ŠIAULIAI
Pre-1939: Šiauliai (Yiddish: Shavl), city and apskritis center, Lithuania; 1940–1941: Šiauliai/Shauliai, uezd center, Lithuanian SSR; 1941–1944: Schaulen, Kreis center, Gebiet Schaulen-Land, Generalkommissariat Litauen; post-1991: Šiauliai, rajonas and apskritis center, Republic of Lithuania
Šiauliai is located 68 kilometers (42 miles) west-northwest of Panevėžys. On the eve of the war, the Jewish population of Šiauliai numbered between 6,500 and 8,000.
Following the occupation and annexation of Lithuania by the Soviet Union in 1940, 202 Jews became victims of the [End Page 1118] Soviet deportations on June 14, 1941.1 When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, some of Šiauliai’s Jews tried to escape into the interior of the Soviet Union. Approximately 100 refugees managed to reach the Soviet rear areas. Others failed, however, because of the Germans’ rapid advance. They either returned to Šiauliai or sought refuge in the surrounding villages. The Red Army abandoned the city on June 26.
In the first days of the German occupation, a Lithuanian administration and police force were established. Various German institutions were also based in the town. Feldkommandantur 819 administered the town initially, then passed on its authority to a civil administration headed by a Gebietskommissar and his staff in August. Units of the Secret Military Field Police (GFP) and elements of Einsatzkommando 2, under Einsatzgruppe A, were also present. SS-Hauptscharführer Werner Gottschalk, head of the Restkommando, a subordinate unit of Einsatzkommando 2, directed the first murders of Jews from the city and region. In late July, the 3rd Company of German Police Battalion 65 arrived in Šiauliai. This company repeatedly participated in the murder of Šiauliai’s Jews during the summer, assisted by other German military and police units.
The first mass murder of Šiauliai’s Jews took place in the Kužiai Forest, 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) from Šiauliai, on June 29, 1941. The victims also included ethnic Lithuanian and Russian members of the Communist Party and the Komsomol. According to witness accounts, the Germans perpetrated the Kužiai killings.2 Mass arrests of Šiauliai’s Jews took place on June 30, July 1, and July 5. Among those whom the Lithuanian police arrested were 20 of the most distinguished members of Šiauliai’s Jewish community, including Chief Rabbi Aron Baksht and Rabbi Avrohom Nochumovsky. They were held as hostages in the city jail until July 11, when they were murdered in “reprisal” for an alleged Jewish attack on German soldiers. Approximately 1,000 Jews were murdered before the establishment of the ghetto, many by Lithuanian partisans.3
The German occupation authorities began to plan for the establishment of a ghetto in Šiauliai in early July 1941. On July 10, a Lithuanian attorney named Linkevicius was designated mayor; Jews were ordered to wear yellow stars shortly thereafter.4 At that time, deputy mayor Antanas Stankus was put “in charge of Jewish affairs,” a post he held until February 1, 1942.5 The military commandant, Konowski, issued instructions for establishing the ghetto. In cooperation with the Lithuanian authorities, a Jewish committee was established to deal with the problems of moving the Jews into the ghetto. The committee included Mendel Leibovitch, Ber Kartun, Fayvel Rubinstein, and Aron Katz.6 In accordance with a proclamation, all Jews had to register at the city administration office between July 19 and July 22. In July, Linkevicius and Konowski announced that the Jews were to move either to the Šiauliai suburb known as Kaukazas or to the town of Žagarė. According to the Judenrat secretary, Eliezer Yerushalmi (author of Pinkas Shavli, a journal of life in the ghetto), although Stankus and the mayor proposed the transfer of the Jewish community to Žagarė, the Jewish leaders (Kartun, Leibovitch, and others) weighed the proposal and appealed for assistance from local Lithuanian intellectuals and the priest, Lapis. Yerushalmi notes that Jewish opposition to the idea caused it to be abandoned, and the ghetto was subsequently created in Kaukazas.7 (Nesse [Galperin] Godin, a survivor from Šiauliai [b. 1928], recalls that the Jewish committee managed to bribe Gestapo officials with valuables and promised to produce goods essential to the German war effort to avoid the transfer of the Jewish community to Žagarė.)8 The non-Jewish residents of these areas “were allowed” to move to other parts of the city of Šiauliai, some moving into formerly Jewish-owned properties.9
Two neighborhoods were chosen for the ghetto. One was Kaukazas, while the other encompassed Ežero and Trakų Streets. The two areas were separated by 300 meters (984 feet). After the ghetto was enclosed, the Jews began moving in from various city districts, starting with the Kaukazas area. The Jewish committee was responsible for allocating accommodation inside the ghetto. The resettlement was largely complete by August 15, 1941, and the closed ghetto was officially established on September 1.10 Between 4,000 and 5,000 Jews were forced into the two ghettos, around which ran 2-meter-high (6.6-feet-high) barbed-wire fences. Police guarded the ghetto gate, and no one could leave without a special pass.
