Before the war, Švenčionys had about 9,000 residents of whom a third were Jewish. The ghetto was established soon after the Nazi Germany attacked Soviet Russia on June 22, 1941. At the end of September 1941, about 1,000 or 2,000 of Švenčionys Jews were moved to barracks of former military training grounds near Švenčionėliai. Jews from other nearby settlements were gathered there as well. These Jews were massacred on October 9–10 by Nazis and Lithuanians from the Ypatingasis būrys. The Jäger Report reported a total of 3,726 deaths (1,169 men, 1,840 women, 717 children).