- Place
- Plungė District Municipality
- Region
- Samogitia
- Type
- Holocaust killing and burial site with a memorial ensemble
- Address
- 15C Birutės Street, Kaušėnai, Plungė district
- Coordinates
- 55.92027, 21.78261
- Visit duration
- 45-75 minutes for a slow visit to the Memory Wall, oak sculptures, burial grounds, and Alley of Rescuers
- Best time
- in daylight and dry weather, when the woodland paths and steps are safer and there is time to read the names quietly
Kaušėnai Memorial, Plungė Jewish killing and burial site, Kaušėnai Jewish killing and burial site
This is a killing and burial site, not simply a sculpture park
The memorial occupies a wooded hill beside Birutės Street in the village of Kaušėnai. Plungė District Municipality's cemetery register lists the site at 15C Birutės Street as the closed killing and burial grounds of Plungė Jews, while the Register of Cultural Property assigns it code 11084. The coordinate pin marks the main memorial grounds, not a guaranteed car park.
The site's primary meaning lies beneath the memorial landscape. These are victims' graves, so the nine oak sculptures, brick wall, name plaques, and paths are not a self-contained outdoor art display. They help identify a community and a crime, but visitors should understand the entire ground as a burial place.
Kaušėnai should not be confused with the Litvak Memorial Garden in Medsėdžiai. The garden is a symbolic map of Lithuanian Jewish communities; Kaušėnai marks the specific place to which victims were brought and where they were murdered in 1941.
From confinement in a synagogue to pits prepared in advance
Yad Vashem's reconstruction states that Plungė's Jewish population was confined in a local synagogue for about two weeks. In mid-July 1941, people were driven on foot and by truck to the forest near Kaušėnai, where six pits had already been dug by Jewish men forced to perform the work.
As the first group of sixty men was marched past a textile factory, some prisoners were shot on the way and the others were taken to the pits. Other people held in the synagogue were subsequently driven to the killing ground in family groups. Yad Vashem says the killing operation lasted two days; Soviet post-war reports gave a total of approximately 1,800 murdered Jews.
LGGRTC research stresses the exceptional nature of this early Holocaust episode. Men, women, and children from Plungė were murdered at Kaušėnai at a stage when the Nazi German military-administration period in many other parts of Telšiai County had primarily targeted Jewish men. Kaušėnai therefore shows how early the destruction of an entire community reached provincial Lithuania.
Why the dates differ and how to describe the perpetrators
Official sources do not agree on the dates. A recent thematic study by LGGRTC gives 12-13 July 1941. Yad Vashem dates the start to 13 July and describes a two-day operation. The heritage-register tradition and some official local descriptions retain 15-16 July. This page therefore uses mid-July 1941 and states the conflicting dates openly instead of selecting one as uncontested.
The figure of about 1,800 is not a name-by-name count either. Yad Vashem traces it to Soviet reports, while heritage and local institutional descriptions use it as an estimate of the scale of loss. The memorial's 1,800 bricks repeat that number symbolically; the bricks themselves do not constitute a new historical calculation of the victims.
The crime took place under Nazi German occupation and within the Holocaust. Yad Vashem identifies local Lithuanians as the perpetrators of the killing operation. This responsibility should be stated precisely, but it cannot be transferred to an entire nation or every local resident, nor should named individuals be accused where reliable archival research has not established their role.
From the 1952 stone to nine oak sculptures
The first post-war monument at Kaušėnai was erected in 1952. A later memorial began with Jakovas Bunka's initiative in 1986, when generic references to victims of fascism in Soviet public space still often obscured the specifically Jewish identity of those murdered. Bunka's project restored the name and faces of Plungė's Jewish community to the site.
A study by Lithuania's Council for the Safeguarding of Ethnic Culture dates the ensemble to 1986-1989 and records nine oak sculptures and one stone monument. Six woodcarvers worked alongside Jakovas Bunka: J. Kuodis, A. Žalgiris, V. Stumbras, S. Ambraška, L. Černiauskas, and E. Riauba. Metalworker T. Bikinas also contributed.
The sculptures bring Lithuanian woodcarving forms together with Jewish memory. Human figures, faces, and bent postures speak without decorative neutrality, but they should not be interpreted as exact portraits of particular victims unless a dedication explicitly says so. Read the nearby inscription first, then consider each work within the composition of the whole hill.
The Memory Wall returns names to bricks from a destroyed synagogue
In 2011, for the seventieth anniversary of the massacre, a long Memory Wall was added to the memorial. It was built from 1,800 bricks from the demolished Plungė synagogue, with each brick conceived as a symbol for one victim. Black plaques return at least the identified community members by name, allowing visitors to move from an approximate mass figure towards a particular person.
Sources describe the number of names differently. A 2011 Lithuanian Foreign Ministry report referred broadly to the names of all the victims, while the current Plungė Tourism Information Centre description gives 1,200 known surnames among approximately 1,800 victims. The most accurate approach is to separate three facts: about 1,800 is an estimated historical victim total, 1,800 bricks form a memorial symbol, and the plaques carry identified names and surnames.
The Alley of Rescuers stands nearby. Individual posts bear the names of people who rescued persecuted Jews in Plungė and its surroundings in 1941-1944. The alley does not replace the history of mass murder with a story of rescue; it records a different, documented choice made within the same occupation.
How to visit a sensitive burial ground
The memorial is outdoors, but it is not a museum with a ticket desk and clearly published permanent hours. As of 20 July 2026, no reliable official page giving set hours or an admission price could be found. Individual visits are described as possible, while guides and groups require advance arrangements; check current information with the Jakovas Bunka Foundation or Plungė district institutions before travelling.
The ground is hilly, with woodland paths, steps, paving, and grassed sections between memorial points. No detailed official step-free route was found, so wheelchair users, visitors with limited mobility, and groups should arrange the specific approach and any assistance in advance. Do not treat the coordinate pin as a guaranteed parking place.
Allow at least 45 minutes and arrive in daylight. Keep noise low; do not climb on grave boundaries, platforms, or the wall, and do not touch the name plaques or oak sculptures. Leaving a small stone can be a respectful practice when visiting a Jewish grave, but the essentials are quiet conduct, leaving no litter, and never treating the site as a backdrop for a staged photo shoot.
