Salakas is a town in northeastern
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 ...
with a population of 519 inhabitants according to the 2011 census. It is famous for the
neo-romantic church of
Lady of Sorrows. It was built in 1911.
History
The settlement of Salakas was first mentioned in written sources in 1496 when a local noble gifted some land with three serfs to the parish church in Salakas and in 1497 when ,
Bishop of Vilnius, gifted some land to a governor of Salakas.
In 1554 the town is mentioned as one of the towns on the main trade route from
Vilnius to
Riga
Riga (; lv, Rīga , liv, Rīgõ) is the capital and largest city of Latvia and is home to 605,802 inhabitants which is a third of Latvia's population. The city lies on the Gulf of Riga at the mouth of the Daugava river where it meets the Ba ...
. Because of this Salakas developed as a trading town. Around 1720, a monastery of the
Canons Regular of the Penitence of the Blessed Martyrs was built, a wooden church was attached in 1740. After the failed
Uprising of 1831
The November Uprising (1830–31), also known as the Polish–Russian War 1830–31 or the Cadet Revolution,
was an armed rebellion in the heartland of partitioned Poland against the Russian Empire. The uprising began on 29 November 1830 in W ...
, the monastery was closed by the
Tsarist authorities in 1832.
Beginning in the early 19th century, there was a significant
Jewish population in Salakas because of its status as a trading town. The percentage of Jewish inhabitants ranged from thirty percent to above fifty percent. At the end of August 1941, about 150 Jews from the town – men, women and children – were murdered
during the Holocaust in the nearby forest of Sungardai.
After the
Polish–Lithuanian War, the
Lithuania–Poland border was located several kilometres from Salakas. This meant that the trade going through the town dried up.
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References
{{Utena County
Towns in Lithuania
Towns in Utena County
Novoalexandrovsky Uyezd
Holocaust locations in Lithuania
Zarasai District Municipality