Tag Archives: Holocaust in Svencionys

Gathering in the Forest to Remember the 8000 Jews of the Svintsyan Region


Some eighty people gathered at midday today, in an eerie mix of wind and autumn sun, at the forest mass grave memorial site just outside the town once known in Yiddish as Svintsyánke (or Nay-Svintsyán; now Lithuania’s Švenčioneliai, interwar Poland’s Nowo-Święciany). Such is the custom every year on the first Sunday in October, to remember the eight thousand Jewish civilians murdered there after a gruesome ten days of imprisonment, deprivation of basic human needs, and torture, in makeshift barracks here at the site, in October 1941. The eight thousand Jews were marched (with the lame and the old transported on wagons) from their hometowns in the area to the site on September 27th. They were all shot over a two-day period on the 7th and 8th of October 1941.

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Posted in Cemeteries and Mass Graves, Commemorations for Destroyed Communities, Events, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Poland, Svintsyán (Švenčionys) | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Gathering in the Forest to Remember the 8000 Jews of the Svintsyan Region