Murder Story of Telsiai Jews in Geruliai

...Then the men were separated from the women and children. The women were allowed to return home, and the men were taken away somewhere. We subsequently found out that they were sent to the camps at Rainiai, Vesheveniai and Giruliai, where they were shot ...

... A few days after the slaughter in Telsiai, they brought the remaining men, together with the women and children, to the Geruliai camp. The murderers brought the clothes of the victims to the Rainiai camp, where they distributed them amongst themselves. At Geruliai, they did not send any more Jews to work. There were just individual instances, when the farmers would come to the camp and forcefully take the girls to work in the fields. Every night the murderers would invade the shacks and steal anything of value. [Chana Pelc also tells] of the nights of rape, during which the murderers would rape the Jewish women and girls, even the young ones. This would happen almost every night. They were kept like this at Geruliai until August 30, 1941. That day, two heavy trucks arrived, laden with armed Lithuanians. They toured the camp. During the night, the Lithuanians became drunk, entered the shacks and demanded good furs, silver and other valuable objects. On Shabbat morning, the notice was secretly spread to pack bundles, write their names on them and prepare to move to the ghetto in Telsiai ... The German army entered Telsiai on June 26, 1941. The following day, the town’s Jewish inhabitants were driven out of their homes and their property was plundered. They were then imprisoned in cowsheds and barns on the Rainiai estate.The commander of the Lithuanians appointed a council to represent the Jews, which strove to improve their difficult living conditions. On July 14, 1941, a number of Germans and Lithuanians appeared at the estate and began to abuse the Jews as a crowd of Telsiai residents looked on. That day and the next, all the Jewish men at the estate were murdered, as were Jews from Alsedziai and from a number of nearby towns and villages.On July 22, 1941, the women and children were taken from the Rainiai estate to the Geruliai camp, which was severely overcrowded. They were held together with the women and children of nearby towns, almost 2,000 people in total. On Saturday, August 30, 1941, the women and children were driven out of their huts. Five hundred women and young girls were then marched to Telsiai, while the others were murdered by Lithuanians.In Telsiai, the 500 women and children were imprisoned in a ghetto near the lake under very harsh conditions. Encircled by a high wooden fence topped by barbed wire, the ghetto’s gate was guarded by Lithuanians. A number of the women toiled for Lithuanian farmers, who fully exploited their workers, while others worked in Lithuanian homes as servants.Female inhabitants of the ghetto, Dr. Blat, Dr. Shapira, and Dr. Srolovits, established a makeshift clinic to treat women that were ill or in labor. Despite their efforts, all of the babies born in the ghetto died shortly after their birth. A typhus epidemic also raged in the ghetto.On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur of 5702 (September 1941), the women of the ghetto gathered to pray – with several leading the prayers – in the Beit Midrash inside the ghetto. Other women, having undergone brutal hardships and suffering, turned to the local priest seeking to convert to Christianity.From December 22, 1941, the women who worked in the villages were returned to the ghetto. The development was construed as a sign of the ghetto’s impending liquidation, prompting many women to flee the ghetto via the lake or under the fence. Dozens of the women who escaped reached the Siauliai ghetto.On December 24-25, 1941, all the women remaining in the ghetto were taken to the Rainiai estate, where they were murdered.Of those who escaped, sixty-four survived until liberation.