At the site of the original location of the POW Camp.

Known as the Macikai Complex, the museum remembers the Nazi POW Camp and the Soviet Era Gulag: The Macikai Complex of a Nazi German prisoner-of-war camp and the Soviet GULAG forced-labour camps (1941-1955).

The museum is built around the original prison facility and approximately 2500 US Airmen where imprisoned here during WW2.

From the museum website:

The Nazi Period

A prisoner-of-war camp established by the Nazi Germany in Macikai Village in 1941 operated until 1944. It was originally called Stalag 331, later on it was renamed Stalag 1C Heydekrug, and still later on, Stalag Luft VI Heydekrug. Soldiers from Poland, the USSR, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Belgium, Australia, New Zealand, and other allies were imprisoned there. According to the US Department of Military Intelligence, at least 10,000 people could have been held in the camp.

The Soviet Period

After the second Soviet occupation of Lithuania, the Soviets established in Macikai, the former German prisoner-of-war camp, the following:

1. German and Allied Prisoners-of-War Camp No. 184, which operated from 1945 to 1948. Germans, Romanians, Hungarians, Austrians, the Czech, the Dutch, Danes, Lithuanians, and people of other nationalities were imprisoned there. In 1946, the camp was reorganized and renamed as the treatment camp; the seriously ill and physically exhausted prisoners of war were brought there from all camps in Lithuania. During this period, approximately 500 people died there;

2. The GULAG camp, which operated from 1945 to 1955. Civilians, political prisoners, priests, as well as women and children were imprisoned there. Most prisoners were Lithuanians, Russians, Poles, and Belarusians. The Soviets would imprison people in the GULAG camp for counter-revolutionary crimes (members of the resistance movement, partisan supporters, farmers having failed to pay obligations, and people having fled exile). Criminals were also held in the camp. In 1948-1955, approximately 450 people died in the camp.

For more information, see the museum website: https://macikulageriai.lt/en/