Kybartai (; russian: Кибартай) is a city in

Marijampolė County Marijampolė County ( lt, Marijampolės apskritis; pl, Okręg mariampolski) is one of the ten counties in Lithuania. It is in the south of the country in the historical Suvalkija region, and its capital is the town Marijampolė Marijampolė ...

Lithuania Lithuania (; lt, Lietuva ), officially the Republic of Lithuania ( lt, Lietuvos Respublika, links=no ), is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea. Lithuania ...

. It is located west of

Vilkaviškis Vilkaviškis () is a city in southwestern Lithuania, the administrative center of the Vilkaviškis District Municipality. It is located northwest from Marijampolė, at the confluence of of and rivers. The city got its name from the Vilkau ...

and is on the border of

Kaliningrad Oblast Kaliningrad Oblast (russian: Калинингра́дская о́бласть, translit=Kaliningradskaya oblast') is the westernmost federal subject of Russia. It is a semi-exclave situated on the Baltic Sea. The largest city and administr ...

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

History

Kybartai was founded under the reign of

Sigismund I the Old Sigismund I the Old ( pl, Zygmunt I Stary, lt, Žygimantas II Senasis; 1 January 1467 – 1 April 1548) was King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1506 until his death in 1548. Sigismund I was a member of the Jagiellonian dynasty, the ...

by the colonization efforts of his wife,

Bona Sforza Bona Sforza d'Aragona (2 February 1494 – 19 November 1557) was Queen of Poland and Grand Duchess of Lithuania as the second wife of Sigismund I the Old, and Duchess of Bari and Rossano by her own right. She was a surviving member of ...

. In 1561, it was listed in the land-register of

Jurbarkas Jurbarkas (; Samogitian dialect, Samogitian: ''Jorbarks'', known also by several #Etymology, alternative names) is a List of cities in Lithuania, city in Tauragė County, in Samogitia, Lithuania. Jurbarkas is located in the historic land of Kar ...

and

Virbalis Virbalis (, pl, Wierzbołów, yi, ווירבאלן ''Virbalen'') is a town in the Vilkaviškis district municipality, Lithuania. It is located west of Vilkaviškis. History It is frequently mentioned in historical as well in modern literatur ...

When in 1861 a branch of the

Saint Petersburg–Warsaw Railway Saint Petersburg–Warsaw Railway (() (transliteration: Sankt-Peterburgo–Varshavskaya zheleznaya doroga)) is a long railway, built in the 19th century by the Russian Empire to connect Russia with Central Europe. At the time the entire railwa ...

was built from

Vilnius Vilnius ( , ; see also other names) is the capital and largest city of Lithuania, with a population of 592,389 (according to the state register) or 625,107 (according to the municipality of Vilnius). The population of Vilnius's functional urb ...

to the

Prussia Prussia, , Old Prussian: ''Prūsa'' or ''Prūsija'' was a German state on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It formed the German Empire under Prussian rule when it united the German states in 1871. It was ''de facto'' dissolved by an em ...

n border, where it was linked to

Prussian Eastern Railway The Prussian Eastern Railway (german: Preußische Ostbahn) was a railway in the Kingdom of Prussia and later Germany until 1918. Its main route, approximately long, connected the capital, Berlin, with the cities of Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland) ...

, the Russian border station near the village of Kybartai was named after the neighbouring town of Verzhbolovo (Вержболово), Lithuanian

, German Wirballen. Meanwhile, Kybartai has become a town bigger than Virbalis and the now Lithuanian border station is called Kybartai, too. The German station of the Prussian Eastern Railway on the western side of the frontier was ''Eydtkuhnen'', today it is the Russian border station and called

Chernyshevskoye Chernyshevskoye (; , from 1938: ''Eydtkau''; ) is a settlement in Nesterovsky District in the eastern part of Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia, close to the border with Lithuania. Between Chernyshevskoye and Lithuanian Kybartai is an important 24-ho ...

(Чернышевское). On June 30, 1941, an

Einsatzgruppe (, ; also 'task forces') were (SS) paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany that were responsible for mass murder, primarily by shooting, during World War II (1939–1945) in German-occupied Europe. The had an integral role in the imple ...

of Germans and a few Lithuanian policemen perpetrated a mass execution of the local Jewish population. 106–116 men were murdered in a sand quarry. From July to Autumn 1941, other Jews from the town were assassinated with hundreds of victims from the nearby town of

on another execution site.

People born in Kybartai

* the Russian

landscape painter Landscape painting, also known as landscape art, is the depiction of natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, trees, rivers, and forests, especially where the main subject is a wide view—with its elements arranged into a coherent compos ...

Isaac Ilyich Levitan Isaac Ilyich Levitan (russian: Исаа́к Ильи́ч Левита́н; – ) was a classical Russian landscape painter who advanced the genre of the "mood landscape". Life and work Youth Isaac Levitan was born in a shtetl of Kibar ...

(

Russian language Russian (russian: русский язык, russkij jazyk, link=no, ) is an East Slavic languages, East Slavic language mainly spoken in Russia. It is the First language, native language of the Russians, and belongs to the Indo-European langua ...

: Исаак Ильич Левитан, 1860–1900) * the Polish composer

Emil Młynarski Emil Szymon Młynarski (; 18 July 18705 April 1935) was a Polish conductor, violinist, composer, and pedagogue. Life Młynarski was born in Kibarty (Kybartai), Russian Empire, now in Lithuania. He studied violin with Leopold Auer and composit ...

(1870–1935) * the Lithuanian painter Jacob Mesenblum (1895–1933) * the Austrian singer Harald Serafin (born 1931) * the Lithuanian singer and politician Inga Valinskienė (born 1966)

References

Cities in Lithuania Cities in Marijampolė County Suwałki Governorate Shtetls Holocaust locations in Lithuania Populated places established in the 16th century {{MarijampolėCounty-geo-stub