factory. A large number of residents were exiled to Siberia (merely during the June deportation in 1941 over 600 residents were exiled to Siberia) or suffered other forms of political repression. On 23 June 1941, the June Uprising began in Panevėžys County. The most active participants of the uprising were in Ramygala and Krekenava counties. The participants of the uprising were also active in the city of Panevėžys. On 25 June 1941, the Panevėžys Staff of the June Uprising was established in the city which was headed by Lieutenant Colonel Antanas Stapulionis. One of the staff's tasks was to oversee the order in the city, thus Antanas Stapulionis had issued an order stating that the robbers will be shot on the spot, and ordered to remove all signs which reminisced the Soviet rule. Moreover, the scouts were sent to all roads leading from the city and on 25 June, at the initiative of the rebels, the Piniavos Bridge and the food factory were demined. The Panevėžys Post Office was peacefully passed into the hands of the rebels. During the first days of the war, the NKGB units carried out repressions, arrested participants of the June Uprising and civilians who spoke out against the Soviet government; the detainees were transported to the Panevėžys Prison. As the Germans were approaching, seeing no way out, the Soviets had decided to retreat to the East and to shoot the political prisoners in the prison. Already on 27 June, the city was full of the Lithuanian Tricolor flags and without any serious clashes with the retreating Red Army in the city or its surroundings. Furthermore, on 27 June, the Wehrmacht had entered Panevėžys and in the end of June the Germans liquidated the staff of the rebels. Soviet and Nazi annexations After Germany attacked the USSR, Panevėžys was occupied by German forces, as it had been during the First World War. It acquired the status of a district center () within the Reichskommissariat Ostland. During the Nazi occupation nearly all the Jewish population of the town was killed in 1943 during the Holocaust; only a few managed to escape and find asylum abroad. The major massacre was in August 1941 when 7,523 Jews were executed by the German Army officers and soldiers, German-SS officers and the Panevėžys (10th) police battalion. In 1944 the city was yet again occupied by the Soviet Union leading to a