Varėna

Varėna
Varėna
City
	Town clock
	UTC+3 (EEST)

Varėna (pronunciation

Yiddish: אוראַן Oran) is a city in Dzūkija, Lithuania

.

History

The town was founded in 1862 near the

German-Soviet Invasion of Poland

, Varėna was returned to Lithuania.

On September 9, 1942, all the Jews of the town of Varėna were collected in the local synagogue. On that day, even though the Germans had tried to prevent him from doing so, the priest Jonas Gylys entered the synagogue and encouraged the Jews to be brave in their last hours rather than convert to Christianity.

On the following day (or, according to another source, on the 9th itself) all of the Jews were taken from the synagogue to Ežeriekai - a grove of trees near the village of Druckūnai, 1.5 kilometres (0.9 miles) from the town, on the side of the road leading to the village. Two large pits had been dug there 25 metres (82 feet) apart, one for the men and one for the women. Germans forced the victims in groups toward the pits and shot them there.

According to

the report of Karl Jaeger, commander of Einsatzkommando 3A, 831 Jews from Varėna (and the surrounding areas) – 541 men, 149 women, and 141 children – were killed on that day.^[1]

In 1946 around 2000 Poles

were repatriated to Poland.^[2]

Following industrialization in the 1970s, the town grew rapidly. Currently there are 9,240 residents in Varėna. The

Varėna district

is the largest and most forested region in Lithuania.