Kretinga gained greater importance after another railway line was built in 1932 that connected it to Šiauliai. During the first Soviet occupation, under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, a reign of terror resulted in local residents being arrested and, in some cases, executed without trial or deported to Siberia. A local lawyer, Vladas Petronaitis, was arrested and ultimately tortured to death by the Soviet intelligence agency. During World War II, the Nazi occupation saw the elimination of Kretinga's Jewish population. In June 1941, German forces and Lithuanian collaborators took about 200 Jewish men and some Lithuanian communist activists to a forest outside the town and shot them in pits that some of the Jewish men had been forced to dig. Several more mass shootings including women and children took place in July at the Kretinga Jewish cemetery. As in neighbouring Palanga, local Lithuanian nationalists volunteered to assist in the killing of Jewish citizens as soon as the German army and police units had arrived. The Soviet occupation in 1945, led to further reductions in the population as refugees fled to the west and many of those trapped were deported to Siberia. The local economy stagnated under Soviet occupation, which forcibly collectivized the farms in the area; it became an economic backwater. Since Lithuania's independence in 1990, the town has made a recovery; it has much to offer by way of history and art. Kretinga hosts folk music festivals, theatricals, the Kretinga Festival, celebrations on Midsummer Night's Eve (Joninės) and Mardi Gras (Užgavėnės), and a Manorial Feast. The Manor House is now a museum housing artistic and archeological collections and a restaurant in the adjacent greenhouse, called "The Winter Garden". A Cambrian geothermal reservoir underlies the area, and the Vydmantai powerplant exploiting this resource is being built nearby. Its Kretinga Jurgis Pabrėža gymnasium was founded in 1980. Notable people Simonas Daukantas (1793–1864), author of the first history of Lithuania written in Lithuanian, briefly studied in Kretinga Berek Joselewicz (1764–1809), Jewish-Polish merchant and a colonel of the Polish Army Jurgis Pabrėža, first Lithuanian botanist; died and was buried in Kretinga Vladas Petronaitis (1888–1941), recipient of the Lithuanian Independence Medal; he was executed during the first Soviet occupation Linas Pilibaitis (born 1985), Lithuanian international footballer Rimvydas Šilbajoris, linguist, author, and professor at Ohio State University Adolfas Večerskis (born 1949), actor Antanas Vinkus (born 1942), Lithuanian diplomat Twin towns – sister cities Kretinga is twinned with: