Kelmė

Kelmė
City
Church of Kelmė
Flag Coat of arms
Kelmė Location of Kelmė
Coordinates: 55°38′0″N 22°56′0″E / 55.63333°N 22.93333°E / 55.63333; 22.93333
Country	Lithuania
Ethnographic region	Samogitia
County	Šiauliai County
Municipality	Kelmė district municipality
Eldership	Kelmė eldership
Capital of	Kelmė district municipality Kelmė eldership
First mentioned	1484
Granted city rights	1947
Government
• Mayor	Vaclovas Andrulis
Area
• Total	7.85 km2 (3.03 sq mi)
Elevation	128 m (420 ft)
Population  (2021)
• Total	7,544
• Density	960/km2 (2,500/sq mi)
Time zone	UTC+2 (EET)
• Summer (DST)	UTC+3 (EEST)
Website	kelme.lt

Kelmė (pronunciation^ⓘ; Polish: Kielmy) is a city in northwestern Lithuania, a historical region of Samogitia. It has a population of 8,206 and is the administrative center of the Kelmė District Municipality.

Name

Kelmė's name is likely derived from the Lithuanian word kelmynės, literally: the stubby place, because of the forests that were there at the time of its founding.^[1][2] The Yiddish name is Kelm, as in Kelm Talmud Torah.

History

Kelmė was first mentioned in 1416, the year that Kelmė's first church was built.^[2] It was located in the Duchy of Samogitia in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania within the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Prior to World War II, Kelmė (Yiddish: Kelm) was home to a famous Rabbinical College, the Kelm Talmud Torah. According to an 1897 census, 2,710 of Kelme's 3,914 inhabitants were members of the town's Jewish population, the vast majority of whom were merchants and traders and lived in the town. Most of the Jews in Kelmė rural district were murdered during a mass execution on 29 July 1941. On August 22 a second mass execution occurred. On 2 October 1941, some Kelmė and Vaiguva Jews were murdered in Žagarė. The executions were committed by the Germans soldiers, auxiliary police and Lithuanian collaborators.^[3] In total, the number of victims is 1,250-1,300 people.

Gallery

• 
  Kelmė Manor, dates to the 15th century
• 
  Kelmė Manor gates and church in the distance
• 
  Evangelical Reformed Church, built in 1615
• 
  Roman Catholic Church
• 
  Kelmė Jonas Graičiūnas Gymnasium
• 
  Municipality building

People

• Aryeh Leib Frumkin (1845–1916), Rabbi
• Bronius Laucevičius-Vargšas (1884–1916), writer
• Antanas Mackevičius (1828–1863),^[2] Roman Catholic priest involved in Uprising of 1863
• Icchokas Meras (1934–2014), writer
• Zvi Yaakov Oppenheim (1883–1926), Rabbi
• Simcha Zissel Ziv (1824–1898), the Alter of Kelm

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Kelmė.

• Official site of Kelmė district municipality Archived 2012-04-15 at the Wayback Machine

This page was last edited on 25 February 2024, at 20:36