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

Pre-1940: Širvintos (Yiddish: Shirvint), town, Ukmergė apskritis, Lithuania; 1940–1941: Širvintos/Shirvintos, Ukmergē uezd, Lithuanian SSR; 1941–1944: Schirwinten, Kreis Wilkomir, Gebiet Ponewesch-Land, Generalkommissariat Litauen; post-1991: Širvintos, rajonas center, Vilnius apskritis, Republic of Lithuania

Širvintos is located 47 kilometers (29 miles) north-northwest of Wilno. In 1939, about 700 Jews lived there; they comprised about one third of the town’s population.

German armed forces captured the town at the end of June 1941. Immediately, Lithuanian nationalists formed a local administration and police force, which proceeded to murder several Jews, burn the synagogue, and implement various anti-Jewish measures. All Jews were marked with the Star of David and forced into labor. The Jews were subjected to murder, assault, rape, robbery, and other forms of degradation by local antisemites. The Jews were also prohibited from appearing in public places and having any relations with non-Jewish Lithuanians.

In July or August 1941 (accounts differ), the Germans forced the remaining Jews into a ghetto composed of about 20 buildings and required them to leave most of their possessions in their old homes. From the ghetto, able-bodied Jewish men and some women were marched about 10 kilometers (6 miles) daily to a forced labor site outside the town. Each day the numbers of Jews returning from work diminished, as they were shot for the slightest infraction. The ghetto existed for little over a month and was liquidated on September 18, 1941. At that time, Lithuanian police, Gestapo officers, and Wehrmacht troops surrounded the ghetto in the middle of the night, forced the Jews into trucks, took them to the pine forest of Pivonija, about 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) from Ukmergė, and shot them.