Telšiai

Jews began settling in Telšiai during the fifteenth century. By the end of the nineteenth century, about 3,000 Jews lived in the town, accounting for 51 percent of the local population. In 1940, Telšiai had nearly 2,800 Jewish inhabitants, making up 48 percent of the population. Most of the Jews earned their livelihood in crafts, commerce and peddling. Telšiai was renowned for its educational institutions, among them a special school for girls founded in 1865 by the Jewish Enlightenment poet Yehuda Leib Gordon (YaLaG), as well as the Great Yeshiva, established in 1880, with 400 students. Following the Soviet annexation of Lithuania in 1940, all shops were nationalized and the Jewish educational institutions, including the Yeshiva, were closed. The German army occupied Telšiai on June 26, 1941. In July, a few hundred Jews from Telšiai and the nearby town of Alsedziai were rounded up, assigned to forced labor, and then murdered in a forest near the Geruliai camp by the Einsatzkommando 2 unit. At the end of August 1941, 500 Jews from Telšiai, predominantly women and children, along with Jews from the nearby towns of Alsedziai, Varniai, Zarenai, Laukuva, Luoke and Nevarenai, were interned in the Telšiai ghetto. The men were murdered. On December 24-25, 1941, the ghetto was liquidated and its entire population murdered in the Rainiai Forest. The Red Army liberated Telšiai in the summer of 1944. The German army entered Telšiai 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 Telšiai 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 Telšiai, while the others were murdered by Lithuanians.In Telšiai, 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.