1 Execution site(s)
Salomėja V., born in 1931: "When the Jews of Teneniai were taken to an unknown place, two Jewish men from another village were locked in a house on the territory of the Pilsudskis manor. They were killed by a grenade thrown into the house. People said that G. was the one who threw the grenade. My aunt and I went to Kvėdarna and stopped to see the execution site. We could see blood on the ground."(Witness n°378LT, interviewed in Teneniai on October 1st, 2018)
Teneniai is a village located 56 km (34 miles) southeast of Klaipėda, in western Lithuania. In the early 20th century, there was a small local Jewish community. After World War I, in 1923, 191 people resided in Teneniai, including three Jewish families. These families owned shops in the center of the village. In the summer of 1940, under the terms of the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, the region was annexed by the USSR.
On June 22, 1941, the German armies and their allies began their invasion of the USSR, marking the beginning of Operation Barbarossa. Teneniai was captured in the first days of the attack. As soon as the occupation began, the German authorities established a Lithuanian auxiliary police force to assist the Nazi security forces. At the same time, local Jews were subjected to forced labor, such as road maintenance. One day in the summer of 1941, the Jews of the village were deported to an unknown location. At the same time, two Jewish men from another village, probably Pajūris or Šilalė, were locked in a barn located 1 km (0.6 miles) north of Teneniai. They were killed by a Lithuanian policeman who threw a grenade inside the building. After this execution, there were no Jews left in Teneniai.
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