Ratnycia Jewish Cemetery
Cemetery Information
Historical overview
Ratnyčia was a small village that had 539 inhabitants in 1897, of which 517 of them were Jewish, the majority of whom had -ov/ovski/ski suffixes in their family names. In the 20th century Ratnyčia (spellings of the name also include Radnitsa and Rotniza) was absorbed by a resort town Druskininkai.
200 Jews from Ratnyčia were killed, along with Jews from neighbouring Druskininkai: they were taken to the Kolbasin concentration camp near Grodno and from there sent to Treblinka extermination camp in 1942.
The old Jewish cemetery in Ratnyčia is located at the outskirts of the village, close to the forest. The cemetery was established here at the end of the 18th century and was in use until the Second World War. In the 1970s the cemetery was demolished, and the bulk of the gravestones was used as building materials in Druskininkai and the surrounding area. In 2015 the cemetery was registered in the Cultural Property Register of the Republic of Lithuania and now it is protected by the state.
Currently 140 stone, granite and concrete headstones or their fragments have been found within the irregularly shaped area which is 0.4 hectares large and is marked by small rocks. Inside the cemetery there is a three-part monument consisting of grey stone slabs concreted side by side. The central slab has a dedication in Lithuanian, on the surface of the right-side slab there is a menorah and inscription in Hebrew, the left-side slab with the Star of David engraved is in Yiddish.