Lithuania

Baltic state, independent 1918–1940, then occupied in turn by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Ancestral home of the Turetz (Turecas), Porubansky, Dreispulis, Langmann and Kessel lines, centred on Kaunas and Vilnius. Of roughly 210,000 Lithuanian Jews, some 95% were murdered in 1941–44 — most in the first months, at the forts around Kaunas, at Ponar near Vilnius, and in the provincial towns. Only Itzik and Mania Turetz survived; they returned briefly after the war and then emigrated to Israel.