Murder Story of Vilkaviskis Jews at the Military Barracks in Vilkaviškis

At the beginning of the war the Lithuanian Mikolis from Vilkaviškis, a former [house] painter and at present the manager of a cinema in the town, lived near the train station. He testified that they killed the Jewish men first, the first group of 60 men were taken out to be shot on July 28, 1941. He does not know who the executioners were but he saw well how gangs composed of all kinds of dregs of society and policemen forced the Jews to perform hard labor and guarded the road next to the barracks while the Jews were being shot. After that he heard about Lithuanian "partisans" boasting that they had eagerly volunteered to take part in the killing of Jews. He also testified that he heard that, during the murder of women and children, the Lithuanian murderers threw little children into the air and shot them as people shoot birds with a pistol. All of the Jews of the town were murdered in Vilkaviškis next to the barracks.... Ursula Urbanaityte testified: I saw the Jews when they were living in the barracks. A day before they were taken out to be shot, policemen and Lithuanian “partisans” surrounded the barracks to prevent the Jews from escaping. The murderers did not allow anyone approach the Jews. The commander of the region arrived at the barracks where the women and children and the few men who were still alive were imprisoned. He gave a speech to them and immediately after the speech the prisoners began to pack whatever they had with them. The commander promised them that they would be taken to Lublin, where their husbands were living and working. I was told about this speech by a girl who had succeeded in escaping from the barracks that night. She bribed the Lithuanian guards. She gave them many valuables that she had hidden on her body. The name of the Jewish girl was Lea Frajmanaite. After her escape she hid with me for three days.... Ursula Urbanaityte continued her account: Joze Cvirkuviene, who lived next to the barracks, climbed up on his roof and saw all the terrible things that took place near the pits and afterwards told her what he had seen. The first group that was led to slaughter were men. The fascists carried out their work of murder in an orderly way. Each time they took another group of victims out of the barracks. When the latter were being taken to the pits, they had to keep their hands raised in the air. They were all forced to run and fall, to run and fall – in order to use up their last bit of strength. Afterwards they were forced to run along the edge of the pits and, while they were running, they were beaten with clubs, with iron bars, and the butts of rifles. All of the victims were half naked, clad only in their underwear. After being horribly tortured, they were chased into the pits and killed there. That is what happened to group after group. The women were still imprisoned in the barracks and they saw all that happened on the way to and in the pits. After the sadists completed murdering the men, they turned their murderous attention to the women. Group after group were driven out of the barracks: each group contained 30-40 women. Some of the women held their small children in their arms. Next to the pits they were forced to strip almost naked. There were women who did not agree to take off their clothes; the sadists took bayonets and cut both clothes and flesh off these women. Each time the murderers brought ten women to the pits while the rest had to wait their turn. They killed the children by hitting them on the head with a sharp instrument and then threw them like garbage into a pit. Some of the children were buried while still alive. After the murderers completed killing one group, they brought the next one from the barracks. Since the victims had already suffered a series of brutal tortures inside the barracks, they were ready to die in order to escape further torture....