ŠILUVA
[End Page 1121] Pre-1940: Šiluva (Yiddish: Shidleve), town, Raseiniai apskritis, Lithuania; 1940–1941: Šiluva/Shiluva, Raseiniai uezd, Lithuanian SSR; 1941–1944: Schidlowo, Kreis Raseinen, Gebiet Schaulen-Land, Generalkommissariat Litauen; post-1991: Šiluva, Raseiniai rajonas, Kaunas apskritis, Republic of Lithuania
Šiluva is located 78 kilometers (49 miles) northwest of Kaunas. According to the 1923 census, there were 365 Jews living in Šiluva, constituting 37 percent of the total. Owing to emigration in the 1930s, the Jewish population declined somewhat. Around 80 Jewish families were living in Šiluva in 1938.
German armed forces captured the town on June 24, 1941. Lithuanian nationalists immediately arrested all the Jews and resettled them into barns in the village of Ribukai. These barns in effect became a ghetto for the Jews. Jewish property was stolen by the Lithuanians. Each day Jewish men were exploited for heavy physical labor at the nearby Lyduvėnai railway station. While at work, the Jews were subjected to beatings at the hands of the Lithuanian guards.
On August 15–16, 1941, 115 to 120 Jewish men were taken out en masse and shot near the village of Padubysis (according to another source, near the village of Zakeliškiai). On August 21, 1941, the ghetto was liquidated, and all the remaining Jews, around 300 people, were shot and buried in sand pits near Ribukai, about 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) east of Lyduvėnai. Three Jews who received advanced warning from a Lithuanian friend were able to escape to the Šiauliai ghetto. The killings were carried out by a detachment of Einsatzkommando 3, assisted by Lithuanian policemen.1
SOURCES
Information on the fate of the Jewish community of Šiluva during the Holocaust can be found in these publications: “Siluva,” in Dov Levin and Yosef Rosin, eds., Pinkas ha-k ehilot. Encyclopaedia of Jewish Communities: Lithuania (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1996), pp. 681–683; and Shmuel Spec-tor and Geoffrey Wigoder, eds., The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life before and during the Holocaust (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem; New York: New York University Press, 2001), p. 1184.
Documentation regarding the persecution and murder of the Jews of Šiluva can be found in the following archives: GARF (7021-94-427); LCVA; and YVA (O-3/2580; M-9/15[6]).
NOTES
1. YVA, 0-3/2580, M-9/15(6); B. Baranauskas and E. Rozauskas, eds., Masinės žudynes Lietuvoje (1941–1944): Dokumentu rinkinys, vol. 2 (Vilnius: Leidykla “Mintis,” 1973), pp. 401–402.
