Šiauliai Ghetto

The Šiauliai or Shavli Ghetto was a Jewish ghetto established in July 1941 by Nazi Germany in the city of Šiauliai (Yiddish: שאַװל‎, Shavl) in Nazi-occupied Lithuania during the Holocaust. The ghetto comprised two areas – one in the Kaukazas suburb and one on Trakai Street. Both were liquidated by July 1944, and their inhabitants were killed or transferred to Nazi concentration camps. In 1939, one quarter of the population of Šiauliai was Jewish, about 8,000 persons. By the end of World War II, only about 500 Jews of the city had survived.

Šiauliai was the second largest city in independent pre-war Lithuania, and its Jewish community, numbering 8,000 in 1939, was the second largest in the country. The city had elected a Jewish deputy mayor. Jews were involved in the manufacture of leather products, and there was a Jewish-owned shoe factory. Jews were also involved in the iron and chemical industries, and many worked as clerks, laborers, and craftsmen.

The Jewish community supported numerous cultural and social institutions and organizations. Among these were Yavneh, a religious secondary school, a Hebrew secondary school, an elementary school, and a kindergarten, as well as several Yiddish schools. There were 15 synagogues, a yeshiva, and two libraries.

After the start of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, and before the arrival of the Germans in Lithuania, several hundred Jews from the city fled to Russia. German soldiers entered Šiauliai on 26 June 1941. Of the Jews who remained, several thousand were massacred by the Germans and their Lithuanian collaborators, both before the ghetto was established and thereafter.

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