Pikeliai (, ) is a town in

Telšiai County Telšiai County () is one of ten counties of Lithuania, counties in Lithuania. It is in the west of the country, and its Capital (political), capital is Telšiai. There are Lithuanians (98.7%), Latvians (0.1%), Russians (0.9%), and others (0.3%) ...

Lithuania Lithuania, officially the Republic of Lithuania, is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, bordered by Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, P ...

. According to the 2011 census, the town has a population of 378 people. Pikeliai is named after the nearby "Pikelhof" estate.

History

Pikeliai was first mentioned in 1594 in the Books of the Courts of Samogitian land. In 1598 it had 19 valakas (unit of measure in the

Grand Duchy of Lithuania The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a sovereign state in northeastern Europe that existed from the 13th century, succeeding the Kingdom of Lithuania, to the late 18th century, when the territory was suppressed during the 1795 Partitions of Poland, ...

; 1 valakas is equal to 21 ha). In 1625 Protestant Bilevičius demolished

Catholic church The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

in Pikeliai but it was rebuilt in 1636. The new

church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a place/building for Christian religious activities and praying * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian comm ...

was built in 1752. The first parish school of Pikeliai is mentioned in 1805. In 1865 it was reorganized to public primary school. In 1897 a total of 1206 Jewish people made up 68% of the population in Pikeliai. By 1921 the increasingly hostile situation had brought the Jewish population down to 286 people. Between 3 and 9 August 1941, all the Jewish families that had not fled Pikeliai were taken out of town and killed by the Nazis and their Lithuanian collaborators. Nowadays Pikeliai has

, high school, medical office, public library, post office etc.

References

Towns in Lithuania Towns in Telšiai County Mažeikiai District Municipality {{TelšiaiCounty-geo-stub