Murder Story of Telsiai Jews in Rainiai

On June 28, 1941, the Jews from Telšiai were sent from their homes to a camp on the Rainiai estate, four kilometers from Telšiai, amongst granaries and dairy farms. The men were brutally beaten and forced to exhume corpses of Lithuanian citizens previously murdered by the Soviets. On July 14, 1941, eighty Jewish men were seized from the camp, brought to pits in the nearby forest, and shot. The following day, on July 15, all the remaining Jewish men in the camp, including former inhabitants of Alsėdziai, were taken in groups to the forest and murdered. Two days later, a number of Jewish women and children who had remained in the camp were brought to the pits in the forest and murdered. On December 24-25, 1941, the Telšiai ghetto was liquidated. All of its inmates, mainly women and children, were taken to pits in the Rainiai Forest and murdered. According to a Soviet report, 800 Jewish men, women and children were murdered in the Rainiai Forest. Sixty-four women who had managed to flee the massacre survived the war. 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.