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Gargzdai (Gorzd), Lithuania

Gargzdai and the Holocaust

by

John S. Jaffer


    I.    Jewish Residents of Gargzdai killed in the Holocaust

   The total number of Jewish residents killed in or near Gargzdai is at least 500: 200 men killed on June 24, 1941, and 300 women and children killed on September 14 and 16, 1941.
    In November, 2004 Yad Vashem posted online its Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names. A search for the location Gargzdai or Gorzd yields a list of 389 names. These names include persons killed in Gorzd, and those born in Gorzd who perished elsewhere. Each name is linked to further information from the report in the Yad Vashem archives, as well as a copy of the report. This site is an invaluable resource for anyone researching Gorzd.
    A list containing names of 78 victims was compiled by the Gargzdai Town Secretary during the War: Jewish residents of Gargzdai killed in June and September, 1941. The original list is now kept at Gargzdai Minijos Secondary School.
    The events surrounding these killings are set forth below.

    II.    Einsatzgruppe A

    Germany invaded the Soviet Union beginning on June 22, 1941. Mobile killing squads known as Einsatzgruppen followed the German Army into the occupied areas. There were four Einsatzgruppen (A, B, C and D), which were in turn divided into smaller units called Einsatzkommandos and Sonderkommandos.
    Einsatzgruppe A, commanded by SS - Brigadeführer Walther Stahlecker, carried on mass executions of the Jewish population in Lithuania and other Baltic areas. Einsatzkommando 3 (a subunit of Einsatzgruppe A) operated in Lithuania. The deeds of Einsatzkommando 3 were set forth in an infamous document known as the Jäger report, which was dated December 1, 1941.   In that document Karl Jäger, commander of Einsatzkommando 3, set forth totals of executions by location in Lithuania. The executions outlined in the report began on July 4, 1941, and totalled over 137,000.

    III.    Einsatzkommando Tilsit

    The execution of the Jewish men in Gargzdai took place on June 24, 1941, prior to the first execution listed in the Jäger report. These killings in Gargzdai were the first mass execution following Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, and may be regarded as the start of the Holocaust.   The group which perpetrated the killings is sometimes called Einsatzkommando Tilsit.  Tilsit was in East Prussia, close to the border with the Soviet Union.
    Einsatzkommando Tilsit was not formally part of Einsatzgruppe A, but acted as an adjunct to it.  The Tilsit unit was commanded by SS-Major Hans - Joachim Böhme, and composed of personnel from the Gestapo and Security Service in Tilsit, as well as police from Memel (the latter led by Oberführer Bernhard Fischer-Schweder).  It committed mass executions in the area of the Soviet Union close to the border with Germany.
    The killings by the Tilsit unit were reported to Berlin in the same "Operational Situation Reports" which reported the killings by Einsatzgruppe A.  Report No. 14, dated July 6, 1941, lists the killings in Garsden (the German name for Gargzdai), as well as in Krottingen (Kretinga) and Polangen (Palanga). The Report lists these killings under the heading of Einsatzgruppe A, but states that "Tilsit was used as a base" for these "major cleansing operations." The Report sets forth that 201 persons were executed in Garsden, and gives a cover story to explain the Garsden shootings - that the "Jewish population had supported the Russian border guards." Similar cover stories were given with regard to the other two towns.
    In Report No. 19, dated July 11, executions in additional towns are attributed to "Stapo Tilsit," including Tauroggen (Taurage), Georgenburg (Jurbarkas), and Mariampol (Marijampole). The author no longer found it necessary to give any supposed excuse for the executions.
    In Report 26, dated July 18, a total of 3302 executions are attributed to "Police Unit - Tilsit," and these are set forth separately from Einsatzgruppe A.
    Stahlecker later wrote a document dated October 15, 1941, known as the Stahlecker Report, which referred to a total of 5502 killed by State Police Security Service Tilsit.
    The summary figures in Report 26 and the Stahlecker Report presumably include the 201 persons previously reported as killed in Garsden.
    Scholars have more recently discovered in the archives of the former Soviet Union Report from Staatspolizei Tilsit to RSHA, July 1, 1941. This document was evidently used as a source for Operational Situation Report No. 14 (which was dated five days later), and also contains additional information.

    Several members of Einsatzkommando Tilsit were prosecuted by the West German Government for War Crimes. These trials took place in Ulm and Dortmund, West Germany, for crimes including the killings at Gargzdai/Garsden.  Summaries of War Crimes prosecutions related to Gargzdai (including the sentences) are located at the site for the University of Amsterdam.