After the Jews were confined in the ghetto, confiscated Jewish gold and other valuables were remitted to the Šiauliai Gebietskommissariat. This was done in accordance with detailed inventory lists. Some Jewish property (primarily furniture) was taken by Gebietskommissariat officials; the rest was sold to the local population.11
The number of Jews forced into the ghetto was greater than the available housing could hold. To solve this problem, in the first days of September, a number of “excess” Jews were herded into the synagogues and the Jewish Home for the Elderly on Vilnius Street, where they were registered. Most of these Jews (the elderly and those deemed unfit for work) were taken to Žagarė or to Kužiai, where they were murdered. On September 7 (according to other sources, September 6), a squad commanded by Lieutenant Romualdas Kolokša, formerly a lawyer in Užventis, raided the Jewish orphanage and seized 47 children and two teachers (A. Katz and Zhenia Karfel). The group was taken to the forest and murdered. On September 13, the police entered the ghetto, arrested many elderly people, and took them away to be shot.12
Mass murders of Šiauliai Jews took place near the village of Bubiai, in the Gubernija Forest, a part of the Normanšiai Forest District approximately 15 kilometers (9 miles) from Šiauliai, during September 1941. Groups of victims, numbering close to 500, were brought to the site in 10 trucks. Before they were shot, the Jews were forced to undress, beaten, and then driven into the pits. Witnesses to the murders stated that the executions were directed by German officers, although Lithuanian partisans participated as well.13 Yerushalmi describes one victim who managed to survive the shootings near Bubiai and returned to the town to report what was occurring there: “The representative M. Leibovitch went there (to visit the survivor of the shootings) and he became aware of the terrible [End Page 1119] truth: all of those who had been seized were taken to the woods near Bubiai and there they were shot next to pits that had been prepared beforehand. The survivor had himself been wounded, but he still managed to escape from the pit.”14 The shootings would start at about 3:00 or 4:00 p.m. and were supervised by German officers. The executioners were Lithuanian partisans and soldiers of the 14th Lithuanian Police Battalion, quartered in Šiauliai. In the Gubernija Forest, approximately 1,000 people were murdered.15 The last major shooting of Jews in 1941 took place between December 8 and December 15. On the orders of Gebietskommissar Hans Gewecke and the head of the German Security Police and SD, 72 Jews from Šiauliai, who worked in nearby villages, were seized and then shot. The executioners were policemen from the villages of Kuršėnai, Stašiūnai, Radviliškis, and Pakruojis.16
Following the mass murders in September 1941, the number of Aktions against the Jewish population declined. A Jewish administration and a unit of Jewish Police were created in the Šiauliai ghetto, similar to the structure of the ghettos in Wilno and Kaunas. Inside the ghetto, the original Jewish committee was reorganized into a Jewish Council (Judenrat). Its authority extended to both the Ežero-Trakų and Kaukazas ghettos. The Judenrat was headed by M. Leibovitch, and it included other influential Šiauliai Jews, such as Aron Heller and B.M. Abramovitch, and the teacher Eliezer Yerushalmi. The main responsibility of the Jewish Council was to direct internal life within the ghetto, while also maintaining contacts with the German and Lithuanian administrative offices. In addition, the council appointed the heads of the Ežero-Trakų and Kaukazas ghetto administrations. The administration of the Ežero-Trakų ghetto included S. Burgin, S. Kultchenitski (social affairs), and Ch. Cherniavski (labor affairs).17 The ghetto administration supervised the maintenance of public order in the ghetto, assignment of forced laborers, distribution of food supplies within the ghetto, sanitation, and other everyday activities.
