Following the slaughter of the Jews, several Soviet supporters were brought to the murder site and killed making a total of 55 people massacred.

[1] The anarchist Emma Goldman lived in the town for a short time as a child, when her father operated an inn here.

[2] While in Papilė, she witnessed a "half-naked human body being lashed with a knout";[3] this experience terrified her and contributed to her lifelong distaste for violent authority.

Upon hearing that Dublin had elected a Jew as its mayor, the legendary American baseball player Yogi Berra famously quipped, "Only in America."

Ahron Dovid Burack, who became a prominent Orthodox rabbi and yeshiva leader in the United States, was born in Papilė in the early 1890s.