    IV.    Killing of the Jewish Men of Gargzdai

    The Court in Ulm entered a lengthy Judgment which is a major source of information about the Gargzdai killings.  This Judgment was published in Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, Vol. XV, University Press Amsterdam (1976), and in KZ-Verbrechen vor deutschen Gerichten, Band II: Einsatzkommando Tilsit - Der Prozess zu Ulm, (Frankfurt am Mein: Europaïsche Verlagsanstalt, 1966). The judgment is summarized in the Gorzd Yizkor Book, pages 75-79 [Image 426].  Further information about the killings is contained on page 38 of the Gorzd Yizkor Book [Image 463].
    Two letters about the killings are posted at the JewishGen Yizkor Book Project. One is a letter in the Gorzd Yizkor Book from Leyb Shoys (or Leibke Shauss), dated February 5, 1945, page 342-344 [Yiddish section]. Shoys had returned to Gargzdai, collected information from town residents, and wrote this report to his brother in South Africa about the killings. A similar letter from Shoys to his uncle Khaim Shoys in America is set forth in the book Lite, as the Chapter titled "The Destruction of Gorzd". Lite gives the name only of the uncle who received the letter and not the nephew who wrote it, but the Gorzd Yizkor Book, page 38, identifies the author as Liebke Shauss.
    Further details are contained in the Gorzd Chapter in Pinkas Hakehillot Lita, also posted at the JewishGen Yizkor Book Project.
    In the Court Judgment, the following facts are reported:
    At the time of the attack, Gargzdai had a population of around 3000, of which 600-700 were Jews.  This included Jewish refugees who had come from Klaipeda/Memel after Germany annexed the Memel Territory in 1939.
    Germany attacked at 3:05 AM on June 22, 1941.  There was heavy resistance by the Soviet army, and the town was not secured until the afternoon of June 22.  During the fighting, most of the civilians hid in a cellar, and much of the town was burned.
    The Gestapo and SD (Security Service) from Tilsit began to round up the Jewish men, as well as suspected Communists, for execution.  They were held overnight in the park.  The males were forced to work on defense trenches, an old rabbi was abused, and a Jewish boy was shot for allegedly not working hard enough.
    On June 24, the men were led to a trench. They were shot by a firing squad consisting of 20 persons, including the Tilsit personnel as well as police from Memel.  Some of the victims who were refugees from Memel knew their executioners among the Memel police. The total number executed on that day was 201 persons.
    The Shoys letters add some additional details. The men were going to be shot on an earlier day, but a messenger arrived and ordered the shooting to be delayed. The men were kept without food or water until the 24th. The shootings took place near a house belonging to David Wolfowitz, at around 1:00 PM.
    The Gorzd Yizkor Book [Image 463] states that the killings took place in a field at the end of Tamozhne St.  A town diagram in the book [Image 13] shows this name for the main street leading west to the old border and Laugallen. ("Tamozhnya" is the Russian word for "Customs.") The Report of Staatspolizei Tilsit states that the 201 persons killed on June 24, 1941 included one woman. The persons committing the shooting were selected by the police director in Memel, and consisted of 30 men with one police officer.

    V.    Killing of the Jewish Women and Children

    The women and children of Gargzdai were initially rounded up at the same time as the men. After the men were killed, the women and children were kept prisoner for several months.  The Gorzd Memorial book and the Shoys letters say they were kept in the village of Anelishke and forced to perform hard labor.  Then, during September of 1941, they were taken to the woods northeast of Vezaiciai, on the road to Kule (Kuliai). The Gorzd Book says the children were killed by the Germans with bayonets, and their mothers and grandmothers killed two days later.
    The Court Judgment points to statements that women and children from Garsden were killed by "betrunkene litauische Hilfspolizisten" (drunken Lithuanian auxiliary police) in August/September 1941, but further states the Court could not determine if Gestapo personnel were involved.  The Court concluded that a minimum of 100 were killed.
    The monument at one of the women's killing sites states that the killing occurred in October, 1941, and 300 were killed. Yosif Levinson, Skausmo Knyga - The Book of Sorrow (Vilnius: Vaga Publishers, 1997), page 110. However, the monuments are not necessarily accurate sources of information as to dates. The monument at the men's site in Gargzdai has a clearly erroneous date of July, 1941 despite the known date of June 24. Pinkas Hakehillot Lita gives the dates of the women's killings as September 14 and 16, and states that about 300 were killed.
    There was one survivor of the women's shooting, Rachel (or Eyne) Yami, who provided chilling detail to Leib Shoys which is set forth in his letters.     