A food shop and 40-bed hospital (headed by Luntz and Peisachovitz) opened in the ghetto. Beginning in September 1941, the inmates were driven to work at locations such as the Zokniai airfield, various workshops, the Frenkel leather factory (in Kaukazas), the Rekyva and Radviliškis peat bogs, the Linkaišiai weapons workshops, and the Pavenšiai sugar refinery. Ghetto inhabitants deemed capable of working were assigned yellow work cards. The Jews were not paid money for their work. The German Arbeitsamt (labor office) transferred the money to the ghetto administration.18 (Nesse Godin recalls that when her family of five was transferred to the ghetto, they were allotted only four yellow work cards. Nesse, who was 13 at the time [August 1941], was too young to receive a work card. Her mother bribed a Lithuanian officer accompanying the Gestapo official, who left a fifth card for Nesse. While this card offered the opportunity to work, Nesse did not receive a ration card because she was not officially registered in the ghetto.)19
Ephraim Gens was made head of the Ežero-Trakų ghetto police in early September 1941. He had 11 or 12 policemen at his disposal, who were unarmed. The ghetto policemen were responsible for maintaining public order inside the ghetto. More specifically, their duties included the housing and resettlement of inmates, prevention of crimes, such as robbery and speculation (food smuggling), maintenance of proper sanitary conditions, and the formation of “work brigades.” Those who violated the ghetto regulations were punished with fines, beatings, confinement in solitary cells, and temporary prohibition from work. The punishments were issued by the Ghetto Court of Law.20
On February 7, 1942, an order was issued forbidding childbirths in the ghetto. The order went into effect on August 15, 1942. Doctors had to perform abortions to prevent violation of this order.21 (The Judenrat discussed whether it was possible to force women to have abortions under the circumstances. Three births had taken place since August 15, 1942, and up to 20 women were estimated to be pregnant in the ghetto in late March 1943. Dr. Aron Pick, a physician living in the Šiauliai ghetto, kept a diary recording events in the ghetto. In a January 1944 entry, he details the birth of a Jewish baby girl born to a slave laborer. The child was drowned after birth to avert the “terrible danger [that] hung over the entire ghetto.”)22
E. Gens remained head of the Jewish Police in the Ežero-Trakų ghetto until March 25, 1944, when he resigned because of a disagreement with the new ghetto administration chief, Georg Pariser. Gens then became an ordinary ghetto inmate, while Chaim Berlovitch occupied his previous post. David Fayn was head of the Jewish Police in the Kaukazas ghetto. His deputy was Zavel Gotz, who replaced Fayn in his duties in July 1943.23
Underground anti-Nazi resistance groups emerged in the Šiauliai ghetto. The most active members of the Zionist youth movements created a secret organization in late 1941. Another “self-defense” organization, headed by engineer Yosel Leibovitch, appeared in 1942, with both Zionist and Communist membership. They acquired and concealed weapons but undertook no armed action. Small underground newspapers, Massada, Hatechiya, and Mimamakim, were produced. [End Page 1120] Youth movements (Hechalutz, Betar, and the Communist group) were also active in the ghetto and commemorated certain Jewish and national holidays. In 1943, schools opened in both ghettos, with an enrollment of 90 pupils in the Ežero-Trakų ghetto and 200 pupils in Kaukazas.
The Šiauliai ghetto was under the supervision of Gebietskommissar Gewecke until mid-September or October 1, 1943, when, the SS assumed jurisdiction. The ghetto then acquired the status of a subcamp of the Kauen concentration camp. The head of the Schaulen subcamp was SS-Unterscharführer Hermann Schleef. For information about this transition and the period of the concentration camp, readers are referred to the entry in Volume I (Schaulen, pp. 858–859).
