Semeliškės

Jews began settling in Semeliškės most likely in the eighteenth century. At the beginning of the twentieth century, around 300 Jews lived in the town, one third of the total population. In 1940, the Jewish population was approximately 500; among them, 200 Baranowicze Yeshiva students who had escaped occupied Poland. Between the two world wars, the town’s Jews made their living from trade, light industry and craft.

In the fall of 1940, after the annexation of Lithuania to the Soviet Union, most of the towns’ shops were nationalized, and the Jewish “Yavne” school was closed down.

With the German occupation of Lithuania, beginning June 22, 1941, armed local Lithuanian nationalists took over Semeliskes. They looted Jewish property and murdered several Jews. A few weeks later, German and Lithuanian authorities ordered the town’s Jewish population to move to a ghetto, set up in a former local church.

On September 22, 1941, the remaining Jews from the nearby towns of Vevies and Zasliai – most of them women and children – were brought to the Semeliskes ghetto. On October 6, 1941, the first day of Sukkot, all the ghetto’s inhabitants, 995 Jews, were taken to pits and shot by armed Lithuanians, under German command. Dozens of Jews who had managed to escape and go into hiding were caught and executed.

The Red Army liberated Semeliškės in the summer of 1944.