Palanga Jewish massacre site and grave

On 26 June 1941, women, children and the elderly were imprisoned in one of the synagogues in Palanga. A few days later they were moved to the former village of Valteriškės (now Vilimiškės), where a temporary ghetto was set up. Although the whole area was surrounded by a barbed wire fence and guarded by guards, the inhabitants of Palanga were not afraid to go to the fences and offer food. The women of the ghetto were forced to do various public works in Palanga: they cleaned the streets of the town, transported amber raw materials to the warehouses, etc. On 11 October 1941 the liquidation of the temporary ghetto began. Jewish women with children and the elderly were told that they would be transported to another ghetto near Darbėnai. They were ordered to hand over their most valuable possessions: money and jewellery. On the night of 11-12 October, groups of 30 people were taken in trucks from Valteriškės to the Kunigiskes forest, where they were killed. The massacre was organised and carried out by the police of Kretinga County, Palanga Valsčius and Palanga City under the orders of the SD of Tilžės and Memel (Klaipėda) and the Gestapo (at least 50 executioners took part in the various stages of the massacre). The massacre took place at night, under the lights of lorries, and ended at dawn. In 1991, a memorial was erected at the site of the massacre, with inscriptions in Yiddish*, Hebrew and Lithuanian: „At this place, Hitlerites and their local helpers brutally murdered 200 Jews in 1941. „The site of the massacre and the grave are located 1.1 km east of the Liepaja motorway (A13 – main road). Two marble pillars (steles) by Lord G. Janer with a hexagonal Star of David, indicating the direction and distance to the massacre site, are erected on the way to the site and the grave.The site and the grave were registered in the Register of Cultural Property of the Republic of Lithuania on 18 June 2015 (unique object code – 10992).