searching for traces of Jewish Vilna

By Neil Adams – Education Research Coordinator at The Together Plan

Photo credits: Neil Adams

 

During the weekend of the 27th to the 30th June I once again visited one of my favourite city’s, Vilnius the capital of Lithuania or Vilna as it is known in the Jewish world. My first visit to the Baltic states in the late 1990s in a former life as an urban and regional planning consultant and later as an academic ignited my interest in this stunning part of the world and its incredibly rich and complex history. An addiction to buying books and maps (which has now got seriously out of hand!) only left me with the desire to learn more. This in turn ignited a passion for learning about the history of the Soviet Union, the Eastern Front and the Holocaust in the East which eventually led me to Belarus and the work of the Together Plan. 

After retiring from 20 years in Higher Education, I was delighted to join The Together Plan as a volunteer. This has given me the chance to pursue what has become a true passion: sharing stories and contributing to projects that highlight lesser-known aspects of the Holocaust. Too often, the collective narrative in the West is dominated by Auschwitz, and I feel privileged to help broaden understanding of this history.

I have visited Vilna many times over the years, but I am always glad to return. So, when my brother — a keen supporter of Parkrun (the free, weekly 5km community running event held in cities worldwide) — told me that a new Parkrun had started in Vingis Park and asked if I’d like to join, I didn’t need to be asked twice.

It wasn’t the run itself that drew me, but rather the chance to revisit one of Europe’s most beautiful cities. Vilnius enchants with its baroque architecture and medieval Old Town, yet for me the real pull lies beyond its aesthetic charm. What fascinates me most is its layered, complex history — and in particular, the story of its Jewish heritage and the Holocaust.

Setting the scene: a bit of history

The Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have the misfortune to be located between the historically great powers of Russia, Germany and Poland and as a result have experienced centuries of war and occupation by their much larger and more powerful neighbours. Long under the yoke of the Russian Empire, Lithuania took advantage of the chaos after World War 1 to declare its independence alongside its Baltic neighbours of Estonia and Latvia. The fledgling young nations survived until war once again engulfed Europe and the Baltic states were occupied first by the Soviet Union in 1940, invaded by Nazi Germany in 1941 and reoccupied by the Soviet Union in 1944. The second Soviet occupation lasted until the country declared independence for the second time in 1990 and Estonia and Latvia soon followed which was a significant contributory factor in bringing about the collapse of the Soviet Union. 

From the 16th until the 18th century Lithuania formed part of the largest state in Europe stretching from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south under the auspices of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania also referred to as the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. In the inter-war years Kaunas (Kovno) was the capital of independent Lithuania as Vilnius had been incorporated into Poland. Stalin returned Vilnius to Lithuania during the huge changes in national borders as a result of the Molotov-Van Ribbentrop pact in 1939 which, amongst other things, divided Eastern Europe into areas of Soviet and Nazi spheres of influence. The Baltic states fell under the Soviet sphere and almost inevitably were occupied by the Soviet Union in 1940 and a puppet government was installed by Moscow in each country and each became a fully fledged Soviet Socialist Republic. 

Just like Belarus, Lithuania was at the heart of the Pale of Settlement that existed from 1791 to 1917 in which permanent settlement by Jews was permitted by Imperial Russia and beyond which Jewish residency was mostly forbidden. Jewish or more specifically Litvak history (Litvak refers to Jews who resided in the area of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania including Belarus) in Lithuania dates from the 14th century. Primarily due to the influence of Elijah ben Solomon Zalman, also known as the Vilna Gaon (1720-1797) Vilna became established as a globally important centre of Jewish education and culture, referred to as the Jerusalem of the North or the Jerusalem of Lithuania. The Vilna Gaon was a distinguished thinker and preeminent leader of misnagdic (non-hasidic) Jewry.  

