Sculpture “Girl”

In 1941, a pioneer camp was established in Palanga. Children were housed in buildings intended for recreation. A significant number of the children in the pioneer camp were Jewish. The boys lived in a two-story house, and the girls lived separately. The children were supervised by teachers and leaders (older students, members of the Communist Youth League). The children played, went to the beach, swam, and collected amber. However, the rest at the camp lasted only two weeks. On June 22, 1941, the first day of the war between Germany and the Soviet Union, the Palanga Pioneer Camp was attacked. The children were taken out of the city in groups and sent towards Latvia. Their fates varied: some were stopped by Wehrmacht troops and returned to Palanga, while others were evacuated deep into the Soviet Union. The Jewish children who were returned to Palanga were locked up in one of the synagogues in Palanga, together with Jewish women and other Jewish children from Palanga. On Vytauto Street, next to the Palanga Summer Reading Room of the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania, stands a sculpture by sculptor V. A. Vertulienė entitled “Girl” (architect V. Daninskis). The sculpture is dedicated to the Palanga pioneer camp that was destroyed in the early days of World War II. During the Soviet era, this work was called “Pioneers.”