The Shoah (1939–1945)
Shooting of Biržai
8 août 1941·Biržai
The toll is reproduced exactly as the source states it — never rounded, never added to another. Tolls overlap from one event to the next.
The Jews of the town, confined for weeks in a barn and in the synagogue, are led in columns toward the forest of Pakamponys, where ditches were dug the day before by requisitioned peasants; men, women and children are shot there in the same day by the mobile detachment and its local auxiliaries.
The Jews of Biržai, one of the oldest communities in northern Lithuania, are locked in the synagogue quarter in early summer, then led in columns toward the forest of Pakamponys, a few kilometers from the town. The pits had been dug the day before by requisitioned men. The killing lasts a single day and leaves almost no survivors; the report written by the commander of the security detachment records its course and tally, making it one of the best-documented Lithuanian massacres.
- Period :
- The Shoah (1939–1945)
- Type :
- Shoah
- Region :
- Central and Eastern Europe
- Country :
- Lituanie
Christoph Dieckmann, *Deutsche Besatzungspolitik in Litauen* ; « Le rapport Jäger » ; Yitzhak Arad, *The Holocaust in the Soviet Union*.