SEIRIJAI
Pre-1940: Seirijai (Yiddish: Serey), town, Alytus apskritis, Lithuania; 1940–1941: Seirijai/Seiriiai, Olita uezd, Lithuanian SSR; 1941–1944: Seirijai, Kreis Olita, Gebiet Kauen-Land, Generalkommissariat Litauen; post-1991: Lazdijai rajonas, Alytus apskritis, Republic of Lithuania
Seirijai is located 24 kilometers (15 miles) southwest of Alytus. According to the 1923 census, there were 880 Jews living in the town. By mid-1941, emigration had reduced the number.
German forces had captured Seirijai by June 24, 1941. Immediately, Lithuanian nationalists formed a local authority and a police force, which introduced anti-Jewish measures. For example, Jews were required to wear Stars of David and were used for various types of forced labor, during which they were subjected to humiliation and beatings by local antisemites. Jews were forbidden to appear in public places or to maintain relationships of any kind with Lithuanians.
As early as June 26, 1941, the first Aktion took place in Seirijai. At that time, Lithuanian partisans, led by Alfonsas Nykstaitis and Antanas Maskeliunas, shot about 50 Communists and Komsomol members, some of whom were Jews.1 [End Page 1116] During a second Aktion on August 2, 1941, 115 Jewish men and 15 Jewish women were sent to Alytus and shot there.2
According to the account in Oshry, the town’s remaining Jews “were crowded together in the Christian art school like herring in a barrel.”3 This building served as a ghetto. The homes and belongings of the Jews were appropriated by their Lithuanian neighbors. Also placed in the ghetto were Jews from neighboring towns and villages, and as a result the ghetto population rose to nearly 1,000 people. The young and strong Jews were taken off for forced labor, such as repairing roads.
The ghetto in Seirijai was liquidated on September 10–11, 1941, when 953 Jews—229 men, 384 women, and 340 children—were killed. The Jews were driven from the town by the local police armed with clubs. After being forced to remove their clothes, they were shot in the Baraušiškės Forest, 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) east of the town, with the participation of members of 3rd Company, 1st Lithuanian Auxiliary Police Battalion, commanded by Bronius Norkus.4 According to the account in Pinkas ha-kehilot, several local dignitaries of the town, such as teachers, were present at the massacre of Seirijai’s Jews.5
For participation in the killing of Jews in Seirijai, and in other places in Lithuania, eight former members of 3rd Company were sentenced to death at a trial in Kaunas in September–October 1962.
SOURCES
Information on the fate of the Jewish community of Seirijai during the Holocaust can be found in these publications: “Seirijai,” in Shalom Bronstein, ed., Yahadut Lita: Lithuanian Jewry, vol. 4, The Holocaust 1941–1945 (Tel Aviv: Association of Former Lithuanians in Israel, 1984); “Serey,” in Rabbi Ephraim Oshry, The Annihilation of Lithuania Jewry (New York: Judaica Press, 1995), pp. 243–244; “Seirijai,” in Dov Levin and Yosef Rosin, eds., Pinkas ha-kehilot. Encyclopaedia of Jewish Communities: Lithuania (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1996), pp. 444–447.
Relevant documentation can be found in the following archives: GARF (7021-94-3); LCVA; LYA (K 1-58-46373/3, vol. 2); RGVA (500-1-25); and YVA (M-1/Q/142; M-33/994; Leyb Koniuchovsky Collection, O-71/131).
