SEDA
Pre-1940: Seda (Yiddish: Shad), Mažeikiai apskritis, Lithuania; 1940–1941: Mazheikiai uezd, Lithuanian SSR; 1941–1944: Kreis Moscheiken, Gebiet Schaulen-Land, Generalkommissariat Litauen; post-1991: Mažeikiai rajonas, Telšiai apskritis, Republic of Lithuania
Seda is located 23 kilometers (14 miles) northwest of Telšiai. According to the 1923 census, 814 Jews were living in the town. By mid-1941, owing to the emigration of Jews in the 1920s and 1930s, the Jewish population had decreased significantly.
German armed forces occupied Seda on June 24, 1941. As the retreating Soviet forces had shot 12 Lithuanian partisans in the town, the new Lithuanian nationalist administration and police force soon started arresting alleged Soviet activists. The new authorities also instituted measures discriminating against the Jews. By the end of June, Lithuanian partisans were rounding up young Jews, and those who were arrested were taken out and shot in the Jewish cemetery. Among those killed was Rabbi Mordechai Rabinowitz.
At the end of June 1941, Lithuanian collaborators gathered all the Jews at the market square between warehouses that belonged to Jews. There the Jews were held without food and water and in unsanitary conditions for several days. Then they were transported to a Jewish agricultural colony not far from the town, known as the “Jewish village.” The Jews were quartered in granaries and cowsheds, which were guarded by armed Lithuanians, forming a temporary ghetto. The young Jewish men were separated from the women, children, and the elderly and were killed near the village on July 3, 1941. In early August 1941, this ghetto was liquidated, and the remaining Jews (around 200 people) were brought to Mažeikiai. On August 9, 1941, the Jews from Seda were shot at the Jewish cemetery in Seda together with the Jews of Mažeikiai. For participating in the mass shooting, the Lithuanian policemen received 300 rubles and strong alcohol that was available in plentiful quantities at the killing site.
SOURCES
Information about the fate of the Jews of Seda in the Holocaust can be found in the following publications: J. Woolf, ed., “The Holocaust in 21 Lithuanian Towns,” available at jewishgen.org; Shalom Bronstein, ed., Yahadut Lita: Lithuanian Jewry, vol. 4, The Holocaust 1941–1945 (Tel Aviv: Association of Former Lithuanians in Israel, 1984), p. 320; Alfonsas Eidintas, Jews, Lithuanians and the Holocaust (Vilnius: Versus Aureus, 2003), p. 278; “Seda,” in Dov Levin and Yosef Rosin, eds., Pinkas ha-kehilot. Encyclopaedia of Jewish Communities: Lithuania (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1996), pp. 421–422. Information on the initial days of the German-Soviet war and German occupation in Seda can be found in Valentinas Brandisauskas, ed., 1941 m. Birzelio sukilimas. Dokumentu rinkinys (Vilnius: LGGRTC, 2000), pp. 109–128; and in B. Baranauskas and E. Rozauskas, eds., Masinės žudynes Lietuvoje (1941–1944): Dokumentu rinkinys, vol. 2 (Vilnius: Leidykla “Mintis,” 1973), pp. 178–185.
Relevant archival documentation can be found in LCVA and LYA (3377-55-111, pp. 70–71).
