Alternate names: Tytuvėnai [Lith], Tzitevyian [Yid], Tsytovyany [Rus], Cytowiany [Pol], Zytovyany, Tytowiany, Tytevėnai, Tytavėnų, Tytavėnai, Tzitavian, Tsitovyany, Tituvenay, 55°36' N, 23°12' E, 11 miles E of Kelmė, 16 miles NNE of Raseiniai (Rasayn), 24 miles S of Šiauliai (Shavl).
CEMETERY: Stasei, a Tytuvenai high school teacher, knows the way to the cemetery in a nearby woods. She directed us through narrow dirt roads, then by foot, over a wire cattle fence, and into the forest. We found a symbolic grave, built to represent a group, as the ones for an "unknown soldier." Except, in this one, no soldier was buried. They were all civilians and all Jews, all women and children. The last gruesome fact was that the ones who were not killed when shot were buried alive. Stasei had found this grave many summers before, led to it by her grazing cow. A few words were written in Lithuanian: FASISTINIO -TERORO- AUKOMS 1941-1945 (Fascist Terrorist Victims, 1941-1945). Tatjana, a Russian language teacher at the high school, is Jewish. The only one in Tytuvenai! As soon as we met Tatjana, she got into the car and suggested we go back into the woods. Les Gediman; This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. [date? 1998]
UPDATE: I was there in June 2007 and took photographs. We think Tytuvenai/Siluva cemetery was shared because it was between the two towns and was the only one we know of. There were many very weathered stones in a good sized field. Linda Morzillo at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. [July 2007]
MASS GRAVE: Forest of Tytuvenai, about 1 km N of Tytuvenai (two massacre sites); 104-105; pic. # 119-121 US Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad
There was another Jewish mass grave. This one had three metal plaques fastened to a common headstone, written in Yiddish, Hebrew and Lithuanian. The Hebrew reads: "IN THIS PLACE, THE NAZI MURDERERS AND THEIR COLLABORATORS, ON 25 JUNE 1941, KILLED 140 TZITOVIAN JEWISH HEROS." This indictment of civilian residents assisting the SS Einsatzgruppe soldiers in the massacres contrasted, if not contradicted, the stories I heard in Tytuvenai last month. The comments about the respect the locals had for their Jewish community and how their children walked hand and hand to school with their Jewish classmates. I plan to make a thorough survey by visiting each former shtetl by car with a translator to determine which ones have or had a Jewish cemetery. This will include the sites of Holocaust mass graves. The larger ones are well known, well advertised, and have elaborate monuments. I want to document the lonely ones, the ones that are seldom or never visited.Anyone who has any ideas or suggestions as to which foundation or agency might help me finance this project, please contact me at Les Gediman; This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. [date? 1998]