The complexity of the history of the country and of the city certainly extends to the Holocaust and the legacy of the Holocaust is still extremely sensitive in Lithuania today. This history and the geographical location in the Pale of Settlement meant that Lithuania generally and Vilna in particular had a large Jewish population, estimated at 263,000 in 1939. On the eve of the Nazi invasion Vilna had a population of approximately 55,000 Jews, almost one third of the total population of the city. This figure was then further swollen by up to 15,000 Jewish refugees from German-occupied Poland who fled to find refuge in the city. Lithuania suffered one of the highest proportions of Jewish victims of any country in the Holocaust with an estimated 95% of the Jewish population being murdered between 1941-1944. 

Large ghettos were established in Vilna, Kovno and Siauliai (Shavl) with countless smaller ghettos established in smaller settlements and rural areas. The Vilna Ghetto was established in September 1941 and liquidated in September 1943, earlier than the ghettos in Kovno and Shavl, which both survived until the end of the German occupation in the summer of 1944. The reason for this is probably that the Nazis were worried about the increasing partisan activity in the forests around Vilna and the threat posed by young Jews from the Ghetto fleeing to join the partisans. 

Mass arrests and killing of Jews commenced in mid-July 1941, within days of the German invasion and before the Vilna Ghetto had even been established. Two ghettos were established, the Small Ghetto housing between 9,000-11,000 Jews and the Large Ghetto around 29,000 Jews. According to Nazi documents approximately 33,000-34,000 Vilna Jews had been murdered by the end of 1941. There followed what became known as the period of stabilisation during which mass killings did not take place although the sporadic murder of individuals and smaller groups of Jews continued. The period of stabilisation lasted until April 1943 when Jews from the few remaining ghettos and forced labour camps in other parts of Lithuania were transferred to Vilna. 

The Leader of the Ghetto, Jacob Gens, was a controversial figure who believed passionately that he could save some of the Ghetto Jews through ensuring that they worked and remained useful to the Nazis. Ultimately this proved to be false and Gens was also murdered by the Nazis once he had outlived his usefulness to the Germans. There was constant tension with factions of the Ghetto underground, some of whom wanted to pursue a strategy of armed resistance within the Ghetto and others who believed that this strategy was doomed to failure and that the best option was for those who could to escape the Ghetto and join the partisans in the forests. The tensions between these 3 strategies were never really resolved with tragic consequences. 

The liquidation of the Vilna Ghetto accelerated from August 1943 onwards when some Jews were transferred to labour camps in Latvia and Estonia (most were killed in these locations) leaving approximately 10,000-12,000 Jews in the Vilna Ghetto. The vast majority of Jewish victims in Vilna were shot in the forests of Paneriai (Ponary in Polish and Russian, Ponar in Yiddish) 10km to the south-west of the city where up to 100,000 victims including approximately 70,000 Jews met their tragic demise. The victims were first buried in mass graves before the Nazis decided to exhume and burn the bodies in an attempt to hide their atrocious crimes as the Red Army advanced towards Vilnius and it became obvious that the Nazis were going to lose the War. 

A four day visit

My recent visit to Vilna lasted only four days, so I had to be selective in deciding what to show my brother. We had already planned to join the Parkrun on Saturday morning, which meant a 3.5 km walk to and from the hotel. It turned out to be a glorious morning, and there is something uniquely special about setting out on an early walk in such a beautiful place — the city still waking from its slumber, the streets almost deserted.

The walk and Vingis Park itself did not disappoint. Beautiful buildings and Catholic and Russian Orthodox churches adorned the route and I even managed to satisfy my thirst for war history by exploring a German military cemetery in Vingis Park. I had a wander round the cemetery after the run and discovered a number of German graves dating from World War 1 and Polish Graves from the 1918-1920 Civil War. I was especially excited to discover one Jewish grave, presumably from a Jewish World War 1 soldier. 

 

 

After struggling our way around the beautiful pine forests of Vingis Park for the Parkrun, we hobbled slowly back to the hotel before dragging our aching limbs out for lunch. True to form, I seized the chance to indulge in my Baltic staple — herring, which I could happily eat at any time of day. Over the meal, we sketched out a plan for the days ahead. That afternoon we visited the Paneriai Memorial.

