Vandžiogala (Polish: ''Wędziagoła'') is a small town in

Kaunas County Kaunas County ( lt, Kauno apskritis) is one of ten counties of Lithuania The territory of Lithuania is divided into 10 counties ( Lithuanian: singular ''apskritis'', plural ''apskritys''), all named after their capitals. The counties are ...

Kaunas district municipality Kaunas District Municipality (''Kauno rajono savivaldybė'') is one of 60 municipalities in Lithuania. The seat of the municipality is the city of Kaunas, which does not belong to the municipality but is a separate administrative unit. It surroun ...

in central Lithuania. It is located north of

Kaunas city municipality Kaunas (; ; also see other names) is the second-largest city in Lithuania after Vilnius and an important centre of Lithuanian economic, academic, and cultural life. Kaunas was the largest city and the centre of a county in the Duchy of Trakai ...

next to Urka brook. A Holy Trinity church was built in Vandžiogala in 1830. A town also has a post office (LT-54073), a community centre building, a school, a library, two cemeteries. A

wayside shrine A wayside shrine is a religious image, usually in some sort of small shelter, placed by a road or pathway, sometimes in a settlement or at a crossroads, but often in the middle of an empty stretch of country road, or at the top of a hill or mo ...

was erected during the 135th commemoration of January Uprising. As of 2011 it had a population of 861.

History

Vandžiogala was first mentioned in written sources 1384 when a battle with Teutonic crusaders happened. In the chronicles it is written that Vice Komtur of

Ragainė Neman (russian: Не́ман; german: Ragnit; lt, Ragainė; pl, Ragneta), is a town and the administrative center of Nemansky District in Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia, located in the historic region of Lithuania Minor, on the steep southern ban ...

Markvard Schulbach was sent to Lithuania to support

Vytautas Vytautas (c. 135027 October 1430), also known as Vytautas the Great ( Lithuanian: ', be, Вітаўт, ''Vitaŭt'', pl, Witold Kiejstutowicz, ''Witold Aleksander'' or ''Witold Wielki'' Ruthenian: ''Vitovt'', Latin: ''Alexander Vitoldus'', O ...

against

Skirgaila Skirgaila ( la, Schirgalo; be, Скіргайла; pl, Skirgiełło, also known as Ivan/Iwan; ca. 1353 or 1354 – 11 January 1397 in Kiev (Kyiv); baptized 1383/1384 as ''Casimir'') was a regent of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania for his broth ...

. The battle was won by Germans: 120 Lithuanians died instantly and the rest either ran away or were taken as prisoners. Komtur took 300 out of those captured and Vytautas took 200. On July 9, 1941, the first large scale mass murder of the Jews in Kaunas district took place.

Rollkommando Hamann ''Rollkommando'' Hamann ( lt, skrajojantis būrys) was a small mobile unit that committed mass murders of Lithuanian Jews in the countryside in July–October 1941, with an estimated death toll of at least 60,000 Jews. The unit was also responsible ...

massacred 38 people. Before

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, Vandžiogala had a significant percentage of inhabitants with Polish roots. As of 2020, still more than 40 people openly admit to having Polish ancestors.

Etymology

Paminklas_nepriklausomybei_Vandziogaloje001

The name is derived from words Vandys (a personal name) and galas meaning "the land belonging to Vandžiai". In the chronicles of crusaders the name is spelled ''Wandyagel'' while in the documents from the 16th century written in Old Church Slavonic it is spelled ''Vondziakgola''.

References

*''This article was initially translated from the Lithuanian Wikipedia.'' Towns in Lithuania Towns in Kaunas County Holocaust locations in Lithuania {{KaunasCounty-geo-stub