ŚWIĘCIANY
Pre-1939: Święciany (Yiddish: Sventsian), town, Wilno województwo, Poland; 1939–1940: Sventsiany, raion center, Vileika oblast’, Belorussian SSR; 1940–1941: Švenčionys/Sventsiany, uezd center, Lithuanian SSR; 1941–1944: Schwentschionys, Kreis center, Gebiet Wilna-Land, Generalkommissariat Litauen; post-1991: Švenčionys, rajonas center, Vilnius apskritis, Republic of Lithuania
Święciany is located about 80 kilometers (50 miles) northeast of Wilno. In 1925, the Jewish population of Święciany was 2,750. On September 18, 1939, the Soviet army entered Święciany. Initially incorporated into the Belorussian SSR, after August 1940, Święciany was transferred to the new Lithuanian SSR.
Following their invasion of the Soviet Union, German forces occupied Święciany by July 1, 1941. At the time of the invasion, a number of Jews, especially those with links to the Soviet authorities, fled into Russia. Lithuanian partisans soon organized in the Święciany area and fired on retreating Soviet soldiers and officials, and also on fleeing Jews, forcing some to return to Święciany, where Jewish firemen had established a self-defense unit.
A German military commandant’s office (Ortskommandantur) was established in the town, as were a local administration and police force. The latter institutions were dominated by Lithuanians, as Poles were excluded from holding office.1 From August 1, 1941, P. Skrabutėnas was in charge of the Święciany district police force and Juozas Šležys the Święciany town police. Head of the Kreis Schwentschionys administration was Mykolas Kukutis, and mayor of the town was Vincas Blažys.
In the first days of the occupation, Jews were harassed and seized for forced labor, and a number were murdered as suspected Communists. According to Yitzhak Arad: “[N]ow the hatred of the Lithuanians for the Jews exploded in full force. Jews were beaten in the streets; their homes were looted; they were snatched away for forced labor and cruelly molested.” Available sources indicate that around 140 Jews were arrested and shot in July 1941, in at least two Aktions, in which local Lithuanians played an important role.2
In August 1941, the German military administration was replaced by a German civil administration. The new Gebietskommissar Wilna-Land, Horst Wulff, ordered the registration of all Jewish residents. At this time, a series of anti-Jewish measures was introduced, including the wearing of the Star of David, a ban on travel by Jews, and restrictions on when Jews could buy food.3 Rumors spread about the liquidation of entire Jewish communities elsewhere in Lithuania. When the Jews learned, in the second half of September, that the Germans were preparing a concentration point for the Jews of the region in Nowe Święciany, Jewish representatives appealed to the Catholic priest for help, but he claimed he was powerless to intervene.4
On September 26, 1941, German and Lithuanian police surrounded Święciany and ordered the Jews to prepare to move to the barracks at the military camp (firing range), also known as the Poligon camp, near Nowe Święciany, some 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) away. The Germans prepared a list of needed specialists, who would be permitted to remain in Święciany with their families. People attempted to bribe their way onto the list. During the night, a number of Jews fled towards Generalkommissariat Weissruthenien, including Yitzhak Arad. On September 27, the majority of the Jews were then taken to the Poligon camp, where they were held, together with several thousand others collected from throughout the region, for just over a week under terrible conditions. After a few days the remaining Jews in Święciany were permitted to bring a little food to the inmates, but the prisoners were robbed and abused by their Lithuanian guards. A few additional specialists were selected out, with the aid of bribes, and brought to Święciany, where a small remnant ghetto was established around the large synagogues. The vacated Jewish houses were soon looted by the Lithuanians.5
Some people who had evaded the roundup soon joined the craftsmen in the ghetto. However, when they were urged to register, to become legal, the Germans arrested those who came forward and took them to the Poligon transit camp to be shot with the other Jews there. In total there were around 300 Jews in the remnant ghetto.6
According to Einsatzkommando 3 commander, Karl Jäger, 3,726 Jews were shot at Święciany by October 9, 1941, reflecting the killing of the inmates of the Poligon camp at two sites nearby.7 Other sources, however, indicate that perhaps as many as 8,000 Jews from the region were murdered by the Security Police, members of the Lithuanian Ypatingas Burys killing squad, and other local auxiliaries at Poligon.8
A report, dated December 17, 1941, from the head of Kreis Schwentschionys to the Gebietskommissar, noted that the remaining Jews of the Kreis had been resettled into the Święciany ghetto, which was surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by the Lithuanian police. Those Jews assigned to perform labor were specially registered. Inside the ghetto, Antanas Markauskas, a Lithuanian policeman, was in charge of enforcing order and cleanliness. A five-man Jewish Council (Judenrat) had been formed, which was charged with maintaining order in the ghetto and dealing with internal Jewish affairs.9 In April 1942, the Gebietskommissar ordered the head of the Kreis to organize all Jews, regardless of age or sex, for labor details to clean the streets of Święciany.10
One of the earliest and strongest Jewish resistance groups in the region emerged in the Święciany ghetto. Gertman, Rudnicki, Shutan, Porush, Wolfson, Ligumski, Nadel, Beck, and Miedziolski were some of its members. At first, the resistance group planned to fight inside the ghetto, but later it decided its members should escape to the forest and join partisan units. The underground and the Judenrat came into conflict over the question of purchasing arms, probably following an incident that provoked a deadly response.
