Pikeliai ( pl, Pikiele, ) is a town in

Telšiai County Telšiai County ( lt, Telšių apskritis) is one of ten counties in Lithuania. It is in the west of the country, and its capital is Telšiai Telšiai (; Samogitian: ''Telšē'') is a city in Lithuania with about 21,499 inhabitants. It is ...

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 ...

. According to the 2011 census, the town has a population of 378 people. Pikeliai is named after the nearby "Pikelhof" estate.

History

Pikeliai was first mentioned in 1594 in the Books of the Courts of Samogitian land. In 1598 it had 19

valakas Volok ( lt, valakas, pl, włóka) was a late medieval unit of land measurement in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Kingdom of Poland and later, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. It was equal, on average, to in Lithuania or to in Poland. It was s ...

(unit of measure in the

Grand Duchy of Lithuania The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a European state that existed from the 13th century to 1795, when the territory was partitioned among the Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Habsburg Empire of Austria. The state was founded by Li ...

; 1 valakas is equal to 21 ha). In 1625 Protestant Bilevičius demolished

Catholic church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

in Pikeliai but it was rebuilt in 1636. The new

church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a building for Christian religious activities * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian communal worship * Chris ...

was built in 1752. The first parish school of Pikeliai is mentioned in 1805. In 1865 it was reorganized to public primary school. In 1897 a total of 1206 Jewish people made up 68% of the population in Pikeliai. By 1921 the increasingly hostile situation had brought the Jewish population down to 286 people. Between 3 and 9 August 1941, all the Jewish families that had not fled Pikeliai were taken out of town and killed by the Nazis and their Lithuanian collaborators. Nowadays Pikeliai has

, high school, medical office, public library, post office etc.

References

Towns in Lithuania Towns in Telšiai County Mažeikiai District Municipality {{TelšiaiCounty-geo-stub