On 1 September 1941, 5,000 Jewish men, women and children were murdered by members of the SS and their Lithuanian helpers in Mariampolė. The victims were for the most part Jewish residents of the town of Mariampol and surrounding areas. After the war, a monument was erected at the site of shootings on the initiative of Lithuania's Jewish Community.
Around 2,800 Jews lived in Mariampolė in 1939. The town, centre of the Suvalkija region in southwest Lithuania, was a hub for Jewish culture. The first Hebrew college of the Jewish Diaspora was founded here already in 1919. After the Soviet invasion in 1940, the German Wehrmacht occupied Mariampolė on 23 June 1941. In August, orders were issued to intern all the Jews of Mariampolė and surrounding towns of Kazlų Rūda, Liudvinavas and Kalvarija in a ghetto. The Jewish men and women were then seperately murdered in former military barracks on the city outskirts. A part of the ghetto residents was forced into slave labour. On 1 September, Lithuanian auxiliary police, under the command of Einsatzkommando 3 (task force) of the SS-Einsatzgruppe A (mobile killing squad), shot well over 5,000 ghetto inhabitants in a ditch outside the town.
According to the SS, 5,090 Jewish men, women and children were shot in Mariampolė and buried in mass graves on 1 September 1941. It is assumed that the number of victims was much higher. The memorial stone in Mariampol speaks of 8,000 Jewish and 1,000 other victims.
The memorial, renovated in 1992, consists of a concrete stele. The Hebrew and Lithuanian inscription of the granite memorial plaque reads: »Here, the blood of 8,000 Jewish children, women and men, as well as 1,000 people of other nationalities was shed. They were brutally murdered in September 1941 by National Socialist murderers and their Lithuanian helpers.«
- Name
- Marijampolės masinio žydų naikinimo vieta
- Address
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Varpo gatvė
68307 Marijampolė - Open
- The monument is accessible at all times.