Virbalis

Virbalis
City
Coat of arms
Virbalis Location of Virbalis
Coordinates: 54°38′0″N 22°49′0″E
Country	Lithuania
Ethnographic region	Suvalkija
County	Marijampolė County
Municipality	Vilkaviškis district municipality
Eldership	Virbalis eldership
Capital of	Virbalis eldership
First mentioned	1529
Granted city rights	1593
Population  (2005)
• Total	1,314
Time zone	UTC+2 (EET)
• Summer (DST)	UTC+3 (EEST)

Market in Virbalis before 1912

Virbalis (, Polish: Wierzbołów, Yiddish: ווירבאלן Virbalen) is a city in the Vilkaviškis district municipality, Lithuania. It is located 12 km (7.5 mi) west of Vilkaviškis.

History

It is frequently mentioned in historical as well in modern literature. It was the site of the formation of the Wierzbołów Confederation by Paweł Jan Sapieha in 1655 during the Deluge (part of the Second Northern War). Later it was the first station for stagecoaches and later the first railway station in the Russian Empire when leaving Germany.

When in 1861 a branch of the Saint Petersburg – Warsaw Railway was built from Vilnius to the Prussian border, where it was linked to the Prussian Eastern Railway, the Russian border station near the village of Kybartai was named after the neighbouring town of Verzhbolovo. Meanwhile, Kybartai has become a town bigger than Virbalis, and the Lithuanian border station is now called Kybartai, too. The German station of the Prussian Eastern Railway on the western side of the frontier was Eydtkuhnen; today it is the Russian border station and called Chernyshevskoye (Russian: Черныше́вское).

Between mid-July and autumn 1941, an Einsatzgruppen of German SS troops aided by local Lithuanian auxiliary police from Virbalis and Vilkaviškis slaughtered 670–700 Jews from Virbalis and the nearby town of Kybartai in several mass executions. A memorial was built on the site of the massacre.