(Pages 248-251)

Vilkija

In Yiddish, Vilki

Written by Josef Rosin

Translated by Shaul Yannai

A county town in the Kaunas district.

Year	General Population	Jews	%
1766	..	652	..
1847	..	789	..
1859	1,181	848	72
1897	2,012	1,431	71
1923	1,797	829	46
1938	2,035	..	..
1940	2,090	500	25

Vilkija is situated on the bank of the Nemunas River, 30 km northwest of Kaunas, the district's city. For many years, contact with the town was only by boats that sailed on the river. The Kaunas-Klaipeda road, which was constructed in 1938, passed near Vilkija. In the 15^th century, the great prince of Lithuania had an estate in the town. At the end of that century, Vilkija was the center of a sub district. In the 16^th century, the town received the Magdeburg Rights. Vilkija was under Russian rule during 1795-1915, at first in the Vilnius Guberina (region) and then in the Kaunas Gubernia. During the period of Independent Lithuania (1918-1940), Vilkija was the center of a sub district.

The Jewish Settlement Till After World War I

It is known that already by 1859 there was a synagogue in Vilkija. The Jewish children during that period studied in a number of “Hadarim” and in the Yeshiva that were in the town.

During the 1880's, there were times when Jews were attacked outside of the town. Farmers murdered the Jewish miller, resulting in the town's Rabbi declaring a fast. The Jews of Vilkija made their living from commerce and labor. There were also Jews who had taverns (public houses for travelers). A number of Jews worked for Jewish residents of Vilkija. The latter were merchants of forest products, and the former engaged in a special profession: they transported timber on rafts on the Nemunas River. Those rowers were called “Konzhortniki”. The lumber was brought from the suburbs of Vilnius and Kaunas and was sent to Germany.

On July 14, 1903, a great fire broke out in the town, which burned down more than 40 houses. About 70 Jewish families lost their entire property in the fire. A few dozen houses of Christians, including the Church, also burned down. As a result, the farmers stopped coming to the town and the livelihood of the Jewish grocers' was harmed.

The Rabbis who served in the town's Rabbinate were: Rabbi Yehosha-Heshel Eliashson; Rabbi Gavriel Feinberg, who served for 6 years; Rabbi Khanoch-Zundel Rappaport (served from 1872); Rabbi Arieh-Leib Wolpert (from 1873); Rabbi Hillel-David Trivash (who edited from 1875 until he died in 1921 the newspaper “HaPisga” [The Apex], which dealt with religious questions and Torah issues). In 1898, a Zionist association was established in the town which maintained, among other things, a literary correspondence with “The Center of Correspondence” in Kishinev. Two delegates from Vilkija (Asher Asherovitz and Reuven-Arieh Helman) participated at the Galil Conference of the Vilnius and Kaunas regions, which met in 1899 in Vilnius. Many names of Jews from Vilkija appear in the 1898, 1900, and 1903 lists of donors for settling Eretz-Yisrael. In 1903, 12 of the town's Zionists protested in the “HaMelitz” about introducing “cultural work” into the working program of the World Zionist Organization.

At the beginning of WWI, the Russian army returned to Vilkija after retreating from the town. This time the Russian soldiers conducted pogroms against the Jews, tortured men and raped women. In the spring of 1915, at the order of the Russian regime, the Jews of Vilkija were brutally expelled from their town. Only 60% of the Jews who lived in the town before the war returned to it after the war. 20 Jewish homes burned down during the war.

The Period of Independent Lithuania

When the Vilnius region was disconnected from Lithuania, the exporting of lumber declined and the Jews who sailed the rafts became unemployed. According to the above census, 50 families received supplementary income from the community's welfare institutions. 10 families subsisted only from welfare. About 300 people received “Maot Khitim” (money for flour for Passover).

