Butrimonys

Butrimonys
Town
Central square in Butrimonys Central square in Butrimonys
Coat of arms of Butrimonys Coat of arms
Butrimonys is located in Lithuania Butrimonys Location in Lithuania
Coordinates:
Country	Lithuania
County	Alytus County
Municipality	Alytus district municipality
Eldership	Butrimonys eldership
Capital of	Butrimonys eldership
Population (2001)
• Total	1,126
Time zone	EET (UTC+2)
• Summer (DST)	EEST (UTC+3)

Butrimonys (Yiddish: באַלטרימאַנטז Baltrimantz, Polish: Butrymańce) is a small town in Alytus County in southern Lithuania. In 2001 it had a population of 1126. Its most famous son was Bernard Berenson (1865-1959), a famous and still influential American art historian. Senda Berenson, known as the Mother of Women's Basketball, was born here March 19, 1868. Berenson introduced basketball to women in 1892 at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, United States, a year after being first invented by James Naismith. She also authored the first Basketball Guide for Women (1901–07).

Butrimonys massacre

On 9 September 1941, shortly after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, the Jews of Butrimonys were massacred by Einsatzgruppen and Lithuanian collaborators. Rounded up and marched along a road, they were lined up beside a mass grave and machine-gunned. According to the Jäger Report, 740 Jews were murdered in one day: 67 men, 370 women, and 303 children.

What distinguished Butrimonys from hundreds of similar crimes in the Baltic region was the survival of a detailed record left by a local Jew Khone Boyarski. Hiding with his son, Boyarski described the events in a farewell letter to his relatives abroad. Boyarski was later killed by the Nazis; the letter was discovered by accident by a graduate student in the archives of Yad Vashem.