The Holocaust in Telšiai

The Holocaust in Telšiai (Yiddish: Telz) was carried out by the local Lithuanian leadership with occasional supervision by Nazi German units.

[1] Followers of the Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF) took over the town, and started a campaign of violence against the Jews: breaking into homes, desecrating synagogues and Torah scrolls.

[4] On 25 June the German army entered Telšiai, and Major Alfonsas Svilas, a Lithuanian nationalist, was placed in charge of the town.

[1] On 24 June, LAF regional leader Jonas Noreika, based in Plungė traveled to Telšiai to meet Svilas.

[1] Noreika's deputy in LAF Telšiai, Bronius Juodikis, the chief of police, organized the killing, eight German SD members and about 50 Lithuanian activists participated.

[8] According to testimony of a Lithuanian perpetrator, the Jews were lined up in groups of 30 to 40, ordered to undress, push the bodies of those killed previously into the pit, and then lie down on top of them.

[1] Younger women, a few hundred, were sent to work at local farms,[1] though this often was in fact rape by the hands of their "employers".

The women were forced to wear Star of David armbands, but were allowed to leave the ghetto for work and or to beg.

[1] In total, of those women who escaped the ghetto, some 64 survived when the Soviet army liberated the area from the Nazis.