Karte des Deutschen Reiches (1921-1929)

Scale in Meters (1000m = .62 miles)

Detail of forest area from Stadt- und Landkreis Memel (1941)
A place name sometimes found in accounts of the killing of the women and children is Ašmoniške, which is not shown on the above German maps. For example, Bubnys indicates at p. 42 that on the way to the second killing, the column turned into the forest near Ašmoniškiai. The Destruction of Gorzd in Lite states that the killings took place in the Ashmonishke forest. Dr. Meyer states in the Gorzd Memorial Book, p. 38 (image 463), that the killings took place in the Ashmanien woods.

Asmoniške is shown in a clearing within the Vezaitine Forest (Miskas Vezaitine) on the Lithuanian Army topographical maps from 1938-39, very close to the border between maps 1201 and 1301.

The symbol with the deer horns, to the left of the "A" in Asmoniške, may represent a forest service station or ranger's house. Similar symbols are used for these designations on Russian and German maps. On the German Stadt- und Landkreis Memel map above, a similar symbol and the notation "W.W." [Waldwärter = forest guard] is shown just above the latitude line, close to where Asmoniške is shown on the Lithuanian Army topographic maps.

Four Lithuanian Army topographic maps of this region may be combined as shown below:

Combined Excerpts from Sheets 1200, 1201, 1300, 1301

The name Oszmianiszki is shown on the 1:300,000 Übersichtkarte map of Tilsit at www.mapywig.org.

    VI.    Orders to Einsatzkommando Tilsit

    The men's killing in Gargzdai is particularly important to historians of the Holocaust because it was the first in the Soviet Union.  The source, timing and content of orders to Böhme concerning the first killings are the subjects of controversy.

    VII.    Visiting the Memorials

    The Memorial to the Men's killing is on the west end of Klaipedos gatve (Klaipeda Street), between the bus station and an apartment complex.  A photo of the Men's Monument is on this website.  The monument erroneously dates the killings in July, 1941, rather than on June 24.  Also on this website is a German aerial reconnaissance photo, taken in January, 1945, obtained from the U.S. National Archives, which shows the area of the killing site.
    There are two Monuments to the killing of the women and children.  Both are in the Vezaitines Forest, northeast of Vezaiciai, on Road 166 leading to Kuliai. The location of Vezaiciai and Road 166 to Kuliai may be seen at the Mapquest link on the Gargzdai main page. As of August, 2001, there were separate marked entrances off the east side of Road 166 leading to the two sites.  The more northeasterly site is easily located, because there is a direct road from 166 to the site.  The more southwesterly site cannot be located without a knowledgeable guide, or assistance from personnel in the Town Hall of Vezaiciai. Finding the site requires the correct choice at two unmarked forks in the unpaved road, and then parking at a further unmarked spot to walk on a path through the woods.  Photos of the Women's Monuments are on this website.

    VIII.    The Kovno Ghetto

    A number of residents or former residents of Gargzdai who were elsewhere in Lithuania at the time of the invasion were imprisoned in the Kovno Ghetto.  Many died there due to illness caused by intolerable living conditions, or were killed in various "Actions" during which residents were selected for execution.  Executions took place at the old forts ringed around Kovno: at Fourth Fort, Seventh Fort and Ninth Fort. The ghetto was liquidated in 1944, with the residents transported to Dachau and Stutthof Concentration Camps.  Some in the Ghetto tried to hide in underground bunkers, but most of the hidden persons died when the Nazis set the Ghetto on fire.
    Gorzd Yizkor Book, page 351 (Hebrew Section), posted at the JewishGen Yizkor Book Project, contains a list of Gorzd residents killed in the Kovno Ghetto and in concentration camps, as well as those who fought in the Lithuanian Division or fell in battle at the front.

Gargzdai main page
Aerial Photo of Gargzdai  |  Identification of Features on Aerial Photo  |  Aerial Photo of Killing Site
    Photos, Page 2 (Women's Memorials)    |    Photos, Page 4 (Men's Memorial)

Copyright © 2002-2009 John S. Jaffer