Jews in Lithuania (9)

Biržai is a town in northern Lithuania. Biržai is famous for its reconstructed Biržai Castle manor, and the whole region is renowned for its many traditional-recipe beer breweries. The name of the town is of Lithuanian origin and is spelled in different forms in other languages: Birsen (German), Birże (Polish), Birzhai (Биржай, Russian - pre-1917 Биржи), and בירז/Birz or Birzh (Yiddish) and simplified to Birzai in English. The town's first written mention dates to 1455. The construction of Biržai Castle began in 1586, and the town was granted Magdeburg rights in 1589. The town's history is closely associated with the Radziwiłł family (Lithuanian: Radvila). Jerzy Radziwiłł was the first noble to settle in the town. Later, after his daughter, Barbara Radziwiłł married the Grand Duke of Lithuania and King of Poland Sigismund II Augustus in 1547, the power and influence of the family grew immensely. The Radvila family established a Protestant church and school, and the town became a cultural center of the Protestant Reformation in Lithuania. In 1869 the town had about 2,600 residents. Thirty years later the population had grown to 4,400. During World War II, the entire Jewish population of Biržai was annihilated. 15 Jews were shot to death by German soldiers at the Biržai Jewish cemetery in July 1941. On 8 August 1941, Gestapo and Lithuanian collaborators murdered the entire Jewish population of the town, some 2,400 people, by shooting them to death at a mass grave in a forest grove 3 kilometres (1.9 miles) outside the town. The town was almost completely burned down during the war. Oldtown was destroyed. In 1968 the population reached 10,000. In 2020 the population was 10,146.

Kudirkos Naumiestis is in the Šakiai district municipality, Lithuania. It is located 25 km (16 mi) south-west of Šakiai. The settlement was first mentioned in 1561 as a village called Duoliebaičiai. In 1639 the town was renamed Vladislavovas (Polish: Władysławów) by Cecilia Renata of Austria after her husband Władysław IV Vasa. He granted the town Magdeburg rights in 1643. In 1934 the town was renamed Kudirkos Naumiestis in honor of the Lithuanian patriot and composer of the Lithuanian national anthem, Vincas Kudirka, who lived there from 1895 to his death in 1899 and is buried there. A well-organized Jewish community also lived in there and produced a number of prominent rabbis and Jewish scholars. Its name in Yiddish was נײַשטאָט־שאַקי (Nayshtot-Shaki). Before World War II the town had about 700-800 Jewish residents. In 1941, an Einsatzgruppen of Germans and Lithuanian collaborators murdered the local Jewish population in mass executions. Hundreds of people were massacred.

The Museum is located in the former Vilnius Gubernia courts building which was built in 1899. During the Soviet occupations (in 1940-1941 and 1944-1990), the building belonged to the repressive Soviet Institutions (NKVD, NKGB, MGB, KGB) and during the Nazi occupation (in 1941-1944), it was owned by German security. This is where plans for the annihilation of the population and persecution of dissenters were created. During the occupations, there was a prison in the basement of the building, and during the second Soviet occupation, there was a chamber for executing death sentences. The names of those who fought for freedom and who were shot by soviets in this prison in 1944-1947 are engraved on the side of the building. In addition to the Museum, the building currently houses courts of the Republic of Lithuania, divisions of the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania, and the Lithuanian Special Archives, where archival documents of the Soviet security are stored.

The area has been mentioned since the middle of the 17th century. In 1653 a church was built. At the beginning of the 19th century, there was a parish school. The town began to grow in the 19th century, when a post office was built here on the road Šiauliai - Telšiai. Kužiai suffered severely during the two World Wars. During the Second World War, the Nazis shot about 8,000 prisoners of Šiauliai Ghetto and Šiauliai Prison in the Lužtinas Forest, 1.5 km northeast of Kužiai. After the Second World War , Lithuanian partisans operated at the Kužiai near Šiauliai – Mažeikiai railway. The population of Kužiai in 2021 was 1.033.

