RUMŠIŠKĖS
Pre-1940: Rumšiškės (Yiddish: Rumshishok), town, Kaunas apskritis, Lithuania; 1940–1941: Rumšiškės/Rumshishkes, Kaunas uezd, Lithuanian SSR; 1941–1944: Rumschiskis, Kreis Kauen, Gebiet Kauen-Land, Generalkommissariat Litauen; post-1991: Rumšiškės, Kaišiadorys rajonas, Kaunas apskritis, Republic of Lithuania
Rumšiškės is located 19 kilometers (12 miles) east-southeast of Kaunas. According to the 1923 census, there were 288 Jews living in the town. By June 1941, emigration had reduced the size of the Jewish population.
At the onset of the German invasion, few Jews were able to flee Rumšiškės due to the rapid German advance, but a number of refugees fleeing from Kaunas and other places became trapped in Rumšiškės. In the first days of the conflict, a Lithuanian partisan squad was formed, which soon started arresting Communist activists, Jews, and Red Army stragglers. The soldiers were transferred to the German army, which occupied the town on June 24, 1941. The Lithuanian nationalists formed a local administration and police force, which agitated against the Jewish population and carried out anti-Jewish measures. Several Jews were killed during the first weeks of the occupation, including the pharmacist Yirmeyahu Rubinstein and others accused of supporting the Soviet authorities. Valuable items were confiscated from the Jews, and they were forced into various kinds of labor, including cutting peat. They were subjected to robbery, assault, and other forms of public denigration by local antisemites. They were forced to surrender their cows and other livestock. Despite a ban on contacts with Lithuanians, the Jews traded remaining property, such as clothing, with Lithuanian peasants to obtain food.
On August 7, 1941, the head of the Kaunas district ordered all Jews into a ghetto by August 15.1 Two houses, owned by the Katz brothers, were initially used for this purpose, resulting in terrible overcrowding within the ghetto.2
The head of the police post in Rumšiškės reported on August 19, 1941, to his superior that on August 15, of the 140 Jews gathered there, 70 Jews (people aged between 15 and 70) had been arrested for allegedly supporting the Communists and escorted away by German and Lithuanian soldiers, commanded by Lieutenant Skaržinskas. This left only just over 70 women and children in Rumšiškės, who were crowded into the house of Yankl-Leyb Langman, which was guarded by the Lithuanian police.3 On August 22, the authorities demanded a “contribution” of 8,000 rubles from the Jews; the sum was delivered by a man named Rubinstein, the head of the Judenrat, on August 23.4 On August 29, 1941, the ghetto in the town was liquidated, and the Jewish women and children were shot at the edge of the Rumšiškės Forest by Lithuanian policemen arriving from Kaunas.5 It is likely that the Jewish men were taken to a labor camp at nearby Pravieniškės (a few kilometers north-northeast of Rumšiškės) and had been murdered there by September 4, 1941.6 Other sources, however, indicate that they may have been taken to Kaunas. Remaining Jewish property was auctioned off in the town by September 21, 1941.
The Germans were driven from Rumšiškės on July 20, 1944, but the Red Army found that most of the town had been destroyed.
SOURCES
Information about the persecution and murder of the Jewish population of Rumšiškės can be found in the following publications: Shalom Bronstein, ed., Yahadut Lita: Lithuanian Jewry, vol. 4, The Holocaust 1941–1945 (Tel Aviv: Association of Former Lithuanians in Israel, 1984); “Rumšiškės,” in Dov Levin and Yosef Rosin, eds., Pinkas ha-kehilot. Encyclopaedia of Jewish Communities: Lithuania (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1996), pp. 633–635; and Arūnas Bubnys, “The Holocaust in the Lithuanian Province in 1941: The Kaunas District,” in D. Gaunt, P.A. Levine, and L. Palosuo, eds., Collaboration and Resistance during the Holocaust: Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania (Bern: Peter Lang, 2004), pp. 283–312, here pp. 303–305.
Relevant documentation can be found in the following archives: LCVA (R 683-2-2; R 1534-1-190); LYA (K 1-58-47533/3); RGVA (500-1-25); and YVA (O-71, file 148).
NOTES
1. B. Baranauskas and E. Rozauskas, eds., Masinės žudynes Lietuvoje (1941–1944): Dokumentu rinkinys, vol. 2 (Vilnius: Leidykla “Mintis,” 1973), pp. 290–291.
2. Levin and Rosin, Pinkas ha-kehilot: Lithuania, p. 635.
3. LCVA, R 683-2-2, p. 63, report of the head of Rumšiškės police precinct to the director of the police department in Kaunas, August 19, 1941; Levin and Rosin, Pinkas ha-kehilot: Lithuania, p. 635.
4. LCVA, R 1534-1-190, p. 3, report of the head of Rumšiškės district to the head of the Kaunas Region, August 25, 1941.
5. RGVA, 500-1-25, p. 112, report of Einsatzkommando 3, December 1, 1941. On August 29, 1941, 20 Jewish men, 567 Jewish women, and 197 Jewish children were reportedly killed at Rumšiškės and Žiežmariai.
6. Ibid., p. 113. Only 6 women were among the 253 Jews reportedly killed at Pravenischkės, which presumably included the 70 Jews from Rumšiškės. See also Josef Levinson, ed., The Shoah (Holocaust) in Lithuania (Vilnius: Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum, 2006), p. 506.