Some Jews from Šiauliai were among the concentration camp inmates liberated by Allied troops at the end of the war. The number of survivors from the Šiauliai ghetto was between 350 and 500.24
Hans Gewecke, the Gebietskommissar in Šiauliai, was tried in Lübeck in 1970 and sentenced to four and a half years for hanging a Jew who was caught smuggling food into the ghetto.25
SOURCES
In addition to the entry on Šiauliai in Dov Levin and Yosef Rosin, eds., Pinkas ha-kehilot. Encyclopaedia of Jewish Communities: Lithuania (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1996), pp. 658–671, a number of other published works on Jewish life in the Šiauliai ghetto are useful. In particular, see Eliezer Yerushalmi, Pinkas Shavli: Yoman mi-geto Lita’i, 1941–1944 (Jerusalem: Mosad Byalik and Yad Vashem, 1958), a journal detailing daily events in the ghetto—an abridged version of this can also be found in The Complete Black Book of Russian Jewry, compiled by Ilya Ehrenburg and Vasily Grossman (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2002). Shirim me-geto Shavli (Israel: Yotse Geto Shavli, 2003) is a collection of poems and songs from the Šiauliai ghetto. See also Levi Shalit, Azoy zaynen mir geshtorbn (Munich: Organization of Lithuanian Jews in Germany, 1949). Among those memoirs published by survivors of the Shavli ghetto are Sarah Yerushalmi, La-geto lo hazarti (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1980); Harry Demby, Life Story of a Holocaust Survivor from Shaulen Lithuania, Who Lived His Life to Help Others (Delray Beach, FL: H. Demby, 2003); and Meyer Kron, Through the Eye of a Needle (Montreal: Concordia University Chair in Canadian Jewish Studies and The Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, 2000). The diary of Aron Pick has been published in Hebrew: Reshimot mi-ge ha-haregah: Zikhronot ketuvim be-geto ha Shavla’i (Lita) (Tel Aviv: Igud yots’e Lita, 1997).
The trial records of Lithuanian collaborators can be found in the Lithuanian Special Archives (Lietuvos ypatingasis archyvas, or LYA). Additional documentation on the German occupation can be found in the Central State Archives of Lithuania (Lietuvos centrinis valstybės archyvas, or LCVA), including the records of the “Šiauliai City SS and Police Leader” (LCVA, R-717; see also USHMM, Acc. 2000.195). See also the trial records for Hans Gewecke: Sta. Lübeck, 2 Ks 1/68.
The diary of Dr. Aaron Pick describes life in the Šiauliai ghetto, public health, and Judenrat activities (see USHMM, Acc. 2000.132). A number of oral histories and testimonies on Šiauliai are available at the USHMM (e.g., RG-50.030*0080 [Nesse Galperin Godin]; the memoirs of Sonja Haid Greene, “Between life and death,” RG-02.112; Acc.1994.A203; Simcha Brudno: “Witness to Nazism,” RG-02.101; Acc.1994.A.159, transcription of oral history interview; and “The Family of Aryeh-Leyb Fingerhut [Leo Gerut],” RG-02.210). Numerous survivor testimonies and other sources can also be found in Israel: at YVA (e.g., M-1/E-575, 1206, 1233, 1472, 1555; M-9/9[6], 15[6]; O-3/3831, 3856; O-33/56, 60, 62, 284, 956, 1381, 1392, 2582, 3368; O-4/[15]); at the MA (A.258, A.685); also in the Oral History Division, Institute for Contemporary Jewry (i.e., [4] 37, [12] 58, 72, 77, 80, 82, 95, 103, 112, 113); and in the archives of the ITS.
NOTES
1. List of the Jews deported by the Bolsheviks in 1941, LMAB, RS, fr. 76-190, pp. 19–23.
2. Memorandum by the Šiauliai Region’s Working People’s Deputies Council Executive Committee, April 4, 1968, LYA, K 1-46-1261, p. 86.