In the elections to the first Lithuanian Seimas, in October 1922, the Jews from Vilkija voted as follows: the Zionist party received 214 votes; the “Folkspartei” 41 votes; and the religious party, “Akhdut” (Agudat Yisrael) 25 votes. According to the 1931 Lithuanian government census, Vilkija had 18 businesses, and 17 of them (94%) were owned by Jews. The division into business branches is shown in the table below:

Branch or Type of Business	Total	Owned by Jews
Butcher shops and cattle	1	1
Restaurants and taverns	1	1
Clothing, furs and textile products	7	7
Shoes, leather and shoemaking	1	1
Medicine and cosmetics	1	0
Radios, sewing machines and electrical equipment	1	1
Tools and iron products	3	3
Wood and heating materials	1	1

According to the same census, Vilkija had 16 light industry factories and 15 of them (94%) were owned by Jews as shown in the table below:

Branch or Type of Business	Total	Owned by Jews
Headstones, bricks, cement products	1	1
Textile: wool, flax, knitting	2	2
Wood industry: sawmills, furniture	1	1
Food industry: mills, bakeries	9	8
Leather industry: production, leather workshops	1	1
Others: Barber shops, processing pig bristles, photography shops, goldsmiths	2	2

A few Jews owned passenger and cargo boats that sailed on the Nemunas.

In 1937, there were 49 Jewish artisans in Vilkija: 9 tailors, 7 butchers, 7 shoemakers, 5 bakers, 3 “Tapars” (Hebrew, “tapar”, which refers to “a craftsman in shoemaking who makes the uppers”), 3 carpenters, 3 barbers, a hat maker, a seamstress, a person who made boots from felt, a glazier, an oven maker, a painter, a blacksmith, a photographer and 2 others. The Jewish national bank (Folksbank), which had 226 members in Vilkija in 1927, played an important role in the economic life of the town's Jews. Vilkija also had a branch of the “Jewish Farmers Credit Association”. In 1939, the town had 44 telephones, 18 of them belonged to Jews.

From the middle of the 1930's, the number of Jews in the town started decreasing. The economic crisis that beset Lithuania in the 1930's, and the open propaganda of the Lithuanian Union of Merchants (Verslas) to boycott Jewish merchants motivated many Jews to seek their future elsewhere. Many of them, and in particular the younger generation, emigrated abroad and also to Eretz-Yisrael. Another reason why the number of Jews decreased in the town was the fire that broke out in Vilkija in 1937, which burned down 17 Jewish homes and 120 people remained without shelter. During the period under discussion, the town had a Hebrew elementary school that was part of the “Tarbut” network, where, on average, 150 children studied.

Religious life concentrated around Vilkija's two prayer houses: “The Kloiz”, which was made of wood, where those who sailed the rafts and also a few forest merchants prayed, and “The Shul”, that is, the synagogue, which was built according to a Bet Khoma structure and was reinforced in order to withstand any flooding from the Nemunas, and where the Rabbi and wealthier individuals prayed. During that period, the Rabbis who served in the Rabbinate in Vilkija were: Rabbi Friedman and Rabbi Shemuel-Josef Shoham, who was murdered during the Holocaust together with his community (see below). The welfare institutions that were active in the town were “Ezra” (aid), “Maot Khitim” and others.

Many of Vilkija's Jews belonged to the Zionist camp. Almost all of the Zionist parties had supporters in the town. In 1934, a branch of the Zionist Socialist Party was established in the town, and also a branch of the “HaOved”, which provided Hebrew evening courses and held evening discussions about issues related to the Zionist Movement during that time period.

The division of votes to the Zionist Congresses in Vilkija in the 1920's and 1930's was as shown in the table below:

Congress Nr.	Year	Total Shekalim	Total Voters	Labor Part		Revis- ionists	General Zionists		Grosm- anists	Mizrachi
				Z”S	Z”Z		A	B
14	1925	7	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
15	1927	15	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
16	1929	13	14	2	12	-	-	-	-	-
18	1933	..	60	55		1	3	-	1	-
19	1935	..	285	221		-	9	16	11	28
								The National Bloc
21	1939	..	176	151		-	7	18

The Zionist Youth Organizations that were active in the town were: “HaShomer HaTzair”, “HeKhalutz”, and others. Sports activities were held at the local branch of “Maccabi” which listed 66 members. A few of Vilkija's youth were active in the communist underground.

