- Place
- Šilutė District Municipality
- Region
- Šilutė
- Type
- roadside memorial sculpture unveiled in 2022 for the Wolf Children of East Prussia
- Address
- Rusnės Street, Šlažai, Šilutė District
- Coordinates
- 55.31933, 21.44895
- Visit duration
- 15-30 minutes; allow time to read the trilingual panel slowly
- Best time
- in daylight and safe weather; 14 September adds the context of the official remembrance day
Wolfskinder Memorial, Wolf Children Monument in Šlažai
A distinct memorial beside the road in Šlažai
The memorial stands beside Rusnės Street in Šlažai on the road between Šilutė and Rusnė. Its exact point is 55.3193338, 21.4489469. Choose the Wolf Children Memorial listing in navigation, because other sites at Mikytai and Panemunė remember the same history.
The composition occupies a low stone base close to the road. A bronze girl clutches a bundle while a goose stands beside her. This is not a triumphal monument: it freezes an everyday image of travel in which a child carries only what she can hold.
A nearby panel tells the story in Lithuanian, German and English. It deserves time, because without the text the girl and bird might look like a general rural sculpture, while they actually represent a specific post-war journey of survival.
Kęstutis Keparutis's girl and Liudas Puškorius's initiative
The memorial was created at the initiative of Liudas Puškorius by sculptor Kęstutis Keparutis. Unveiled in Šlažai in 2022, it joined earlier Lithuanian memorials to the Wolf Children.
The bundle marks forced travel, but the work avoids excessive documentary detail. The goose evokes a rural environment and connects the arriving child with Lithuanian farms where some children found food, work and shelter. That is an interpretation of the sculpture, not a claim that every child travelled with such a bird.
The panel foregrounds the words 'Go, daughter, to Lithuania, there you will survive.' They should be read as a memorial distillation of many separations between mothers and children, not as a quotation tied to one named girl's documented biography.
Who the Wolf Children were
Official state sources use Wolf Children for children from East Prussia who were orphaned or separated from their families at the end of the Second World War and afterwards. In 1944-1948, they reached Soviet-occupied Lithuania alone, with other children or with an adult, travelling on foot, by cart and on freight trains in search of food and shelter.
Lithuania's Department of National Minorities gives an estimate of 6,000-8,000 East Prussian children in Soviet Lithuania. It is an estimate rather than a complete register. Some were sheltered or adopted, while others lived under changed names and documents, leaving histories that remained difficult to trace.
Lithuania now observes 14 September as Wolf Children Remembrance Day. The Šlažai memorial connects that nationally recognised memory with a particular road direction and border region through which some of the children entered Lithuania.
Visiting a sensitive roadside site
The memorial is outdoors with no ticket, gate or fixed opening schedule. A stop takes 15-30 minutes, but the essential experience is the relationship between the figures and the trilingual text, not a quick photograph.
Because this is a roadside location, park only where it is safe and suitable, and do not walk along the carriageway. No detailed official parking or accessibility plan is published, so assess conditions on arrival. The memorial is harder to inspect after dark, when traffic becomes an even more important safety concern.
Treat it as a place of remembrance: do not climb on the base, touch the figures, disrupt ceremonies or leave objects that may become litter. On 14 September and during other commemorations, the small space may be occupied by participants.
