Murder story of Vilkija Jews in the Pakarkle Forest

The Murder of Women and Children During the first days after the Germans occupied Vilkija the Lithuanian nationalists (who were referred to as "partisans") told the men that they were going to shoot their women and children but said that if a certain amount of money and valuables were handed over the intended victims would be allowed to live. The men handed over everything they still had after being robbed previously and having paid ransom for their own lives. After the men gave the second ransom to the Lithuanian murderers, instead of being released, the women and children were taken to a site near the village of Jaučakiai between the Niemen and Brūžė Rivers, where two pits had been prepared. There the women and children were forced to strip naked and then were shot to death. On that tragic day a total of 1,800 women and children from Vilkija, Čekiške, Seredžius, Veliuona, and other small localities were killed. Two mass graves of these women and children were found to the right of the road from Vilkija to Jaučakiai, near the village elementary school.

… After liberation Rakhel Gempel visited her native village of Vilkija. Farmers who lived on the outskirts of the village told Rakhel that several weeks after the beginning of the war all the Jews of the village were forced into the synagogue and held there for three days. Then all the men were taken to a grove of trees near the village of Jaučakiai, several kilometers away, where they were shot. Rakhel Gempel does not know when and how the women were shot.