Standing by the Vilnius-Druskininkai road, the “Mother of Pirčiupiai” memorial commemorates one of the most brutal civilian tragedies of World War II in Lithuania — the Pirčiupiai village massacre.

On June 3, 1944, at dawn, Soviet partisans hiding nearby in the Rūdininkai Forest attacked German military vehicles close to the village. Several German soldiers were killed, and the rest fled to Eišiškės. That same day, the Germans sent a punitive squad to the village.

The squad surrounded the village, drove the residents into barns, and burned 119 people alive — 58 men and 61 women. Among the victims were 49 children under the age of 16; the youngest was only six weeks old.

In 1960, a granite memorial ensemble was erected — the sculpture “Mother of Pirčiupiai” by Gediminas Jokūbonis, along with a memorial wall inscribed with the names of the 119 victims. In Pirčiupiai village, the site of the massacre and graves of the victims are also preserved. The granite sculpture, with its plastic, flowing form, symbolizes a mother’s grief.

The village tragedy is immortalized in Justinas Marcinkevičius’s poem Blood and Ashes and in the film The Fact by director Almantas Grikevičius, shot in the ethnographic village of Zervynos.