Šeduva

Traces of Jewish life in Ŝeduva go back to the 15th century. Toward the end of the 18th century 508 Jewish taxpayers lived in the village and their number increased with time. At the end of the 19th century there were 2,513 Jews in the village, comprising 56 percent of the total population. In the early 1920s, due to the economic crisis suffered by Lithuania after World War I and to emigration, the number of Jews in Šeduva dropped to 916 (29 percent of the total population). The town’s Jews earned their living from commerce, crafts, small industry, and agriculture. The village had one yeshiva, two hadorim, a Hebrew school affiliated with the Tarbut network, and a Jewish public library. A large proportion of the Jews belonged to one or another of the Zionist groups. In 1940, with the annexation of Lithuania to the USSR, private enterprises, many of which were owned by Jews, were nationalized. All the Zionist parties were banned and the Hebrew educational institutions were closed. On June 26, 1941 the German army entered Šeduva but, during the first days of occupation, control was in the hands of radical Lithuanian nationalists who persecuted the local Jews and engaged in violence against them. In mid July the Germans ordered the Jews of the village to be taken to a ghetto in the village of Pavartičiai, 5 kilometers away. The murder of the Jews of Šeduva began in early August 1941 and continued throughout the month. Šeduva was liberated by the Red Army in the summer of 1944.