On July 23, 1941 the Germans and Lithuanians loaded about 100 Jews from Kėdainiai onto six trucks on the pretext that they were being transported for work. The Jews were taken to the village of Taučiūnai, approximately 10 kilometers from Kėdainiai, and shot.

More information: Yad Vashem

On August 15, 1941 the Jewish residents of the towns of Kėdainiai, Šėta, and Žeimiai who had been incarcerated in the ghetto of Kėdainiai were driven into the courtyard of the local synagogue and, then, from there to stables that were located in one of the town parks, where they were held for 13 days in very crowded conditions and without any food. On August 28 the Germans and their Lithuanian accomplices began forcibly moving the Jews from the stable to the banks of the Smilga River, about 2 kilometers from the town. There Soviet prisoners of war had dug deep pits. The Jews were forced to undress and to enter the pits, where they were fired on by machine guns. During the shooting the motors of tractors were run at full throttle so that the other Jews would not hear the sounds of the shots and the screaming of those being killed. During the course of the murders the Jews offered some resistance. The former head of the fire brigade, Tsadok Shlapoberski, attacked one of the Germans, pulling him into the pit and trying to strangle him. One of the Lithuanians attempted to come to the aid of the German but Shlapoberski wounded him mortally. Another Jew stabbed one of the killers in the neck, while a third Jew grabbed a sub-machine gun from one of the guards but did not succeed in firing it. The mass murder was carried out by Einsatzkommando 3a under the command of Karl Jaeger, with the help of Lithuanian collaborators. According to the Jaeger Report, on August 28, 1941 2,076 Jews - 710 men, 767 women, and 599 children were murdered in Kėdainiai.

More information: Yad Vashem

At the beginning of July 1941 the Lithuanians arrested more than 100 men and women from Kėdainiai, 94 of them Jews. Accused of being Communists, the arrestees were taken through the streets of Kėdainiai in only their underwear to the town of Babėniai, eight kilometers away, and were murdered there. After the war about 125 bodies were discovered in a mass grave in that location.

More information: Yad Vashem