The old Jewish cemetery in Želva is now not only a place of burial, but also a place of death of Želva Jews, who were murdered during the Holocaust. In the summer of 1941, after Nazi Germany occupied Lithuania, Lithuanian citizens of Jewish ethnicity were persecuted and killed. Squads of local collaborators also contributed to this persecution and mass murders. The town of Želva was no exception, although Jews and Lithuanians were neighbors there for more than a century. In the months of July and August of 1941 almost all the Jews of Želva area were killed in the town with the help of locals. These massacres took place in the old cemetery, where the murdered were buried as well. In 1967 a monument commemorating the macabre summer of 1941 and its victims was erected on the periphery of the old Želva Jewish cemetery.