Twenty-fifth largest city in Lithuania. The town's name was first documented in the 16th century. Since a clay that is ideal for fine ceramics was detected near Kuršėnai, pottery has long been thriving in the city. The history of Kuršėnai Manor begins in 1564 when Sigismund Augustus gave the said manor as a fief to George Despot-Zenovich, the Castellan of Polotsk. Soon, a settlement began to grow in the manor lands on the other side of the Venta, and in 1569 the first wooden church was erected. In 1621, the estate went to S. Pac, the Grand Treasurer of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and a decade later the manor became the property of George Gruzewski and his wife. At the end of the 18th century, Kuršėnai were inherited by Stephen Gruzewski. The estate of Kurshan was under Russian rule from 1795 to 1914. The mansion and the park were devastated by the Germans who occupied the manor during the First World War and took away the most valuable things. In 1914 the town's Jewish population was expelled by the Russian army, who accused them of collaborating with the Germans. The fire of 1915 destroyed the peasant farms, barns, and sheds. The manor belonged to George Gruzewski at that time. Owing to advanced farming, the estate was flourishing during the interwar period. The manor was nationalized in 1940. Outside the manor, the town itself began to grow in 1873 when a railway station was built here. In 1939 there were around 900 Jews living in the village (out of the total population of around 3000). Their persecution began in July, 1941.

Litvaks Ziskind Leiba Karnofsky and his wife Estera Tille (Toby) lived in Vilkija in the second half of the 19th century. Their main business was known to be waste collecting and trading. Being simple people themselves, they managed to raise an outstanding personality. After emigration to the USA, they brought up ten children of their own and one black boy, a foundling, who was desperately looking for food in the dumpsite of New Orleans. Having recognized the child's talent for music, the Karnofsky's helped him buy a cornet and encouraged him to start singing. The boy happened to be the future Jazz genius Louis Armstrong, who later described his warm relationship with the Litvak family in his memoirs "Karnofsky's Document". "They saw that something was in my soul", wrote the performer. Louis Armstrong learnt Yiddish and wore a chain  with the Star of David on his neck for the rest of his life, while his Jazz compositions featured motifs of Jewish music. The mission of "The Karnofsky Project" Foundation, active in the USA till the present day, is to help talented children from indigent families purchase musical instruments.

This book is a monumental effort to narrate the history of the Lithuanian town of Eishyshok (Eišiškės), from its foundation until the tragic events of the Nazi atrocities of 1939. The Jewish people of Eishyshok, their lives, their community, and the economy are meticulously researched and exposed in a literary masterpiece which enables the reader to dig deeper into what occurred in the city of Eishyshok in the 1930s and 1940s. Part 1 presents the origins and history of Eishyshok. Part 2 analyzes the religious aspects of the Jewish people in Eishyshok. Part 3 is dedicated to the economy. Part 4 exposes detailed aspects of the family structure and the community. Part 5 is about modern times with an emphasis on emigration to America. Part 6 is the chronicles of the horrors from the years 1933-1941. Title: There once was a world: A 900-year chronicle of the Shtetl of Eishyshok Author: Yaffa Eliach Pages: 864 First published in 1998 ISBN: 9780316232395

The issue of the genocide of the Jews in Lithuania and the decision, in 2011, to add to the Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights a single room dedicated to the tragedy of the Lithuanians Jews. Details about the museum's name change from Museum of Genocide Victims to Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights. Published: 30-03-2018

The museum is located in the former KGB headquarters and is informally referred to as the KGB Museum. The museum is dedicated mostly to collecting and exhibiting documents relating to the 50-year occupation of Lithuania by the Soviet Union, the anti-Soviet Lithuanian partisans, and the victims of the arrests, deportations, and executions that took place during this period. Before 2018, the museum was known as the Museum of Genocide Victims, reflecting a broadened definition of the genocide used by the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre. Although these events are considered a genocide only by a few historians. The building, completed in 1890, originally housed the court of the Vilna Governorate.