Monument The settlement was first mentioned in 1561 as a village called
Duoliebaičiai. Queen
Cecilia Renata, who held the
Jurbarkas starostwo as her dower estate, founded a town here under
Magdeburg Law, which she named Władysławów () in honor of her husband King
Władysław IV, by virtue of a charter dated March 26, 1643. The town was granted a coat of arms featuring a stag’s head with three stars above it.
Journalist and
writer Herman Bernstein was born here in 1876 and Rabbi
Abba Hillel Silver, who would become a prominent
American Jewish leader, was born here in 1893. The
Shubert family, which later became prominent in building the American
Broadway theatre district, also has its origins here. During
World War II, the town was occupied by the
Soviet Union from 1940, then by
Nazi Germany from 1941. In 1941, an
Einsatzgruppen of Germans and Lithuanian collaborators murdered the local Jewish population in mass executions. Hundreds of people were massacred. The
Gestapo also carried out executions of ethnic Jewish prisoners of war from the nearby Oflag 60
POW camp in Schirwindt/Širvinta (now
Kutuzovo) in the nearby forest. ==Notable people==