Kamajai (Kamai in Yiddish) is located in the eastern part of
Lithuania, about 13 kilometers south of the district
administrative center Rakishok (Rokiskis), on the banks of the
Seteksna River. Forests, fields and villages surrounded the
town. Its beginnings go back to an estate with the same name
mentioned in historical sources from the sixteenth century.
Until 1795 Kamai was included in the Polish-Lithuanian Kingdom.
At the time of the third division of Poland by the three
superpowers of those times, Russia, Prussia and Austria,
Lithuania was divided between Russia and Prussia. As with most
of Lithuania, Kamai became a part of the Russian Empire, first
in the Vilna province (Gubernia) and Vilkomir district and from
1843 in the Kovno Gubernia and Novo-Alexandrovsk district. In
the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth
century Kamai was a county administrative center and this status
extended to the period of Independent Lithuania (1918-1940), and
then later in the Rakishok (Rokiskis) district.