The following day, thanks to the Lithuanian Ministry of Culture’s free museum entry on the last Sunday of the month, we decided on two visits: the Museum of Occupations and Freedom Struggles (with its small but sobering section on the Holocaust) and the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum, more commonly known as the Green House. The time in between — and the final day before our evening flight home — would be spent wandering through the ghetto areas of the Old Town. I also knew that much of my energy would be dedicated to buying books, and even more to figuring out how to fit them into my cabin luggage.

I have visited these sites many times, but for my brother it was a first encounter. He was deeply struck by the complexity of Holocaust history in Lithuania, admitting it was a real eye-opener. He observed how little people in the West — where the Holocaust narrative is dominated by Auschwitz and the ghettos and camps of Nazi-occupied Poland — know of this history. His reaction reinforced for me just how vital The Together Plan’s work is in raising awareness of the Holocaust in the East. These stories must be told.

The dark history of Paneriai

An absolute must on any exploration of the Holocaust in Vilna is a visit to Paneriai located 10 km to the south-west of the city. It can be reached by public transport but I always find it easier and much quicker to jump in a Bolt Taxi and as it is not too far this is a relatively inexpensive option. Fortunately for us my good Lithuanian friend Egle offered to accompany us and took us by car. A total of approximately 100,000 people were shot and buried at this site including approximately 70,000 Jews. The remaining victims consisted of Soviet POWs, Roma and Sinti and Lithuanian and Polish military, political and intellectual figures and communists. As with many such Nazi death sites the location is in the middle of a forest, the beauty and tranquillity of which belies the horror of the atrocities that occurred there.

The site is the largest killing site in terms of numbers of victims in Lithuania and one of the largest in Eastern Europe. The Germans chose the location deliberately taking advantage of the site where the Soviets had been building a fuel storage depot, utilising the pits for the fuel tanks as ready-made mass graves.

Some Jews were transported to Paneriai by train (the station lies just a kilometre from the murder site) or by truck, but most were marched there in huge columns from the ghetto. These columns were generally escorted by Lithuanian police battalions, who not only guarded them while they awaited execution but in some cases also took part in the shootings. The scale of this collaboration remains one of the reasons why the Holocaust is still such a sensitive subject in Lithuania today.

When we arrived, I stopped briefly at Paneriai Station to take photographs. I always find it deeply moving to stand in places like this and wonder what the victims felt as they stepped off the trains. That same thought haunted me as we drove the straight road from the station to the memorial: what must men, women, and children have been thinking as they shuffled along this path, many in the depths of winter, clad only in rags, moving slowly toward what most already knew was certain death?

The villagers of Paneriai and those living in isolated homes in the surrounding forest could not have missed what was happening. They would have seen the columns of Jews being marched, and they certainly heard the gunfire, the screams, and the cries. This reality is chillingly confirmed in Ponary Diary 1941–1943: A Bystander’s Account of Mass Murder, written by Kazimierz Sakowicz, a Polish journalist who lived nearby and documented the atrocities. Though Sakowicz did not survive the war, his diary did, and it stands as a unique eyewitness record, written without political or emotional agenda. I would recommend reading it before visiting Paneriai.

At the site, victims were held under guard, forced to listen to the shootings and screams of those who went before them. They were then ordered to undress, surrender their remaining valuables, and march to the edge of a pit, where they were shot. In an effort to save ammunition, small children and babies were sometimes thrown alive into the pits and buried.

Having visited Paneriai and many similar Nazi killing sites in the Baltics, Belarus, and Poland, I know how emotionally draining such places can be. For my brother, on his first visit, the experience was overwhelming. He admitted he simply could not comprehend the scale or the nature of the atrocities.

Statistics about the number of victims can never fully convey the horror of what happened. This is one reason why, at The Together Plan, we strive to translate events like Paneriai into personal stories through testimonies — making it possible to connect with the human cost of these tragedies.

The first memorial at the site was erected by survivors in 1948 but removed by Soviet authorities in 1952. Its original inscriptions were in Hebrew, Russian, and Yiddish. In its place, the Soviets installed a standard obelisk inscribed simply: “In memory of the victims of Fascism.” The official Soviet narrative refused to acknowledge the specific suffering of the Jews, instead subsuming it into the broader suffering of the Soviet people.

