Known as Shavel (שאַװל) in Yiddish, Šiauliai’s long and illustrious Jewish history effectively ended on June 26, 1941 when German soldiers entered the city during the first few days of Operation Barbarossa. Although approximately 500 Litvaks survived the Holocaust, most fled the ensuing five-decade Soviet occupation to Israel and the United States. Today, the Jewish population of Šiauliai, the city with the second-largest Jewish population in Lithuania during the interwar period, is tiny.