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

[End Page 1115] Pre-1940: Šeduva (Yiddish: Shadeve), village, Panevėžys apskritis, Lithuania; 1940–1941: Šeduva/Sheduva, Panevezhis uezd, Lithuanian SSR; 1941–1944: Scheddau, Kreis Ponewesch, Gebiet Ponewesch-Land, Generalkommissariat Litauen; post-1991: Šeduva, Radviliškis rajonas, Šiauliai apskritis, Republic of Lithuania

Šeduva is located 37 kilometers (23 miles) west of Panevėžys. According to the 1923 census, 916 Jews were living in the village. By mid-1941, as a result of emigration in the 1920s and 1930s, the number of Jews in the village had decreased.

German armed forces captured Šeduva on June 26, 1941. Lithuanian nationalists, headed by the teacher Gorionos, began to terrorize the Jews even before the Germans arrived. Jews trying to escape into the Soviet Union were stopped by the Lithuanian partisans, who murdered several on the road and robbed others, compelling them to return to Šeduva.

The Lithuanian nationalists formed a local administration and a police force, which carried out a series of anti-Jewish measures. Jews were forced to wear white armbands bearing a yellow Star of David. Valuable items were confiscated from the Jews, and they were required to perform various kinds of forced labor, guarded by armed Lithuanians, who abused them. Young men who had performed administrative functions in the Soviet regime were murdered. Other Jews that were forced to clear up the bombed armament factory in Linkaišiai were accused of stealing grenades and also killed.

In mid-July 1941, all the Jews were settled into a ghetto. First they were ordered to gather in the marketplace and to surrender the keys to their homes to the Lithuanian police. Under guard they were then escorted to the village of Pakuteniai, a few kilometers to the southwest, where they were placed in an abandoned barracks without water or electricity. The building was surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by armed Lithuanians. Other Jews, who had been working on local farms, were brought, beaten and bleeding, to the ghetto, where the Jewish physician Dr. Patorski gave them first aid.

From time to time, the Lithuanian partisans shot groups of Jews taken out of the ghetto on the pretext of conducting agricultural work. On August 3, 10 Jews were shot and buried in lime pits. In mid-August, 27 more Jews were shot, including Rabbi Mordechai David Henkin. Around the same time, another 35 who had been assigned to work on the Red Estate were murdered and buried in its surrounding fields.

On August 25 and 26, 1941, the ghetto was liquidated, and Lithuanian partisans shot most of the remaining Jews in the Liaudiškiai Forest, 10 kilometers (6 miles) southwest of the village. According to the Jäger report, in total, 664 people were killed in Šeduva: 230 men, 275 women, and 159 children.¹ After the massacre, the Lithuanian murderers ate and drank all night in celebration.

Three Jewish families, including that of Dr. Patorski, were kept alive for another six weeks before being killed. One Jewish woman, Shulamith Noll, escaped from the pit in her underwear and survived the mass killing. She went to the local Catholic priest, who arranged for her to be hidden with local farmers for the remainder of the German occupation.