Vilkija

Jews began to settle in Vilkija in the 18th century. Apparently there was a synagogue in this location in 1759, when local Jewish children were studying in chederim and in a yeshiva. A Zionist organization was established at the end of the 19th century and Zionist activity increased in the first half of the 20th century. Reflective of this interest were a Hebrew-language school that belonged to the Tarbut network and several Zionist youth movements.

During the fighting of the First World War the village changed hands several times. After Vilkija was conquered by the Germans, the Russian Army regained it and began pogroms against the Jews. In 1915 the Jews were expelled by the Russian authorities. Only 60 percent of the Jews returned to the village when the war ended.

Most of the Jews of Vilkija worked as merchants and craftsmen; a few owned distilleries. Due to the location of the village on the banks of the Niemen River a number of Jews were involved in felling timber and exporting lumber to Germany. However, this export declined between the wars when Vilna was part of Poland rather than Lithuania, as it had been previously.

At the end of the 19th century the Jewish population of Vilkija was 1,431 or 71 percent of the total population. In the mid-1930s there was a sharp drop in the number of Jewish residents due to migration and to a devastating fire in the village. It is estimated that the Jewish population of Vilkija in 1940 was 500, which was 25 percent of the total.

In the same year, in the wake of the annexation of Lithuania to the Soviet Union, stores and factories, most of which were owned by local Jews, were nationalized. During the process of sovietization Zionist activity, including that of youth groups, and Hebrew-oriented educational institutions, was suppressed.

German forces occupied Vilkija on June 26, 1941. Without waiting for the Germans, Lithuanian nationalists began to persecute the local Jews. Then, following German orders, the nationalists forced the local Jews into a ghetto. At the end of August 1941 the Jews were taken from the ghetto to a nearby forest, where they were murdered.

Vilkija was liberated by the Red Army in the summer of 1944.