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Murder story of Joniskis Jews in the Vilkiaušis Forest
Murder Site
Vilkiaušis Forest
Lithuania
On July 18, 1941 the German occupation authorities issued an order that required the Jews of Joniškis to pay a fine of 20,000 rubles for not having carried out orders. On July 19, after a large sum of money was collected, the Jews were forced into a local synagogue. 150 Jewish men were taken to the Vilkiaušis forest, 5 kilometers from the town. There they were forced to dig pits and, then, were shot in them and buried there.
On August 27 the remaining Jews who had been held in the synagogue were taken to the same forest and shot to death. According to the report by Karl Jaeger, commander of Einsatzkommando 3A, 355 Jewish men, women, and children were shot on that day.
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From the diary of Eliezer Yerushalmi:
May 1 , 1942
Near Joniškis cable-layers recently found three mass graves of Jews from this city. According to local farmers, each grave had 250 Jewish victims, for a total of 750 Jews. The Jewish cableslayers found children's clothers, [ritual] fringed garments, holy books, parts of which were no longer usable, and documents. The cable-layers collected a minyan of Jews who prayed Minchah [the afternoon prayer] at the graves, wept, said Kaddish and held a memorial ceremony for what had been left of a large and flourishing community, one that was both rich and generous in Lithuania.
Eliezer Yerushalmi, Pinkas Shavli: A Diary from a Lithuanian Ghetto (1941-1944), pp. 74-75 (in Hebrew)
Vilkiaušis Forest
forest
Murder Site
Lithuania
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