Among those who were born in Vilkija were: Moshe Yardeni-Zakheim (1881-1960), who had a doctorate in chemistry and was the principal of the Hebrew gymnasium in Vilkaviskis during the years 1924-1933. He was also a member of the Zionist Center and the “Tarbut” Center in Lithuania and passed away in Tel Aviv; Haim Yelin (1913-1940), an author, who was the leader of the anti-Fascist organization in Ghetto Kaunas. He was killed by the Nazis while armed with a rifle. After the war he was decorated as a fighter against the Nazis.

During World War II and Afterwards

The war between Germany and the Soviet Union broke out on June 22, 1941. A few days later, on June 26, the German army entered Vilkija. But the Lithuanian Nationalists got organized even before the Germans arrived in the town and took control of Vilkija. They started arresting supporters of the communist regime and in particular arrested the Jews among them. Two Jews were killed immediately; 21 others were arrested and were accused of having connections with the Russian regime. They were tried and sentenced to death. The local priest approved the verdict with a seal of approval on behalf of the Church. They were killed on July 15, in the village of Yagminiskis and were buried there, after everything they had was confiscated from them, including their clothes. When the German commander of the city arrived in Vilkija he imposed a heavy tax on the Jews and published a decree that ordered them to handover to the authorities all of their radios, cameras and electrical equipment. The German commander and his Lithuanian collaborators used to overwhelm the Jews with all kinds of “invitations”, and the Jews, who were gripped with fear, were forced to comply.

One day, the Jews were ordered to leave their homes, and to concentrate in the ghetto. Some of the men were imprisoned in the Bet Midrash, and the women and children were crowded into the house and granaries of Shimon Friedland. Both of those buildings were locked from 5 p.m. until early the following morning, and no one was permitted to go outside. Lithuanian auxiliary police guarded them from the outside. Then, young people ages 18-22 were forced to do various types of labor, such as washing the underwear of the Germans and the Lithuanian auxiliary police, cleaning their offices and polishing their shoes. Some of the men were taken to work in the sawmill in the town, where they were beaten and tortured. The Lithuanians hinted to the men that their families were in danger, but that it was possible to prevent the evil decree in return for some money. This is how the Lithuanians extorted from the Jews the money and valuables they still had.

On August 28, 1941 (5 Elul, 5701), the entire Jewish population of Vilkija and the surrounding areas were led to the Pakarkle Forest, about 2 km south of Vilkija, near the village of Jaucakiai, 1 km off the Kaunas-Vilkija road, and on the right bank of the Nemunas River, all of them were shot and buried in pits that were prepared in advance. Altogether, 402 men, women and children were murdered and buried there. The names of the murderers are kept in the Yad Vashem archives.

After the war, the corpses of those who were murdered in Cekiske, Seredzius, Veliuona and from other nearby places, were brought to this mass grave and were reburied there. The remains (bones) of about 3,500 men, women and children are buried in those mass graves. Vilkija descendents who survived the war erected a memorial on the mass grave and on it an inscription in Lithuanian and Russian.

Bibliography:

Yad Vashem Archives, Jerusalem, M-9/15(6); 0-3/3788; Koniukhovsky Collection 0-71, file 145; a detailed list of the Vilkija households, heads of households and their descendants before the war is included in the Vilkija file, 0-57.
Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem, files 55/1788, 13/15/131, Z-4/2548.
YIVO - Lithuanian Communities' Collection: files 342-360, pp. 16239-16721, 20753-20755.
Historical Writings, Volume 2, 3, pp. 780-785.
Kamzon, The Jews of Lithuania, Jerusalem, 1958, p. 104.
Dos Vort - (Kaunas) - 23.12.1934.
Hamelitz [The Advocate] – (St. Petersburg), 26.12.1882, 8.1.1884, 28.1.1884, 1.2.1886, 22.8.1892, 21.4.1901, 3.7.1901.
Folksblat [The People's Newspaper] – (Kaunas), 28.12.1937, 7.8.1938, 21.8.1938, 17.11.1940.
Teviskes Zinios (Kaunas), 3.9.1991.

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