Plateliai (; ) is a town in
Samogitia
Samogitia, often known by its Lithuanian language, Lithuanian name ''Žemaitija'' (Samogitian language, Samogitian: ''Žemaitėjė''; see Samogitia#Etymology and alternative names, below for alternative and historical names) is one of the five ...
,
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 ...
. It is situated on the west bank of
Lake Plateliai, the largest lake in Samogitia. The town has a population of about 1,100 people and is the center of an
elderate
A ''seniūnija'' (in English: eldership, elderate, ward, parish, or subdistrict) is the smallest administrative division of Lithuania. An eldership may comprise a very small region consisting of few villages, one single town, or a part of ...
in
PlungÄ— district municipality
PlungÄ— (; Samogitian: ''PlongÄ—''; ) is a city in Lithuania with 17,252 inhabitants. Plunge is the capital of the PlungÄ— District Municipality which has 33,251 inhabitants (2022). Two parts of the city are separated by the Babrungas River and ...
. It is the administrative center of the
Žemaitija National Park
__NOTOC__
Samogitia National Park or Žemaitija National Park is a national park in Lithuania. It is situated on the Samogitian Upland, 45 km from the Baltic Sea. Lakes cover more than 7% of its territory. Lake Plateliai (12.05 km2, 47 m ...
. The town is a popular resort in Samogitia and attracts many tourists.
History
The wooden St. Peter and Paul church of Plateliai was built in 1744 by Jan Wojtkiewicz. The Choiseul de Gouffier palace was destroyed at the end of
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
but the 40
hectare
The hectare (; SI symbol: ha) is a non-SI metric unit of area equal to a square with 100-metre sides (1 hm2), that is, square metres (), and is primarily used in the measurement of land. There are 100 hectares in one square kilometre. ...
park remained.
Jewish community
Having settled in Plateliai at the end of the 18th century, Jews were employed in small commerce, craftsmanship and fishing in the lake bordering the town. There was a synagogue in the town, but no Jewish school or any other Jewish public institutions. From the end of the 19th century, the Jews of Plateliai started gradually emigrating to America and South Africa, and the flow continued into the interwar period, propelled by a huge fire that devastated half of the town in 1923. The disaster worsened the economic situation of the Jews. Families usually maintained vegetable gardens beside their houses, which helped them survive. Of 150 Jews that lived in Plateliai in 1923, only about a hundred remained in 1940.
Three dozen Jewish men from Plateliai were arrested about a week after the German invasion, on the second day of the war. While they were confined in the synagogue and forced to do hard physical labor, Jewish women and children were forced to work for the farmers around the town as auxiliary labor force. The first shooting took place in the Laumalenka forest, 4 km south of the town, in the beginning of July 1941, when up to ten Jewish men were shot. The rest of the Jewish men were executed in mid-July at the foot of Mount Bokštikalnis, 0,5 km west of the town. After the execution of men, 70 women, children and the elderly were placed in the synagogue and kept there until the end of August. They were shot and buried in a trench dug by residents of the town in the Laumalenka forest. In the same manner as the men before them, the women had to undress before being lined up at the edge of the pit and shot.
References
External links
Settlements in Žemaitija National Park
Towns in Lithuania
Towns in Telšiai County
PlungÄ— District Municipality
Holocaust locations in Lithuania
{{TelšiaiCounty-geo-stub