Murder Story of Vidukle Jews at the Viduklė Jewish Cemetery

On Thursday evening the 28th of the month of Av, 1941 notice was given by the Lithuanian police. A policeman informed [the Jews] that they wanted to register the people who lacked the resources to survive the winter since they wanted to help them. A few women grasped what the murderers had in mind and tried to escape. However, most remained in their homes and waited for what the next day would bring. On Thursday night and on Friday the women saw that they had been surrounded by policemen and that it was no longer possible to flee. On Friday they were all forced into the synagogue. Around the synagogue a large guard of policemen was set up and no one was allowed to leave. The mood among the women and children was terrible. Everyone screamed and wept. The women opened the holy ark and prayed to God for mercy. The Lithuanians stood by and laughed. Asher Icikovich, the tanner, who had been released earlier but was taken to the synagogue with his family, was the only man there with all the terrified women. A Lithuanian policeman entered the synagogue with a list and checked to see if everyone had turned up. Afterwards, he asked if anyone needed help for the coming winter. Since the women knew what would happen, not one of them requested aid. Meanwhile, through the window the women saw Lithuanian workmen heading toward the Jewish cemetery with shovels in their hands. The women realized that the pits were being prepared for them. A Lithuanian policeman who was a friend of Icikovich came and said that the situation was serious, even terrible, but he did not attempt to save Asher. Through the window the women saw the workers returning from the cemetery. Hirsh Hirshovitz told his mother that they should try to escape. His mother, Rakhel Gite, spoke with Hirsh’s sisters Dvora, Ita, and Temba-Rivka and with their young brother Moshele but, of course, their mother Rakhel Gite did not succeed in saving her children. No one had any chance to escape. Hirsh slipped out of a window and managed to escape despite the Lithuanian guards and to reach the village. On the same day they took everyone to the cemetery and shot them there. Dozens of killers from the small town and nearby villages took part in the massacre of the Jews of Vidulkė.

After the war Peshe returned to the village. In the village she visited the Jewish cemetery where the Jewish women and children had been shot to death. In the cemetery was a long trench where all the women and children were buried together. There was no fence and peasants trampled the earth covering the trench. The cemetery was destroyed, the gravestones were broken and scattered. Some farmers had built the foundations of their houses from gravestones that were taken from the Jewish cemetery. The farmer Ona Butrnaite, who lived next to the cemetery, told in detail how the [Jewish] women and children of the village were shot. They were forced to strip naked, and then they were taken to the pits. Most of the children were thrown into the pits alive. This peasant woman had lived next to the cemetery and heard the screams of the women and of the young children.