Klaipeda is the former German city of Memel, a place where Judaism came under the influence of the modern nineteenth-century Orthodoxy originating in Germany. The city is still home to some 300 Jews.

Despite limited rights of residence, the Jewish presence in Memel, which was under Prussian control at the time, dates back to the middle of the 16th century. They gradually gained access to trade fairs in the following century.

It was not until the early 19th century that they were able to form a community here. By the middle of that century, it consisted of 400 people. This figure rose to 2,000 in 1910, then to 9,000 in 1939. Israel Lipkin (Salanter), the founder of Moussar, lived there and set up a yeshiva in the 1860s and 1880s.

The town changed its name after the First World War, becoming Klaipeda following the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. Most of Klaipeda’s Jews managed to escape to the north of the country before the Nazis invaded in 1939, but were among the many Lithuanian victims of the Holocaust.

The town’s Jewish population stood at 1,000 in 1967, gradually declining to 700 by 1990. The following year, a monument to the victims of the Shoah was erected in the municipal cemetery.

The Jewish cemetery was established in 1759.

Sources: Yivo