On May 13, 1942, on the orders of Jonas Maciulevicius, the head of the Lithuanian Criminal Police, two members of the Jewish underground, Beck and Miedziolski, were arrested in the ghetto after Miedziolski had accidentally shot and wounded Beck with an illegal firearm. This was reported to [End Page 1127] the Judenrat by the Jewish doctor who treated Beck, and the Jewish Police also reported the incident to the Lithuanian police. The two prisoners were interrogated and tortured for days, then killed. More or less at the same time, Sonia Lewin, another resident of the Święciany ghetto, was also arrested and shot.11 Subsequently, the Judenrat tried to weaken the resistance by sending its members to work for the Organisation Todt (OT) in a labor camp.
In July 1942, the Gebietskommissar Wilna-Land banned Jewish artisans from practicing their crafts in the ghetto, unless there was a great need for their services, and ordered that 50 percent of their salary was to go directly to the Gebietskommissar’s office.12 At this time, some Jews in Święciany were working as shoemakers and tailors, while others worked in agriculture and in a factory making boots for the army. On August 6, 1942, the German office dealing with social affairs (Sozialamt) in Święciany reported that there were 566 Jewish men, women, and children in the ghetto of which all 353 able-bodied men and women were currently already deployed for labor.13
On August 28, 1942, the Generalkommissar in Litauen, owing to the lack of guards for Jewish work details, ordered the deployment of ghetto laborers to forestry, agricultural work, and road building to cease immediately. This was in response to increased partisan activity in the region. Soon afterwards, the German authorities also ordered the dissolution of the smaller ghettos east of Wilno and the resettlement of their inhabitants into the ghettos of Święciany, Oszmiana, and Wilno. Exceptions were made for Jewish workers needed by the German army and the OT and for Jews working as artisans in specific towns.14 At this time, most of the remaining Jews from the Widze ghetto were transferred to Święciany. Around 80 craftsmen and their families initially remained in Widze, but these Jews were also sent to Święciany subsequently.15 The ghettos in Święciany and Oszmiana were also subordinated administratively to the Wilno ghetto.
After the arrival of the Jews from Widze, overcrowding intensified, and an epidemic of typhus broke out. The Jewish doctor, however, tried to keep the outbreak secret from the Germans, for fear it might give them a pretext to liquidate the ghetto. The Wilno ghetto Judenrat provided some assistance.16
On March 5–6, 1943, shortly before the liquidation of the ghetto, 22 people connected with the underground decided to flee into the forest to join partisan resistance units. However, 2 of them, Kosha Ligumski and Gershon Nade, gave up their weapons and stayed behind with their widowed mothers. Around this time, about 40 Jews escaped the ghetto altogether.
In late March 1943, members of the Jewish Police from Wilno arrived in Święciany and, on German instructions, prepared two lists: one for those Jews destined to move to the Wilno ghetto and one for those to be transferred to the Kaunas ghetto. Initially people were not sure which would be the better destination. However, once it became clear that all the members of the Judenrat and the Jewish Police were going to Wilno, others also sought to get on this list.17
On April 4, 1943, the Jews of Święciany were transported on trucks initially to a barbed-wire enclosure at the railroad station in Nowe Święciany. On the evening of April 4, 1943, the train departed, reaching Wilno before dawn the next day. The members of the Święciany Judenrat and their families, with others from the list, were then taken to the Wilno ghetto. A few hours later, the train left, taking the remaining Jews to Ponary rather than Kaunas. When the Święciany Jews realized the deception, many of them tried to flee. The German and Lithuanian guards opened fire on the fleeing crowd. Around 600 people from the ghettos in Oszmiana and Święciany, who had been in the transport, were killed at the Ponary railway station and its vicinity. On that day, around 4,000 Jews, who had been brought in the two transports, died in Ponary.18
A few of the Jews from the Święciany ghetto survived the war, either with the partisans, in hiding, or after being in the Wilno ghetto and other camps.
