Former NKVD headquarters
Coordinates: 55.494761 22.180114
Object address: Vytauto Didžiojo str. 9, Šilale, Lithuania
Municipality: Šilalė district
On Vytauto Didžiojo g. 9, near the church, there is the parsonage. The brick two-storey building has been built in 1939.
Back in 1940, the Soviet authorities had nationalised the building, turning it into the NKVD headquarters (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs, Rus. Народный комиссариат внутренних дел).
The NKVD operated as a ministry of interior and security police, being responsible for transport issues, fire security, murdering civilians, ethnic cleansing, genocide, elimination of persons against the USSR in the Soviet Union and abroad, etc.
The saddest period of this building’s history is now commemorated with a memorial plate, stating that the NKVD had been operating in the building from 1949 to 1953. NKVD officers used to torture Lithuanian citizens. The arrestees used to be imprisoned in the four cells of the prison in the basement with the interrogation rooms above them. A number of locals had lost their freedom and even lives there.
The memorial plate was opened in 1992.
Compiled in 2018