In the 1960s, a small museum for the “Victims of Fascist Terror” was opened at the site. This was later replaced in 2018 by a modest visitor information centre, which reportedly houses archival documents, photographs, maps, and details of archaeological searches for mass graves. However, it has always been closed during my visits, and it appears entry must be arranged in advance.

At the entrance to the memorial park today stand two striking monuments from the mid-1980s. One is a bold granite memorial bearing the words “Paneriu Memorialas,” while the other, facing it, is inscribed in Hebrew, Lithuanian, and Russian. Together, they mark the threshold of a place that holds some of the darkest chapters of Lithuania’s past.

 

 

There are 19 monuments dispersed throughout the site with small information boards at each dedicated to Jews, Poles, Lithuanians, Soviet prisoners of war and Roma and Sinti who were murdered here. Some memorials date from the 1960s – 1980s but most date from post 1990. There are a number of pits where the victims were shot and initially buried before being exhumed and burned as the Red Army got close to Vilna and the Nazis tried to hide their atrocious crimes. The route linking the different monuments takes you through the tranquil forest and the tranquillity contrasts starkly with the events that occurred there. 

 The most imposing memorial at Paneriai is a large granite stele inscribed in Hebrew and Yiddish, with a Star of David mounted above and a cast-metal menorah below. On the reverse side, another menorah is flanked by inscriptions in Lithuanian, English, and Russian.

Other memorials may be less monumental in scale, but they are no less poignant. One honours the group of prisoners whom the Nazis forced to exhume and burn bodies in a desperate attempt to erase evidence of their crimes before the arrival of the Red Army. These prisoners, housed in a pit, managed to dig a 30-metre escape tunnel — an astonishing act of courage — and some succeeded in breaking free. This story is powerfully recounted in Chris Heath’s recent book, No Road Leading Back: An Improbable Escape from the Nazis and the Tangled Way We Tell the Story of the Holocaust.

It is estimated that between December 1943 and April 1944, these “incineration brigades” built 19 to 21 pyres on which as many as 56,000 to 68,000 corpses were burned. Standing before the memorial, I found myself without words. My brother and our Lithuanian friend, Egle, who accompanied me, were likewise speechless in the face of such horror.

 

 

Back at the hotel, we gratefully rested our still-aching limbs before limping out later in search of another good meal. What we hadn’t anticipated was how tricky it would be to find a table for two in Vilna on a Saturday evening. After some wandering, we eventually settled into a restaurant offering “traditional” Lithuanian fare — which, true to form, meant herring and generous portions of meat.

By the time we returned to the hotel, we were exhausted — both physically and emotionally — and ready for bed by 9 o’clock. How times have changed for my brother and me since our younger days!

Museums, books and controversial issues

The Sunday saw us hoping to take advantage of free access to the museums and visit the Museum of Occupations and Freedom Struggles in Aukų gatve 2A and the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum, otherwise known as the Green House at Pamėnkalnio gatve 12. Both are located in close proximity to each other and within easy walking distance of the Old Town. Unfortunately, nobody seemed to have told the staff at the Museum of Occupations and Freedom Struggles that it was free museum day and I could not be bothered to argue (although I did make a note of the fact in my mental black book of grudges). 

I had visited this museum several times before, and there is no doubt that it is both informative and well worth seeing — not least because of its setting. The exhibition is housed in the former KGB building, which still contains the basement cells where prisoners were held, interrogated, and often murdered. Touring these cells adds a chilling and powerful dimension to the exhibition, one that feels grimly appropriate to the history being told.

The Exhibition focuses on the occupations by the Soviet and Nazi regimes, although the focus is overwhelmingly on the Soviet occupations and the anti-Soviet resistance that remained active in the forests of Lithuania until 1953 in the vain hope that the Americans and British were going to come to their rescue. They never did. The Exhibition, just like many of the publications by the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania, has a distinctly nationalistic feel, which is understandable to a degree in terms of a relatively young state seeking to strengthen its national identity and highlight its victimhood in light of an undoubtedly brutal occupation. 

