- German occupation
- June 24, 1941
- Ghettos created
- September 6, 1941
- Main killing site
- Ponary / Paneriai
- Liquidation
- September 23–24, 1943
A teenage diary documenting ghetto life, education, fear and knowledge of Ponary.
Open original sourceThe “Jerusalem of Lithuania”
Prewar Vilna—today Vilnius, historically Wilno in Polish and Vilne in Yiddish—was a major center of Jewish scholarship, Yiddish and Hebrew culture, publishing, schools and political life. German forces occupied the city on June 24, 1941.
Ponary before the ghetto
Mass murder began before the ghetto was established. German SD and Einsatzkommando personnel, working with Lithuanian auxiliary shooters, murdered thousands of Jews at Ponary/Paneriai, a forest killing site about ten kilometers from the city. The ghetto and Ponary must never be conflated.
Two ghettos and forced labor
On September 6, 1941, Jews were forced into Ghetto I and Ghetto II. The smaller ghetto was quickly liquidated. A period of relative “stability” in the main ghetto depended on forced labor and coexisted with selections and repeated killings.
Culture, diaries, and the Paper Brigade
Schools, a library, theater, lectures and religious activity continued. Yitzhak Rudashevski and Herman Kruk kept important diaries. Avrom Sutzkever, Shmerke Kaczerginski and others in the “Paper Brigade” hid books and manuscripts while forced to sort Jewish cultural treasures for Nazi looting.
FPO and resistance
The Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye (FPO) formed in 1942 across political factions. Abba Kovner’s famous call “Let us not go like sheep to the slaughter” warned that Ponary meant systematic murder; it should not be read as a condemnation of victims. The Wittenberg affair of July 1943 exposed deep dilemmas between underground plans and immediate communal survival.
Liquidation and survival
The ghetto was liquidated on September 23–24, 1943. Some men and women were sent to labor and concentration camps in Estonia and Latvia; more than 4,000 children, women and elderly people were deported to Sobibór and murdered. Others were killed at Ponary. FPO members escaped toward partisan forests.
Sources
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