3. Yerushalmi, Pinkas Shavli; and Yerushalmi’s Diary, Šiauliai (Shavli), in Ehrenburg and Grossman, The Complete Black Book, pp. 265, 522. Yerushalmi, Pinkas Shavli, p. 31, also cites mass arrests carried out by Lithuanian partisans.
4. See Yerushalmi, Pinkas Shavli, p. 32.
5. Šiauliai City Government's Report to Gebietskommissar Schaulen-Land, August 13, 1941, LMAB, RS, fr. 76-181, p. 2.
6. Excerpts from A. Stankus’s Examination Record, October 20, 1950, LYA, K 1-8-182, pp. 158–159. See Yerushalmi, Pinkas Shavli, pp. 32–33, on the creation of a Jewish administration.
7. Yerushalmi, Pinkas Shavli, pp. 33–34.
8. Nesse Godin Oral History transcript, USHMMA, RG-50.030*0080, p. 8.
9. Šiauliai City Mayor’s Announcement, July 18, 1941, ŠAA, 269-1a-27, p. 27.
10. Ehrenburg and Grossman, The Complete Black Book, pp. 296–300 (extract from the diary of E. Yerushalmi). See also Kron, Through the Eye of a Needle, p. 64, which states that the ghettos were closed by August 31.
11. Excerpts from A. Stankus’s Examination Record, October 20, 1950, LYA, K 1-8-182, pp. 158–160.
12. Ibid., p. 160; Statement of the Description of Murders in the Šiauliai City Jewish Ghetto, November 25, 1944, LMAB, RS, fr. 159-29, p. 3.
13. Note issued by the Soviet Lithuanian KGB about mass murders in the Šiauliai Region in 1941, February 7, 1973, LYA, K 1-46-1274, p. 1; Z. Ašmonienė’s Examination Record, January 23, 1973, K 1-46-1274, pp. 5–7.
14. Yerushalmi, Pinkas Shavli, p. 41.
15. Note by Captain Obraztsov, Soviet Lithuanian KGB Šiauliai City Chief Operative Official, about the 14th Lithuanian Police Battalion, n.d., LYA, K 1-47-1268, p. 145.
16. Statement of the Description of Murders in the Šiauliai City Jewish Ghetto, November 25, 1944, LMAB, RS, fr. 159-29, p. 3.
17. E. Gens’s Examination Record, June 29, 1948, LYA, K 1-58-P42809/3, pp. 18, 25; Avraham Tory, Surviving the Holocaust: The Kovno Ghetto Diary (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), p. 460.
18. USHMM, RG-50.030*0080, p. 10.
19. A. Galiūnas’s Examination Record, September 6, 1951, LYA, K 1-58-P16850, p. 19.
20. E. Gens’s Examination Record, January 21, 1948, ibid., K 1-58-P42809/3, pp. 13–14.
21. See Yerushalmi, Pinkas Shavli, for a copy of the order officially dated July 13, 1942 (p. 88), as well as the minutes of the Judenrat meeting on the topic, March 24, 1943 (pp. 188–189).
22. Dr. Aaron Pick Diary, USHMM, Acc. 2000.132, January 1944 (Hebrew).
23. E. Gens’s Examination Record, January 21, 1948, LYA, K 1-58-P42809/3, pp. 15–16; also L. Lazeris’s Examination Record, June 21, 1950, K 1-58-18181/3, pp. 13–14.
24. L. Peleckienė, “Prie Šiaulių geto vartų skambėjo gedulingas ‘Requiem,’” Lietuvos rytas, 1994 m. liep. 26d.; E. Gens’s Examination Record, January 21, 1948, LYA, K 1-58-P42809/3, pp. 12–13; Walter Zwi Bacharach, ed., Dies sind meine letzten Worte … Briefe aus der Schoah (Göttingen: Wallenstein, 2006), p. 124.
25. Kron, Through the Eye of a Needle, p. 66; Sta. Lübeck, 2 Ks 1/68.