My passion for the Baltic states began in the late 1990s, and I have since built an extensive library on their history, including many excellent works from Lithuania’s Genocide and Resistance Research Centre. While I acknowledge the horrific scale of Soviet crimes, I cannot accept the Centre’s occasional equivalence of this suffering with the Holocaust.

This discomfort is exacerbated by the Centre’s defensive tone in addressing the Holocaust, which often seems to minimize the well-documented role of Lithuanian collaborators. Furthermore, the presence of Jonas Noreika’s name on their memorial wall is a stark contradiction. As revealed in his granddaughter Silvia Foti’s illuminating book, The Nazi’s Granddaughter, Noreika was no mere patriot. He was an official in the Nazi administration who was aware of and complicit in sending thousands of Jews to their deaths. To venerate such a man while drawing parallels between these two distinct tragedies is a profound failure of historical memory.

In the aftermath of the publication of her book, Silvia Foti teamed up with Grant Gochin an American Jew of Lithuanian descent and some sympathetic Lithuanian researchers whose explorations have resulted in ongoing legal battles to remove awards and recognition of Noreika as a national hero but have been vehemently opposed numerous times by the Genocide and Resistance Centre. I find it tragically ironic that Noreika is still honoured with his name carved into the walls of a Museum that commemorates victims of genocide. 

The negative reaction to Foti’s book both within Lithuania and within the large Lithuanian community in her adopted city of Chicago and even within her own extended family has had a huge impact on her life. A similar impact has been experienced by a famous best-selling Lithuanian novelist Ruta Vanagaite who wrote “Our People: Discovering Lithuania’s Hidden Holocaust” with a well-known Jewish Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff. The book provides an account of these two people who formed an unlikely alliance to travel around numerous death sites and former ghetto areas in Lithuania to explore Lithuanian complicity in the Nazi crimes. The resulting storm in Lithuania resulted in Vanagaite having to leave her home country and having all of her best-selling novels removed from Lithuanian bookshops. 

She has since seen a second book published “How Did it Happen? Understanding the Holocaust”. The book takes the form of an interview with the hugely respected German Holocaust historian Christoph Dieckman and once again explores these highly sensitive issues and in no way brought about her redemption in the eyes of Lithuanian nationalists. While some Lithuanians collaborated with the Nazis to fight the Soviets, and while Noreika himself resisted Soviet occupation, no patriotic motive can justify participating in the Holocaust.

One of the cells in the basement of the KGB building is dedicated to the Holocaust and focuses primarily on events in Vilna and the surrounding areas. The small cell contains a large illuminated Star of David and numerous photographs and information boards. The information boards also gave me the feeling that they have been written from a defensive perspective. The Exhibition ends with a list of 816 Lithuanians who have been awarded the status of Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem. This number has risen to 924 (as of December 2022) since the list in the Exhibition was produced. The fact that Lithuania has one of the highest proportions of citizens per capita who have been awarded this status by Yad Vashem must be acknowledged, but at the same time so must the role of Lithuanian collaborators in implementing the Holocaust and I still feel that this national debate has yet to take place in earnest. 

 

 

After buying all of the books in the bookshop that I did not already have from previous visits we made our way to the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum, otherwise known as the Green House located to the north-west of the Old Town at Pamėnkalnio gatve 12. There is also a Museum housing the artworks of former Ghetto resident Samuel Bak at Naugarduko gatve 10/2 but the Green House displays the permanent Holocaust Exhibition. There are plans to move the Museum to larger premises in the former Ghetto Library in Žemaitijos Street in the territory of the Large Ghetto, although the cost of the extensive renovations necessary have so far delayed the project. Clearly this will be another significant development in preserving and promoting the history and heritage of Jewish Vilna and the memory of the Ghetto and the Holocaust, and will provide a key anchor point for tours of Jewish Vilna. 

The current site in the Green House is rather quaint and the Exhibition is extremely interesting, albeit the premises are rather cramped and too small to house the collection in its entirety. The staff at the Museum are extremely dedicated and helpful and there is a small shop selling books about the Ghetto and the Holocaust in Lithuania at the entrance. They are also knowledgeable and happy to take the time to tell stories relating to some of the exhibits and always seem to be extremely pleased when I hit their bookshop in my quest to add to my already extensive and ever-growing collection of literature about the Holocaust in the East! 

