Kupiškis, known in Yiddish as Kupishok or Kupishik, was home to 1,444 Jews before World War II. The Jewish population made up about 42% of the town's population. In the summer of 1941, all Jewish men, women, and children in the town were forced into an improvised ghetto and tortured for about two days, deprived of food and water, then on June 28, 1941, they were shot and buried in nameless pits at the communal cemetery. After the war, Christian midwives from the Jewish Hospital in Panevėžys compiled a list of more than 800 names of murdered Jews. However, historians estimate that between 1,500 and 2,000 Jews were killed by the Lithuanian "Kupiškis self-defense squads."
A German citizen named Werner Löw, who pretended to be a communist while teaching German at the local gymnasium in Kupiškis, decided to seize control of the town in July 1941 and became the self-proclaimed commandant. He used the services of a small squad of deserters from the 618th artillery unit of the Soviet Red Army, which had been previously deployed to Kupiškis in 1940. These former Lithuanian soldiers of the Red Army were led by Lieutenant Antanas Gudelis, who later became the commander of the executioner squad under Löw’s personal leadership.
However, some non-Jewish residents of the town, such as Doctor Franckavičius, tried to hide and protect some Jewish residents. Unfortunately, none of those protected survived.
Sources:
https://ru.wikibrief.org/wiki/Kupi%C5%A1kis
http://holocaustatlas.lt/EN/#a_atlas/search//page/1/item/204/
https://kvr.kpd.lt/#/static-heritage-detail/540ecf39-0488-40fa-9f59-7e68abdb0822
