| Butrimonys | |||
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| — Town — | |||
| Central square in Butrimonys | |||
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Butrimonys
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| Coordinates: | |||
| Country | Lithuania | ||
| County | Alytus County | ||
| Municipality | Alytus district municipality | ||
| Eldership | Butrimonys eldership | ||
| Capital of | Butrimonys eldership | ||
| Population (2001) | |||
| • Total | 1,126 | ||
| Time zone | EET (UTC+2) | ||
| • Summer (DST) | EEST (UTC+3) | ||
Butrimonys (Yiddish: Baltrimantz) is a small town in Alytus County in southern Lithuania. As of 2001 it had a population of 1126. Its most famous son was Bernard Berenson, a famous and still influential American art historian.
On 9 September 1941, shortly after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, the Jews of Butrimonys were massacred by Einsatzgruppen and Lithuanian collaborators. Rounded up and marched along a road, they were lined up beside a mass grave and machine-gunned. According to the Jäger Report, 740 Jews were murdered in one day: 67 men, 370 women, and 303 children.[1]
What distinguished Butrimonys from hundreds of similar crimes in the Baltic region was the survival of a detailed record left by a local Jew Khone Boyarski. Hiding with his son, Boyarski described the events in a farewell letter to his relatives abroad. Boyarski was later killed by the Nazis; the letter was discovered by accident by a graduate student in the archives of Yad Vashem.[2]