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 Marijampol� ...

, Lithuania. It is located west of Vilkaviškis and is on the border of Kaliningrad Oblast,

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eig ...

History

Kybartai was founded under the reign of Sigismund I the Old by the colonization efforts of his wife, Bona Sforza. In 1561, it was listed in the land-register of Jurbarkas and Virbalis. Stancija Veržbolovo1900

When in 1861 a branch of the Saint Petersburg–Warsaw Railway was built from Vilnius 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 ...

n border, where it was linked to Prussian Eastern Railway, the Russian border station near the village of Kybartai was named after the neighbouring town of Verzhbolovo (Вержболово), Lithuanian Virbalis, 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 (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 Virbalis 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 composi ...

Isaac Ilyich Levitan ( Russian language: Исаак Ильич Левитан, 1860–1900) * the Polish composer Emil Młynarski (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