The Museum has some audio-visual exhibits with testimonies of survivors but many are only available in Lithuanian. The majority of the collection consists of artefacts, sculptures and artworks, photographs, maps, information boards and extracts from books. These focus primarily on the Vilna story but also cover aspects of the Holocaust in Lithuania more generally. The photos of the Ghettos and the photos of Paneriai are particularly disturbing if you have already visited these sites. 

Parts of the collection also cover other aspects of Jewish life and history in Lithuania including religion and the life of the Vilna Gaon, the period of enlightenment in the 18th and 19th centuries, the interwar period which was generally a time of relative prosperity and freedom for Jews in Lithuania and numerous key historical figures. There is also a mock malina (hiding place) upstairs where you can watch a short film. 

The Jews in all of the large ghettos became experts at creating malinas behind false walls, under stoves or anywhere that they could conceal themselves during Nazi raids. A malina can be defined as a:

“……..safe place. A secret hidden section in or around their home which the Nazis did not know about and could not find. It could be concealed within the eves of the roof, it could be a secret hatch leading to an underground chamber; everyone’s ‘malina’ was unique to what worked best for them” Rachel Gordon (2020), The sweetness of safe spaces – lessons from the ghetto.

 

 

This museum is an informative and essential visit. While its exhibit format may feel somewhat old-fashioned, this in no way detracts from the quality of its exceptional collection and its value as a profound learning experience. I make a point to visit every time I’m in the city and have never been disappointed. I actually like the old fashioned style of the Museum and whilst I recognise the value of having more space and a location at the heart of the former Large Ghetto and the fact that the new Museum is likely to be more modern and interactive I will be rather sad when the Exhibition does finally move away from the Green House. 

Once again, my brother left with the impression: “Wow, in the UK we know nothing about all of this.” His visit opened his eyes to the complex history of this beautiful country. For me, the Green House’s power is in its ability to spark new questions with every visit, compelling me to learn more. In my eyes, that inspiration is the true mark of an exceptional museum.

After another wonderful evening meal that for once did not involve herring but did involve large quantities of meat, we dragged our still aching limbs back to the hotel and settled in for another early night and wonderfully peaceful sleep. One of the reasons I enjoy going away is that I manage to sleep without my many cats waking me up ridiculously early demanding breakfast. But after a long sleep I was up and out early leaving Kevin in bed for a bit of a lie in. I visited some of my favourite places in the Ghetto to take yet more photos (more than 1200 photos during this visit to add to my collection!) and was also delighted to find that the Zydu Kulturos ir Informacijos Centras (Jewish Culture and Information Centre) located at Mesiniu gatve 3/5 in the territory of the Large Ghetto was open. 

I had seen the Centre several times on previous visits but this was the first time that I had found it open so I took the opportunity to pop in and I am pleased that I did. The Centre organises cultural events and promotes and disseminates information about the Jewish heritage of Vilna to tourists and Litvaks dispersed throughout the world. I was greeted by an extremely friendly and helpful lady who allowed me to study the material in their impressive library and showed me the malina that they have reconstructed in the basement. She was also knowledgeable about the history of both the building and of the history of Jewish Vilna and the Ghettos so we had a nice chat. There is no substitute for accessing local knowledge, which is so important in terms of gaining insights into the history of places and events. 

 

 

The basement also has a small conference room with short films from survivors of the Vilna Ghetto telling their stories, although the ones that I tried to listen to were all in Lithuanian. Upstairs there are some interesting artworks and an excellent map showing the extent of the damage to buildings in the Old Town during the Nazi occupation. I would have happily bought the map and a number of books but unfortunately most were their only copies and therefore understandably they were unwilling to sell them, so alas I had to content myself with only a couple of additions to my book collection. This is probably just as well as I was already well in excess of my permitted weight for my cabin baggage due to the number of books that I had already bought! 

