Alternate names: Mosėdis [Lith], Maisyad [Yid], Masiady [Rus, Pol], Mashadi, Maishad, Mosėdžio, Russian: Масяды. מײַסיאַד-Yiddish. 56°10' N, 21°35' E, in NW Lithuania, 29 miles WNW of Telšiai (Telz), 20 miles NNW of Plungė (Plungian) on the Baruva river . 1900 Jewish population: 363. Słownik Geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego (1880-1902), VI, p. 162: "Masiady". Mosedis ("Maishad" in Yiddish), a small town in the Kretinga region between Skud and Salant in NW Lithuania, before WWII was home to about 35 Jewish families (130-150 people) and an equal number of non-Jewish families. [March 2009]
MASS GRAVE: The Germans entered the town at twilight on June 23, 1941. Local Lithuanian nationalists painted black swastikas on the Jewish houses. Almost all of Mosedis' Jews were murdered during summer 1941 by armed Lithuanian bands during the first weeks and months of the German occupation in Mosedis, nearby Skuodos ,and in Kretinga. On June 24, they were locked in the synagogue. The beards were torn from the men and the women raped. On Sunday, when the Lithuanians went to church, a number were taken out and were forced to run a race by the Lithuanians, old Jews with the cross. Two Germans soldiers stopped the Lithuanian bandits. The Jews were given almost no food or water and not allowed to relieve themselves outside. They were held this way for two week and then taken via Skud to Kretinga by carriages or on foot, two men tied behind the carriage. Most of the men were shot in Skud in the Shavlistem Club in the beginning of July. The women were held about a week in Skud and then taken to clean the streets or carry bricks. They were taken with the children to the Jewish cemetery in Kretinga at the end of July and brutally tortured, beaten with sticks and clubs, and ordered to strip to their underwear, and shot to death. Local farmers said that the river close to the cemetery ran red from the victims' blood. In the cemetery, Soviet authorities raised a monument where the women and children of Maishad were killed saying that "on this spot three Lithuanian women were killed who were members of a Soviet Communist Youth organization"; their names are inscribed on the monument with "others" referring to the Jews. Other Maishad citizens were in the Kaunas ghetto or in concentration camps in Germany. A few Jews escaped to the USSR. [March 2009]