The Šiauliai District Jewish Community commemorated the establishment of the Šiauliai ghetto 85 years ago, its liquidation several years later and Holocaust victims buried at the mass grave in Kužiai on July 20.

The International Commission to Assess the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes in Lithuania organized the procession to the Kužiai mass grave in the Luponiai Forest.

Šiauliai District Jewish Community chairwoman Rašella Galinienė addressed the gathering at the ghetto site in central Šiauliai and Choral Synagogue cantor Shmuel Yaatom performed kaddish. Šiauliai deputy mayor Justinas Švėgžda also spoke about the need to keep memory alive.

The commemoration continued indoors at the Chaim Frankl villa where Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky spoke about how her mother, an inmate at the Šiauliai ghetto, was marched with other prisoners to Radviliškis, where they were put on trains and sent to different concentration camps. Her mother was sent to the Stutthof concentration camp in what is now Poland surviving against all odds the barbarity of the camp.
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Deputy chief of mission from the Israeli embassy Shimon Pesach, Lithuanian Ethnic Minorities Department director Dainius Babilas and independent historian Evaldas Balčiūnas also spoke.

The commemoration moved from Šiauliai to the mass grave at Kužiai village in the Luponiai Forest where around 8,000 Jews were murdered. International Commission secretariat director Ronaldas Račinskas spoke there about the need for commemoration throughout Lithuania. LJC chairwoman Kukliansky said her family was murdered and buried there, with relatives numbering in the 50s. Yaatom performed kaddish.