I met my brother for our final breakfast, which unsurprisingly once again involved herring, and then returned to the Hotel to check out and leave our bags so that we could spend most of the day having a wander, particularly around the Ghetto area which my brother said he was anxious to see, despite having walked though there several times in the previous days without noticing. 

I have always felt that you need to know where to look to find traces of Jewish Vilna and luckily I already knew where many of these traces are from previous visits and my own research. The visibility and prominence of these traces are limited, especially considering the huge role Jews have played in the history of Lithuania and of Vilna. The history and heritage of Jewish Lithuania is impossible to unravel from the history of Lithuania of which it forms a central part. 

Wandering around the fully renovated areas of the Old Town that were once the territories of the Large and Small Ghettos it is difficult if not impossible to associate these areas with the realities of what happened there between 1941 and 1944. I cannot help but wonder whether this lack of memorialisation detracts from the ability of younger generations to relate to or even be aware of the history of their city and their country. The traces are there but only if you look for them or know where to find them. The discreet signage, plaques, sculptures and murals are wonderful but too understated and too few and far between. 

The information boards at the site of the main gates to the Large and Small Ghettos are useful and provide some insights into the history of the Ghetto. The main gate to the Large Ghetto at Rudninku gatve 18 has an inscription in Lithuanian and Hebrew commemorating the 30,000 Jews who were driven through it to their deaths. The main gate to the Small Ghetto at the intersection of Strikliu gatve and Town Hall Square provides more information about the history of both ghettos alongside a plan, key and some photographs from the time. Both ghettos are characterised by narrow winding streets which open out onto some large open spaces and squares that were usually used for markets and trade before the War and some of which were used to assemble the Jews before marching them off either to work or to death during the days of the Ghettos. 

 

 

The only other traces of the existence of the Ghettos are a couple of sculptures, a few murals and other discreet plaques and memorials. The bronze sculpture of the Water Carrier by Martynas Gaubas and Rimantas Keturka is one of my favourites and is located outside Lydos gatve 4. It was unveiled in 2020. The sculpture acknowledges the hugely important role that water carriers played in the time of the Ghetto and provides a glimpse of the physical exertion necessary to undertake this task especially for Jews severely weakened by slave labour and malnutrition. 

There is also a sculpture of Doctor Zemach Shabad on Mėsinių gatve by Romualdas Kvintas which was unveiled in 2007. The concept for the sculpture with the Doctor standing by a small girl holding a kitten is inspired by a well-known fictional character who helped animals (written in 1925 by K. Chukovski). A number of murals scattered around the Ghetto territories depict scenes and figures from Jewish Vilna and provide a subtle and poignant addition to the urban fabric. I just find it a pity that there are not more of them!

There are also plaques mounted on buildings commemorating various people including Ona Šimaitė. The plaque is located at the house where she lived between 1940-1944 at Savicicius gatve 13. Šimaitė who was the librarian at Vilnius University during those years helped Jews in the Ghetto by smuggling food and other necessities in and out and saving important literary and historical materials and documents from destruction by the Nazis. She was recognised by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations in 1966 and has a street in Vilnius named after her. 

 

 

The other notable site located in the Small Ghetto in Zydu gatve (Jewish Street) is the site of the former Great Synagogue and the adjacent memorial to the Vilna Gaon. The Nazis looted and partially destroyed the Synagogue, which was then completely demolished by the Soviets along with the entire “Schulhof” complex surrounding it in the mid-1950s and replaced by a typical Soviet structure that housed a primary school. The school is now vacant and there have been a number of archaeological explorations undertaken in the last 15 years that have discovered numerous original structures and artefacts.

 

 

The demolition was part of the efforts of the Soviet authorities to eradicate Jewish culture and history. The irony is that the demolition actually helped to preserve much of the site as it involved knocking the buildings down and covering the site with a concrete slab and building the school on top. According to the local building regulations at the time when the Great Synagogue was built it was forbidden for a synagogue to be taller than nearby churches, so the Jews built downwards 2 or 3 meters and therefore the concrete slab upon which the school was built actually preserved many of original structures and artefacts. 