Jonas Maciulewiczius (Maciulevicius), the head of the Lithuanian Criminal Police in Święciany, was tried by a Polish court in Olsztyń on May 2, 1950, and was sentenced to death. He was executed by hanging on December 12, 1950.19
SOURCES
Information about the fate of the Jews of Święciany during the Holocaust can be found in the following publications: Arūnas Bubnys, “The Fate of the Jews in the Švenšionys, Oshmyany and Svir Regions (1941–1943),” in Irena Guzenberg et al., eds., The Ghettos of Oshmyany, Svir, Švenčionys Regions: Lists of Prisoners, 1942 (Vilnius: Valstybinis Vilniaus Gaono žydu muziejus, 2009), pp. 83–118, here pp. 86–94; Christoph Dieckmann, “Deutsche Besatzungspolitik in Litauen 1941–1944” (Ph.D. diss., Universität Freiburg, 2002), sections F.1.2.6 and F.1.8.1; Shalom Cholawsky, The Jews of Bielorus sia during World War II (Amsterdam: Harwood, 1998); Shimon Kanc, ed., Sefer zikaron le-esrim ve-shalosh kehilot she-nehrevu be-ezor Svintsian (Tel Aviv: Former Residents of Svintzian in Israel and the U.S., 1965), pp. 545–558; and Yitzhak Arad, Ghetto in Flames: The Struggle and Destruction of the Jews in Vilna in the Holocaust (New York: Holocaust Library, 1982). Also useful are Arad’s personal memoirs: Yitzhak Arad, The Partisan: From the Valley of Death to Mt. Zion (New York: Holocaust Library, 1979). There are two short survivor testimonies published in Rima Dulkiniene and Kerry Keys, eds., With a Needle in the Heart: Memoirs of Former Prisoners of Ghettos and Concentration Camps (Vilnius: Garnelis, 2003), pp. 38–40, 240–242.
Relevant documentation can be found in the following archives: AŻIH (301/3327, 5462); BA-BL (ZM 1641, A. 23); GARF; IPN (SAOl, I K 39/50); LCVA (R 1548-1-1 and 11, R 614-1-736, R 617-1-1, R 626-1-211, R 659-11-58, R 677-1-46, R 689-1-3, R 721-3-3, R 760-1-104); OKŚZpNPGd (S1/00/Zn); USHMM (RG-50.120 # 0266); VHF (e.g., # 03620, 11047, 51769); and YVA (e.g., O-71/169.1).
NOTES
1. Ber Kharmats and Jekov Levin, “Khurbn Sventsian,” in Kanc, Sefer zikaron, p. 545; Arad, The Partisan, pp. 32–34.
2. YVA, O-71/169.1; Klara Jovitsh, “In geto,” in Kanc, Sefer zikaron, p. 555; Arad, The Partisan, pp. 35–36.
3. LCVA, R 617-1-1, p. 565; R 659-11-58, p. 53; R 760-1-104, p. 4; and R 1548-1-1, p. 309.
4. YVA, O-71/169.1.
5. Arad, The Partisan, pp. 38–39; Jovitsh, “In geto,” pp. 556–557.
6. VHF, # 03620, testimony of Anna Nodel (née Gordon); # 11047, testimony of Rywa Gordon.
7. Report of Einsatzkommando 3, December 1, 1941, RGVA, 500-1-25, p. 114. This report gives October 9, 1941, as the date of the killing, but other sources indicate it occurred on October 7–8, 1941.
8. Kanc, Sefer zikaron, p. 1376, gives the figure of 8,000 victims at the Poligon camp. Dieckmann, “Deutsche Besatzungspolitik,” uses the phrase “at least 5,000”; IPN, SAOl, I K 39/50, case against Jonas Maciulevicius.
9. LCVA, R 1548-1-11, p. 12.
10. Ibid., R 721-3-3, p. 69.
11. IPN, SAOl, I K 39/50, case against Jonas Maciulevicius; Jovitsh, “In geto,” p. 557.
12. LCVA, R 721-3-3, p. 146.
13. Ibid., R 626-1-211, p. 33.
14. Ibid., R 689-1-3, p. 102.
15. Gershon Vainer and Yitshak Alperovitz, eds., Sefer Vidz: ‘Ayera b-hayeha u-ve-khiliona (Tel Aviv: Widze Association in Israel, 1977), pp. 457, 467–476.
16. VHF, # 11047; Jovitsh, “In geto,” p. 557.
17. Kharmats and Levin, “Khurbn Sventsian,” p. 551.
18. Jovitsh, “In geto,” p. 558.
19. IPN, SAOl, I K 39/50, case against Jonas Maciulevicius.
