Students from the Panevezys Yeshiva in Lithuania, on the eve of World War I. At that time, more than 6,000 Jews were living in Panevezys, which was home to a wide range of educational institutions. There were also 10 synagogues and religious study houses in the city, and the Panevezys Yeshiva, a source of great pride to the Jewish community, established in 1909.Only 20 of the most learned and talented men were accepted to the Yeshiva study program, where they also received a monthly stipend.
At the beginning of World War I, the Yeshiva students were exiled to Russia together with all the Jews of Panevezys. After the war, most of the Yeshiva students returned to the city, but the communists closed down the Yeshiva and its Rabbi died broken hearted in 1919. However, while the war was still going on, in 1916, Rabbi Yosef Kahaneman opened a second Yeshiva in Panevezys and gradually expanded it.
On the eve of World War II, approximately 6,000 Jews lived in Panevezys, about one fifth of the total population. In July 1941, one month after the Germans invaded Lithuania, the Panevezys ghetto was established, and the Jews of the city and the surrounding towns were incarcerated there. During the month of August, some 8,700 ghetto inhabitants were taken out and shot by Lithuanian policemen and SS Sicherheitspolizei (security police) units. The Panevezys Yeshiva was destroyed in the Holocaust, but its founder, who immigrated to Eretz Israel (Mandatory Palestine) in 1940, established it anew in Bnei Brak.
Yad Vashem Photo Archives, 3238/41
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