the site of the killing and to cordon it off. The others did the shooting.⁷ The killing took place in the woods near the village of Baiorai, to the north of Rokiškis. Members of the guard company (the partisans) who took part in the killing received a bonus of 150 rubles each “for the performance of special duties.”

On or around August 25, 1941, the Jewish women and children from Rokiškis, Kamajai, and several other places, who had been concentrated in the village of Antanašė, 5 kilometers (3 miles) south of Obeliai, were shot. The shootings were conducted by units of Rollkommando Hamann, subordinated to Einsatzkommando 3, assisted by Lithuanian partisans. According to the Jäger report, on August 25, 1941, the Germans and their collaborators murdered 112 men, 627 women, and 421 children (1,160 people) near Obeliai.⁸ A local inhabitant recalled in the 1990s: “Men from Obeliai were taken to Rokiškis to be murdered. Women, children, and old people were taken from Rokiškis to Obeliai to be murdered. I saw the carriages with old people arriving from Rokiškis to Obeliai, the road goes next to my house. One old person fell out of the carriage, and a guard killed him, beating his head with a rifle butt.”⁹

A few Jews from Rokiškis survived the war initially in the Kaunas ghetto and later in various camps. A number of the Jewish men who fled successfully from Rokiškis served subsequently in the Lithuanian Division of the Red Army, which was established in Gorki in January 1943.

On November 15, 1965, a court in Rokiškis sentenced to death four former policemen (Dagis, Lašas, Vamas, and Strum-skis) who had participated in the killing of Jews in Rokiškis.