Krakių bunkeris: dviejų partizanų žūties vieta
On January 7, 1951, two partisans from the Samogitian region - Albertas Švažas-Vanagas and Pranas Šiuipys - were killed in the Jonuškiai forest bunker. Half a century later, the Mažeikiai riflemen rebuilt the bunker and immortalized the memory of the fighters.
"We started digging slowly, hoping to find the remains of the bunker's logs, but we didn't find them, our find was only a rusty grenade. We dug up two powerful stones and then it became clear that we were in the right place," says Pranas Trakinis, commander of the Mažeikiai Rifle Company, about the bunker's reconstruction work. The place was not chosen by chance: "On one side - the Venta River, on the other - the Ubagynas and Maigai forests. [...] There was a path nearby, paved with huge stones, which left no traces when walking on." The memory of the partisans was immortalized in several stages: in 1999, a small oak cross was erected, in 2005 - a pillar in the shape of a Vytis cross, and the remains of the partisans were reburied in the Viekšniai cemetery. "We dug up two powerful stones and then it became clear that we were in the right place - according to witnesses, the bunker was between those stones, and the partisans would jump inside through them to confuse uninvited guests," Trakinis says about the discovery of the historical site.
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Miliai (Krakiai) partisan bunker
About 1.5 km east of the Krakiai settlement, in the Jonuškis forest, on the right bank of the Kutuvys River, a former hiding place for participants in the post-war freedom struggle has been restored.
On January 3, 1948, betrayed by an MGB agent, two partisans died here after a heroic fight: 29-year-old member of the "Alka" squad, group leader Albertas Švažas-Vanagas, and 25-year-old Pranas Šiuipys.
In 1999, a small oak cross was erected at this location, and in 2005, a pillar in the shape of a Vytis cross was erected in the forest near the Kuršėnai–Mažeikiai road to commemorate those who died. In the same year, the remains of the partisans were reburied in the Viekšniai cemetery.
"When we started work, there was a heavily overgrown area with grass and birch trees. We started digging slowly, hoping to find the remains of the bunker's logs, but we didn't find them; all we found was a rusty grenade. We dug up two large stones and then it became clear that we were in the right place - according to witnesses, the bunker was between those stones, and partisans would jump through them to get inside to mislead uninvited guests," said P. Trakinis about the bunker's installation.
A drawing of the partisan bunker was found in archival documents, and the current bunker was reconstructed based on it in 2010. Its construction corresponds to the original drawing, but, according to contemporaries, it was "shallow", smaller in size, and built of logs.