page_title: Šiauliai Ghetto
section_title: Liquidation
hierarchical_section_title: Šiauliai Ghetto / Liquidation
caption_attribution_description: Lietuvių: Šioje vietoje 1941–1945 m. buvo Šiaulių getas English: In this place there were jews ghetto 1941–1945, Šiauliai, Lithuania
context_page_description: The Šiauliai or Shavli Ghetto was a Jewish ghetto established in July 1941 by Nazi Germany in the city of Šiauliai in Nazi-occupied Lithuania during the Holocaust. The ghetto comprised two areas – one in the Kaukazas suburb and one on Trakai Street. Both were liquidated by July 1944, and their inhabitants were killed or transferred to Nazi concentration camps. In 1939, one quarter of the population of Šiauliai was Jewish, about 8,000 persons. By the end of World War II, only about 500 Jews of the city had survived.
context_section_description: On June 21, 1943, Heinrich Himmler issued an order to liquidate all ghettos and transfer remaining Jews to concentration camps. The Šiauliai Ghetto was reorganized into a concentration camp, an exterior camp (Außenlager) of the Kaunas concentration camp (Kaunas Ghetto) under jurisdiction of the SS. At the time, the ghetto had five work camps: Zokniai airport (500 Jews), Linkaičiai weapon workshop (250 Jews), Pavenčiai sugar factory (250 Jews), A.B.A. military clothing workshop (800 Jews), Akmenė brick factory (250 Jews) and Daugėliai brick factory (250 Jews). Territorial Commissioner (Gebietskommissar) Hans Gewecke was replaced by SS-Oberscharführer Hermann Schlöf on 1 October 1943 as commander of the ghetto.
  The original Kaukazas neighborhood ghetto site was liquidated in mid-October 1943. On November 5, 1943, SS troops and a company from the Russian Liberation Army seized and transported 574 children under the age of 13, 191 elderly, 26 disabled, and 4 women to Auschwitz concentration camp.
  Later, as Germany was losing the war, the Nazis started closing down work camps and transferring the Jews into the ghetto. In July 1944, the Germans, retreating from the advancing Russian army, transferred remaining ghetto residents to the concentration camps of Stutthof and Dachau in Germany. Of the total number of Jews interned, only a few hundred managed by various means to escape death. On 15 July 1944, the final liquidation of the Šiauliai ghetto began. Several thousand Jews were deported in four large groups to the Stutthof concentration camp.
  No more than 500 people were identified as survivors of the Šiauliai Ghetto after the war.
caption: Marker indicating the location of the Šiauliai ghetto at Trakai Street
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