1 Killing site(s)
Elena T., born in 1921: "I saw the column of Jews march from Dusetos to the place of execution. They were not told that they were being taken to the shooting. Some Jews, including children and the elderly, were transported on horse-drawn carts, while young men walked in front of the column. I don’t remember seeing any women. There were armed guards walking along the column. The Jews were calm, only the old ladies were crying." (Testimony N°YIU268LT, interviewed in Eikotiškis, on April 29, 2016)
Dusetos is situated approximately 35 km (21.7 mi) northeast of Utena and about 18 km (11 mi) northwest of Degučiai. The first Jews started to settle in Dusetos in the 16th century. In 1811, there were 907 residents, including Jews, Lithuanians, Russians and Tatars. Till the beginning of 20th century, the Jewish community made up the large majority of the population. According to 1897 census, the town comprised 1,158 Jews, making up 91% of the total population. The relationship between communities although were tense and Jews were often accused of fires that frequently broke out in the town, including the one in 1905, followed by a pogrom, during which Jewish property was destroyed and a number of Jews lost their lives. Another fire, occurred in 1910, destroyed almost all the Jewish houses and resulted in immigration of Jewish residents, decreasing their number to 250 families.
During the period of Independent Lithuania, there were over 100 Jewish families recorded as being settled in Dusetos. According to the 1923 census, the town comprised 704 Jews, making up 60% of the total population. Dusetos was home to a Jewish school, a Jewish cemetery and two synagogues. Religion played an important role in the life of the Jewish community, which observed the Sabbath and religious holidays. Local Jews were primarily engaged in commerce, service sector, including the medical branch, and artisanal work, while a number of them worked the land or made their living by fishing. Jews owned different kinds of shops and small enterprises, most of them producing food, clothing and footwear. Jewish craftsmen offered their services as tailors, leather workers, glaziers, blacksmiths and others. Jews were highly engaged in the cultural and political life of the town. The migration in 1920s and 1930s led to the decreasing of the Jewish population, which was around 500 residents in 1939.
When Lithuania was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940, the economic situation deteriorated as nationalization of the Jewish shops and enterprises led to a shortage of goods and rising prices. Several local families, including the Jewish ones, were deported to Siberia. When Germany invaded Lithuania on June 22, 1941, many Jews tried to evacuate to the interior of the Soviet Union, but most were forced to return to Dusetos because of the rapidly advancing German troops.
Dusetos was occupied by German forces on June 25, 1941. In the first days of the war, before the German arrival, Lithuanian activists, the white armbanders, established the local administration and police force. Jewish property was looted, and anti-Jewish measures were implemented in the town, forbidding the Jews to engage in any form of business, walking on public places and communicate with non-Jewish residents. In June 1941, 5 people, including a Jew, considered loyal to the Soviet regime, were arrested and executed in Dusetos by Lithuanian activists. After the war, the body of the Jewish man was exhumed from the mass grave and reburied in the Dusetos Jewish cemetery, where a monument was erected.
From the beginning of July 1941, all the local Jews, marked by then with distinctive Star of David symbols, were rounded up near the synagogue from where they were led to the ghetto, set up in the nearby village of Uztile. The ghetto’s territory, which comprised several houses, was surrounded by a barbed wire fence and supervised by white armbanders with dogs. To sustain themselves, some ghetto inmates managed to secretly visit local residents, while locals, despite prohibition and beatings from the guards, approached the ghetto and smuggled the food through the barbed wire ghetto fence. Isolated killings of Jews intercepted outside ghetto boundaries were perpetrated during this period. At the same time, ghetto inmates were subjected to forced labor in Dusetos or surrounding farms.
The ghetto was liquidated over the course of an Aktion, carried out on August 26, 1941, by Einsatzkommando 3, with the help of local policemen, when the ghetto detainees were taken to the forest near the Degučiai village to be executed. Those enable to walk, such as children and the elderly, were transported there by horse-drawn carts, driven by requisitioned local, while others were escorted there on foot under supervision of the guards. According to local witnesses’ accounts, isolated shootings of the Jews who tried to escape from the column were conducted during the Aktion. The Jews of Dusetos were shot in a long pit dug in advance in the forest near Degučiai alongside other Jews from the surrounding area, including those from Zarasai. Jewish belongings were then stored in a house in Dusetos and looted by local population.
For more information about the killing of Jews in Degučiai please follow the corresponding profile.
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