Murder story of Kedainiai Jews on the Bank of the Smilga River in Kedainiai

On Thursday August 28, 1941 about two hundred Lithuanian railway workers arrived at the farm of Źirgunai, armed with rifles and hand grenades. These murderers took all the healthy young men, numbering 60, and took them away from the farm. These Jews had to keep their hands behind them and they were forbidden to speak to each other. The group was taken to the banks of the Smilga River, about 1.5 kilometers away. A wide and deep pit awaited them there. The pit had been dug by Russian prisoners of war in the course of five days. All the Jewish men were shot there. So that those Jews [who were being temporarily kept] in a barn did not learn ahead of time about the shooting, the murders placed some large motors near the pit so that the shots and screams of the victims would be drowned out. Many of the victims were wounded and fell into the pit. Hirsh Leviotkin, the butcher from Keydan [Kėdainiai], hung himself in the barn. When they brought the second group of men, that included a Jew from Keydan named Tsadok Shlapoberski, there was a German standing guard next to the pit. Tsadok asked the German not to shoot him. As a result the German began to beat him. Shlapoberski pulled the German into the pit and began to strangle him. One of the Lithuanian murderers jumped into the pit to help the German. Shlapobersky severed the Lithuanian’s windpipe and killed him. They didn’t shoot Shlapobersky but cut him to pieces with knives. They buried the [Lithuanian] murderer with honors. The rabbi of the town was in the first group that was brought to the pit. Before he was killed, he told the men who had not resisted that this [resistance] might make the Germans so angry that they would shoot the women and children in the barn who, otherwise, might remain alive.