Eišiškės

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Eišiškės
Coat of arms
Eišiškės Location of Eišiškės
Coordinates: 54°10′N 25°00′E / 54.167, 25
Country	Lithuania
Ethnographic region	Dzūkija
County	Vilnius County
Municipality	Šalčininkai district municipality
Elderate	Eišiškės elderate
Capital of	Eišiškės elderate
First mentioned	1384
Granted city rights	1950
Population (2001)
- Total	3,765
- Rank	63rd
Time zone	EET (UTC+2)
- Summer (DST)	EEST (UTC+3)

Eišiškės (pronunciation (help·info); Polish: Ejszyszki also Eishyshok) is a city in southeastern Lithuania on the border with Belarus. It was a Jewish shtetl. On 21 September 1941, an einsatzgruppen unit entered Eišiškės and killed the approximately 4,000 Jewish residents.

Place of fights between Polish Armia Krajowa and Soviet NKVD on October 19th and 20th, and December 6th/7th, 1944.

The history of Eišiškės (Eishyshok) shtetl has been documented in the book, There Once Was A World by Yaffa Eliach, professor of history and literature in the department of Judaic Studies at Brooklyn College and creator of the Tower of Life at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. Eliach documents the founding of the town in 1054 by a Lithuanian military commander Eisys, who was granted the land as a reward for actions against the Russians. Tombstones indicate that Jewish settlement goes back almost to the very founding of the town. By the 16th century Jews made up the majority of the population and remained so until the Nazi invasion.

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