In 1940, after the Soviet occupation of Lithuania, deportations of people from the town began. When the Germans attacked the Soviet Union and its occupied territories, on June 22, 1941, the retreating Soviets gave instructions to their operatives to kill some 120 prisoners; however, most of them escaped; only eight of them were tortured to death. After the German invasion, the Nazis rounded up and killed about 10,000 members of the town's Jewish population with the help of Lithuanian collaborators.[6] During World War II, the city center suffered from extensive bomb damage.