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Šeduva
Municipal Coat of Arms
Copyright © 2009 Jon Seligman.  All Rights Reserved.
Shadova / Šeduva - Shtetl of the Lederman and Fleishman Families
Situated between the great Litvak towns of Shavel (Siauliai) and Ponovezh (Panevezys) in northern Lithuania, Shadova (Šeduva) was a small market town of little importance. Known as Shadova to the Jews, Šeduva to the Lithuanians, Szadow to the Poles, Sheduva to the Russians, Šeduvos to the Letts and Schadow to the Germans, its many names showed how it had passed from hand to hand through history.

Jews originally settled in Shadova in the 15th century, though the community only grew after a further influx in the 18th century, reaching a population that numbered over sixty percent of residents by the end of the 19th century. Emigration, the results of WWI and especially the Holocaust, would change all that, leaving Shadova with only its Lithuanian residents.

You are invited to travel through pages of history of our shtetl and view images of places that were once familiar to our ancestors.