The Jewish history in Lithuania dates back to the mid 14th century, when Jewish communities migrated there after the Grand Duke Gediminas invited foreign artisans and merchants to come to Lithuania. At that time, Jews were famous for being fine tradesman and artisans, and were leaving Western Europe due to plague and the persecution that resulted from being falsely accused for the plague’s beginning. This migration is the reason that what is now Poland and Lithuania had some of the largest Jewish communities in Europe from the 1300’s until WWII. In Vilnius, the Jewish community totaled 100,000 at its largest, over a third of the population. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Vilnius was known as the “Jerusalem of the North”, experiencing a cultural flourishing with over 100 synagogues, secular and Jewish study centers (yeshivas), arts, theater, and was known as a world center for Yiddish learning. What happened next is complicated and very sad. During the Holocaust, 90-95% of Lithuania’s Jewish community was lost. Most were not sent to concentration camps but were killed in Lithuania, in or outside their villages. A dark spot in Lithuanian history is that like elsewhere, the Nazi's use of psychological warfare and physical force resulted in most of the murders being carried out by Lithuanians. There is a subtle but palpable shame about this part of Lithuania's history, and some anger and Anti-Semitism still lingers as well. You can sense the country is moving forward, our visit to Vilnius, this history aside, was filled with food and beauty.
We learned about much of the Jewish history of Lithuania at the Jewish State Museum’s Center for Tolerance. In addition to their detailed exhibition on Jewish Life in Lithuania, they have many beautiful artifacts and artwork on display.
A photo of the old Great Synagogue of Vilnius
An old photograph of one of the main streets in the Jewish neighborhood in Vilnius.
This neighborhood today.
The remaining synagogue in central Vilnius.
10km outside of Vilnius is the small town of Panerai. In the forest outside of town is where over 70,000 Jews were murdered during the Nazi occupation of Lithuania. There are monuments spread throughout the otherwise beautiful forest. The scale is haunting.
A video of the Panerai forest memorial.
One of over a dozen memorials placed by individuals and organizations over the past 60 years.
Today, Panerai is a small train station, a market, and a cluster of modest homes.
We also visited the Museum for Genocide Victims, which chronicles the occupation of Lithuania by the Soviets from 1940-41 and 1944-1990 and by the Germans during WWII. The small museum is located in the old KGB headquarters and jail—from the outside, a neoclassical stone structure taking up an entire city block in the center of town. Lining the walls of the exterior are bricks with names of Lithuanians that lost their lives in that building, it was like a huge gravestone. Inside, hundreds of artifacts from the time period are displayed and described in dozens of small chambers that were originally used for KGB offices, interrogation rooms, etc. The number of artifacts made an impression on us, ranging from small pieces of cloth embroidered with slogans of freedom and perseverance, sent to family members in Siberian labor camps, to hundreds of photographs of partisan fighters, young men and women who literally lived in bunkers in the forests of Lithuania and fought a guerrilla war with the Red Army for 10 years following WWII. It was a war of resistance and half lost their lives. Today, anti-Soviet sentiment still exists, as the country recently passed a law banning the use of Soviet symbols.
A farmer turned newspaper editor and military chief for the partisans. Here you can see the day-to-day existence of the partisan resistance in this photograph.
Young partisan women in their leisure time, 1950’s.
