Obj. ID: 58610  Old Holocaust memorial near Vilkija, Lithuania, 1991

In August 1941, Vilkija became one of the most important centers of Jewish concentration in the Kaunas region. Jews from other areas were moved to the ghetto of Vilkija. “There were two mass shootings of Jews in the Pakarklė forest at Jaučakiai (2 kilometers from Vilkija). The first was an organized mass murder operation on August 28, 1941, during which 402 Jews were shot, including 76 men, 192 women and 134 children. The second mass murder was at the end of September 1941. Members of the command post unit and the police of Vilkija were guarding Jews held in the Vilkija synagogue. Together with the battalion troops, they removed about 400 Jewish men, women, and children from the synagogue and marched them in a column to the mass murder site.

On December 4, 1945, according to information contained in paperwork by Vilkija executive committee chairman Skaudys, deputy Armanis, and Beržanskas, up to 800 murder victims were found buried at the mass grave in Pakarklė forest at Jaučakiai village. In 1958, the remains of Soviet activists, Communists, Jews and others from Veliuona, Seredžius and Čekiskė districts murdered from 1941 to 1945, were taken to the mass grave in Pakarklė forest at Jaučakiai. The remains of about 3,500 people were buried in a common grave.

The memorial was installed in 1991. A new monument was built in its stead in 2021, see here.

Unique Site Code 10920

Status Protected by the state since 1993-02-10