Monument for the participants of the revolt of Tauragė in1927

The monument for the participants of the revolt of Tauragė in 1927 is located at the outskirts of the town, at the confluence of Jūra and Miltauja rivers.
The revolt of Tauragė (also referred to as the Putsch of Tauragė), which took place in 9 September 1927, was organised by social democrats and supported by the leftist people’s party. The rebels attempted to revolt against Antanas Smetona and the nationalist party, which came to power after the takeover of 17 December 1926. The revolt was organised by Jeronimas Plečkaitis and led by the Seimas member Povilas Mikulskis in Tauragė. Although similar revolts were supposed to take place all over Lithuania, the plan was implemented only in Tauragė. Seeking to restore the constitutional government, on 9 September 1927 about 30 armed rebels took hold of the major institutions in Tauragė (the bank and the railway station), disarmed the police, the riflemen and announced that the Lithuanian government has been overthrown. Soon the rebels were joined by several hundreds of local workers and farmers. They took several surrounding towns as well.
However, the government of A. Smetona didn’t take long to notice the revolt (a message had been sent from Tauragė Post Office to Kaunas using Morse code). The Lithuanian armed forces arrived from Klaipėda and Šiauliai and extinguished the revolt in the afternoon of the same day. Many of the rebels were arrested, others managed to escape abroad. P. Mikulskis died during his arrest. The court-martial sentenced some of the rebels for life imprisonment or hard labour camps and 22 people were sentenced to death. 14 of them were pardoned, but 8 others were executed on 13 September 1927 in a remote wash of Jūra River. They were buried there as well. Later one of the rebels (Jonas Milkeraitis) was reburied in the cemetery.
On 1967 the place of the execution was marked with a monument, which says: ‘In 1927, this place became the execution place of the participants of the revolt in Tauragė: Vladas Burneckas, Aleksas Gudjonis, Giršas Nachmanas Kazlauskas, Petras Lėkavičius, Jonas Milkeraitis, Augustas Odovas, Jonas Paulikas, Richardas Vizenbergas’..

Compiled in 2018