 

 

There are plans and ongoing discussions about the erection of a meaningful memorial at the site, which is long overdue and will make a significant contribution to reinvigorating the memory of Jewish Vilna if and when it is finally achieved. It will also form another hugely significant anchor point in the cultural heritage trail of Jewish Vilna. There is a memorial bust of the Vilna Gaon adjacent to the site and next to his former residence at Zydu gatve 3 and a small plaque simply saying that he lived in the house that stood on the site mounted on the gable end of the building. Interestingly the school built in the 1960s was finally demolished in August 2025, opening the way for a fitting Memorial to be created on this hugely important historical site. Click here for more information.

Some other important buildings of the former Ghetto still remain including the Ghetto Theatre, which illustrates the relatively rich cultural life in the Vilna Ghetto in comparison to most other large ghettos such as the Minsk Ghetto where no such cultural activities were permitted.                   

The overall impression of the Ghetto areas is that the traces are attractive but subtle, discreet and somewhat understated and I do wonder how many tourists who wander through the area actually realise that this is where the Ghettos were located and are aware of the horrors that occurred there. My brother confirmed this, saying that he would not have noticed evidence of the existence of the Ghettos if I hadn’t been there to point out these traces. On our roundabout route back to the Hotel we also paid a visit to the Choral Synagogue, the only Synagogue that remains operational in Vilna today, out of over 100 synagogues before World War 2.

Believing that the most tiring part of the trip was over, we set off for the airport, with me severely weighed down with books. Delays to our flight to Brussels meant that we would have missed our connection to Manchester, so we were transferred onto a flight to Munich to catch a connection there. Although we would be 750km further south than anticipated we were happy that we were going to get back to Manchester rather than be stranded in Brussels. Unfortunately, the flight to Munich was delayed for over an hour meaning that we only had about 30 minutes to dash across Munich Airport, which is huge, to get to the gate for the Manchester flight. Luckily, we just made it and although exhausted we were finally on the way home after a more eventful journey than we both anticipated! 

Conclusions

Recognition and preservation of the memory of the Holocaust has improved dramatically since Lithuania regained its independence and Jewish communities in Lithuania and abroad have been allowed to mobilise resources and lobby authorities to fund the necessary preservation works and erect new monuments at the hundreds of Holocaust sites throughout Lithuania. 

The collapse of the Soviet Union also allowed researchers from Lithuania and elsewhere to dive into the historical archives relating to the Holocaust and there is now an extensive bank of literature on the subject. There are approximately 200 mass killing sites dotted around the whole of Lithuania plus the sites of ghettos and camps, so there remains an awful lot of work to do to commemorate the well over 200,000 Jewish victims of the Holocaust in Lithuania and to do justice to their memory. The identification, preservation and memorialisation of these sites is also essential to preserve the memory of these events and to educate current and future generations. 

The occupation by the Soviet Union for almost half a century after the War meant that as in other countries such as Latvia and Belarus the official historical narrative of the Holocaust and the second World War (or Great Patriotic War as it was known in the Soviet Union) denied Jews their specific identity and denied them the right to be considered either heroes of Soviet resistance or victims of the Nazi Holocaust. The ubiquitous term “Soviet citizens” was the only permitted term to describe both the victims of Nazi terror and those who heroically fought against the Nazis in the partisan resistance.  

Lithuania and Vilna should do more to celebrate its Jewish heritage and remember its Holocaust history. This heritage and history remains highly sensitive in Lithuania today as the country struggles to come to terms with the complexities of this dark period in its history and the inevitable pain that such a national self-analysis would undoubtedly cause. Whitewashing the role of individuals and organisations and denying historical events will only prolong the pain and deny justice for the victims and their descendants. 

I would thoroughly recommend visiting Vilna and the rest of Lithuania, it is a stunning country with a rich Jewish heritage and history, which I felt privileged to be able to introduce to my brother. I think and hope that my love for Lithuania has shone through in this article and I firmly believe that these stories need to be told and that Lithuania needs to face up to this dark period of the country’s history in order to not only preserve memory but also to safeguard a more peaceful future.