Murder story of the Jews of the Nowe Święciany at the Poligon camp

"Poligon" was the popular designation of the site of a former Polish army camp. According to some accounts, as early as the end of June 1941 the anti-Soviet Lithuanian insurgents shot at least eight Jews at this site, as suspected Soviet collaborators. Then, in late 1941, the Nazis set up a camp for the Jews of the area at the "Poligon". Jews from Święciany, Nowe Święciany, Ignalino, Podbrodzie, Daugieliszki, Labanoras, Syłgudyszki, Stojaciszki and other settlements were assembled there. On October 7-9, 1941, the Jewish inmates of the "Poligon Camp" were shot by the so-called Ypatingasis Būrys ("Special Squad" in Lithuanian), a pro-Nazi collaborationist military formation, which had come to Nowe Święciany from Vilna for this purpose. They were assisted by a number of local Lithuanian policemen, and by volunteers from among the former anti-Soviet Lithuanian partisans. The initiator of this massacre was SS Einsatzkommando 3. On December 1, 1941, the commander of the Einsatzkommando, Karl Jäger, reported, inter alia, that 3,726 Jews – 1,169 men, 1,840 women, and 717 children – had been shot by his unit in Święciany (i.e., at the "Poligon" camp) on October 9 that year. The numbers reported by Jäger seem to be an underestimate, given the size of the Jewish population of the area in the summer of 1941. The accepted estimate of the number of victims is 6,000-8,000.