Murder story of Virbalis Jews in the Vigainis Field

On July 7, 1941, upon the orders of the Tilsit Gestapo (East Prussia), the forces of the GPK (Border Police Office) in Eydtkau, assisted by the Lithuanian police, arrested the Jewish males over the age of sixteen (or fourteen, according to a different source) – a total of more than 200 people – and took them to the Raudondvaris estate, some 2 kilometers north of Virbalis (the site now lies on the northern edge of the town). There, they were locked up on the premises for several days, without food or water; they were joined by a number of alleged communists, both Jews and non-Jews. On July 10, 1941, a squad of the SiPo (Security Police) and the SD, led by the chief of the Tilsit Gestapo and assisted by the Lithuanian police, arrived in Raudondvaris and escorted the arrestees to a field called Vigainis by the locals. There was an anti-tank ditch there, some 400 meters (a quarter mile) northwest of Raudondvaris. The victims were told to deepen it. When the work was done, the Nazis ordered the arrestees to hand over their money and valuables, and then to undress and line up in batches of 15-20, with their backs toward the trench. Afterward, the arrestees were shot – first the Lithuanians, and then the Jews. On July 29, a second massacre occurred. The Nazis picked other Jewish men, along with some women and Lithuanian "Communists", and locked them up in the same Raudondvaris manor. This time, the Germans told the Lithuanian auxiliaries to carry out the massacre on their own, since the Tilsit Gestapo allegedly lacked the manpower for the operation. Fifteen Lithuanian policemen shot the victims and buried the bodies. An estimated 300 Jews were killed in the two massacres. On September 11, 1941, the Nazis liquidated the Virbalis Ghetto. Its remaining Jewish inmates, mostly women and children, were loaded onto carts and driven by Lithuanians to the same ditch in the Vigainis field, where they were all shot. The last surviving Jews from the Kybartai Ghetto were also murdered there on the same day. In all likelihood, the total number of people killed in the Vigainis field is 2,000.