The main gates of the Vilnius Ghetto. 1942. From the archives of the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum

The memorial plaque showing the schemes of the Large Ghetto and the Small Ghetto on the house on Gaono Street 3. Photo by Vilma Juozevičiūtė, 2013

The Jews deported to concen-tration camps. 1943. From the archives of the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum

The liquidation of the Vilnius Ghetto. Sept. 23–24, 1943. From the archives of the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum

The exhumed bodies in Paneriai. August 1944. From the Lithuanian Special Archives

On June 24, 1941, the German army entered Vilnius. The persecution of Jews began since the very first days of the Nazi occupation: several thou-sand Jews were murdered before the establishment of the Vilnius Ghetto. On Sept. 6, 1941, the Vilnius Ghetto was established under the order from Hans Hingst, who then was the gebietskommissar of the Vilnius munici-pality. There were two ghettos – the Large Ghetto and the Small Ghetto – they were established by the end of October 1941.

The two ghettos were sealed and separated from each other by Vokiečių Street. There were 30,000 Jews in the Large Ghetto and 9,000–11,000 in the Small Ghetto. After some time, the Large Ghetto was considered as the ghetto for qualified specialists and workers while the Small Ghetto was considered as the ghetto for the elderly and the sick. In the fall of 1941, mass killings of the Vilnius Ghetto prisoners were car-ried out in Paneriai, some nine kilometers from Vilnius. Until the end of 1941, the German Sonderkommando as well as other German units and Lithuanian police executed some 30,000 Jews of Vilnius there. All the prisoners of the Little Ghetto were killed during these actions. The Little Ghetto ceased to exist during the so-called quiet period (December 1941 – March 1943). During the quiet time period, large-scale massacres were not carried out.

The German army failed to implement its plan of Blietzkrieg (Lightning War, in German) in the Soviet Union and the German military econo-my needed a large workforce. It is why the German authorities decided to keep Jewish workers and their families alive for some time. During the so-called quiet period, the ghetto became some kind of state within a state: there were administrative and police structures within ghetto as well as workshops and cultural institutions. The Germans appointed the Judenrat (the Jewish Council), which was in charge of the ghetto’s Jewish police, food supplies, welfare, health, accommodation, work, education, and other matters. The Judenrat members thought that the Germans plan keeping the ghetto inhabitants alive because they need the Jewish workforce and, therefore, the work-related matters were a priority for the Judenrat: almost all the ghetto’s men and women of working age worked in various fabrics, workshops and labor camps. In the summer of 1943, some 14,000 prisoners of the ghetto (some two-thirds of all the ghetto prisoners) were engaged in working activities. In July 1942, the Germans dismissed the Judenrat. Jo-kūbas Gensas, who is also known as Jacob Gens (1903–1943), was appoin-ted the head of the ghetto’s self-rule.

On Sept. 23–24, 1943, the Vilnius Ghetto was liquidated by the Nazis. Some 14,000 of the Vilnius Ghetto prisoners were sent to labor camps and concentration camps in Estonia, Latvia and other countries. Some 2,000–3,000 Jews were left for the German institutions in Vilnius. In July 1944, the Red Army approached Vilnius and the Nazis murdered the Jews, who remained in the city. Some 2,000–3,000 out of the total 58,000 Jewish pre-war population of Vilnius survived the war and the Nazi occupation.

After the re-establishment of independent state of Lithuania in March 1990, on Oct. 31, 1990, the presidium of the Supreme Council of Lithuania (the Lithuanian parliament in 1990–1992) issued its decree announcing the day of Sept. 23 as the day of commemoration of the victims of the ge-nocide of Jews in Lithuania.

By Dr Arūnas Bubnys

The monument by Jaunutis Makariūnas commemorating the victims of the genocide of Jews in Paneriai. The mo-nument was erected in 1991. Photo by Vilma Juozevičiūtė

The Vilnius GheTTo