Telšiai, a town in western Lithuania, is commemorating the 80th anniversary of the extermination of its Jewish community.
On Thursday, a march from the nearby village of Rainiai to the massacre site wraps up this year's Road of Memory events held across Lithuania from June to December.
As part of the commemoration programme in Telšiai, the town's former Yeshiva is hosting a performance by young artists, the presentation of a book on the Holocaust in Lithuania's provinces, the opening of an exhibition, and a concert.
Based on the 1897 census, there were 3,088 Jewish residents in Telšiai, half of the town's population.
The Jewish community had an active economic, political and cultural life. The town was home to Telshe Yeshiva, a world-famous Jewish religious school.
The entire County of Telšiai had a Jewish population of 4,229 in 1941.
The persecution of Jews began in the early days of the Nazi occupation in 1941. In late June, the town's Jews were expelled from their homes and their property was confiscated and looted.
Mass killings began in the second half of July. Between 1,200 and 1,500 Jewish men from Telšiai and the nearby towns of Varniai, Luokė, Alsėdžiai and Rietavas were killed in Rainiai on July 20 and 21.
Killings took place in other places, too. On September 1, younger able-bodied women were moved to the Telšiai ghetto, and the remaining women and children were killed. The last Jewish women, about 400, were murdered in Rainiai when the ghetto was liquidated on December 24.
There are more than 200 Holocaust massacre sites in Lithuania.
In all, about 200,000 Jews were killed in Lithuania during World War Two. The country had a Jewish population of around 220,000 before the war, according to the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania.
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