Jewish Holocaust site in Kražiai (near Medžiokalnis)
Memorial site

At the foot of Medžiokalnis Hill, near the town of Kražiai, is the site and grave of the Kražiai Jewish massacre.

Before World War II, the town of Kražiai was home to about 1,500 people, including about 80 Jewish families – 450-500 residents of Jewish origin. In 1941, the Jews of Kražiai were isolated in a ghetto set up in the manor barn (later Jews brought from Karklėnai also entered it) and were murdered in several stages.

The Nazis actively tried to involve Lithuanians in the Holocaust: when shooting Jews, German officers sought that every policeman, rebel, partisan or white-arms soldier who arrived in the forest as a convoy member would shoot at least one of his Jewish neighbors or acquaintances. After the massacres committed in 1941, about 20 people remained from the Kražiai Jewish community, who hid in Lithuania or retreated to the depths of the USSR.

On August 2, 1941, the Nazis and their collaborators killed more than 70 children and several adult Jews near Medžiokalnis. Historian Stanislovas Buchaveckas called this massacre the "Murder of Jewish Children."

Currently, a monument stands at this location with an inscription: “On this spot on 2 August 1941, the Nazis and their collaborators murdered 71 Jews of Kražiai.” The inscription in Hebrew notes that 71 Jews of Kražiai were murdered: 6 men and women, 65 children.