Pinkas HaKehillot Lita: Rusnė

“Rusnė” - Encyclopedia of Jewish
Communities in Lithuania
55° 17' / 21° 22'

Translation of the “Rusnė” chapter from
Pinkas HaKehillot Lita

Written by Josef Rosin

Published by Yad Vashem

Published in Jerusalem, 1996

Click here to see how to add a Memorial Plaque to this Yizkor Book

Acknowledgments
Project Coordinator
Barry Mann

Our sincere appreciation to Yad Vashem
for permission to put this material on the JewishGen web site.

This is a translation from: Pinkas HaKehillot Lita: Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities, Lithuania,
Editor: Prof. Dov Levin, Assistant Editor: Josef Rosin, published by Yad Vashem, Jerusalem.

This material is made available by JewishGen, Inc. and the Yizkor Book Project for the purpose of
fulfilling our mission of disseminating information about the Holocaust and destroyed Jewish communities.
This material may not be copied, sold or bartered without JewishGen, Inc.'s permission. Rights may be reserved by the copyright holder.

JewishGen, Inc. makes no representations regarding the accuracy of the translation. The reader may wish to refer to the original material for verification.
JewishGen is not responsible for inaccuracies or omissions in the original work and cannot rewrite or edit the text to correct inaccuracies and/or omissions.
Our mission is to produce a translation of the original work and we cannot verify the accuracy of statements or alter facts cited.

(Page 636)

Rusnė

In Yiddish, Rusne; in German: Ruß
Written by Josef Rosin
Translated by Shimon Joffe

A town in Klaipėda province, 8 km south-west of Heidekrug (Šilutė), near the Rusnė River, one of the arms of the Nemunas river delta. Until 1923, it was under Prussian rule [Ruß, in Kreis Heydekrug, Ostpreußen]. Between the years 1923-1939, during the period of Lithuanian independence, it became a county center in the autonomous province of Klaipėda (called Memel by the Jews).

Before the First World War, the town was an important center for the export of timber from Russia to Klaipėda. Jews settled there at the beginning of the 19th century (the families of Eizenheim, H M Vazbutzki, Tsamor and others). It had 1,997 inhabitants in 1815. In 1855, a few dozen Jews lived in the town. In 1857, it already had a synagogue and a mikve (ritual bathhouse). In 1884, a beautiful large synagogue was built. In 1925, it had 1,509 inhabitants, with an unknown number of Jews. With the annexation of the Klaipėda province to Germany in the spring of 1939, all the Jews left the town and settled in Lithuania. With the conquest of Lithuania by the Germans in June 1941, they shared the fate of the other Lithuanian Jews.

Bibliography:

YIVO - Lithuanian Communities' Collection: pp. 63778-63786.

Yizkor Book Project JewishGen Home Page

Yizkor Book Project Manager, Binny Lewis
Emerita Yizkor Book Project Manager, Joyce Field
This web page created by Max Heffler

Rusnė

In Yiddish, Rusne; in German: Ruß Written by Josef Rosin Translated by Shimon Joffe

Bibliography:

In Yiddish, Rusne; in German: Ruß
Written by Josef Rosin
Translated by Shimon Joffe