Ponary massacre

The Ponary massacre (or Paneriai massacre) was the mass-murder of about 100,000 people performed by German SD and SS and their subordinate Lithuanian^[1][2][3][4] Sonderkommando collaborators (Special SD and German Security Police Squad "Ypatingasis būrys" units)^[1][2][5] during Second World War in German-occupied Lithuania. The executions took place between July 1941 and August 1944 near the railway station of Paneriai (Polish: Ponary), now a suburb of Vilnius. Most of the victims, who were usually brought to the edges of huge pits and shot to death with machine gun fire, were Jews (approx. 70.000), Poles (approx. 20.000) and Russians (approx. 8.000), many from the nearby metropolis of Vilnius.^[1][3][6]

The background

Following the incorporation of the Republic of Central Lithuania into Poland, the town of Ponary became part of the Wilno Voivodship, (Kresy region). In September 1939 the region was taken over by the Soviets, and after about a month transferred to Lithuania. After the annexation of Lithuania by the Soviet Union, in June of 1940, the Soviets began constructing an oil storage facility near Ponary in conjunction with a military airfield. That project was never completed, as in 1941 the area was occupied by Nazi Germany. The Nazis decided to take advantage of the large pits dug for the oil warehouses to dispose of bodies of unwanted locals. Their policy was to kill every Jewish individual in Lithuania, and the Baltic countries became the first place Nazis would mass execute Jews^[7]. Out of 70,000 Jews living in Vilnius, only 7,000 would survive the war; the Jewish culture in Vilnius, one of the greatest in Europe, ceased to exist.^[8]

The massacre

Monument of Polish victims in Paneriai

The massacres began in July, 1941, when Einsatzkommando 9 arrived in Vilnius, rounded up 5,000 Jewish men of Vilnius and took them to Paneriai where they were shot. Further mass killings, often aided by Lithuanian volunteers,^[8] from Ypatingasis burys, took place throughout the summer and fall.^[5] In September, Vilna Ghetto was created.^[8] By the end of the year, about 21,700 Jews had been killed at Paneriai.^[8] The pace of killings slowed in 1942, as slave workers were appropriated by Wehrmacht.^[8]

Honor guard of Lithuanian Army laying wreath at Jewish Memorial of the Ponary massacre.

The total number of victims by the end of 1944 was between 70,000 and 100,000. According to post-war exhumation by the forces of Soviet 2nd Belorussian Front the majority (50,000–70,000) of the victims were Polish and Lithuanian Jews from nearby Polish and Lithuanian cities, while the rest were primarily Poles (about 20,000) and Russians (about 8,000).^[2][1] The Polish victims were mostly members of Polish intelligentsia (teachers, professors of the Stefan Batory University like Kazimierz Pelczar, priests like Romuald Świrkowski) and members of Armia Krajowa resistance movement.^[2][6] Among the first victims were approximately 7,500 Soviet POWs shot in 1941 soon after Operation Barbarossa begun.^[4] At later stages there were also smaller numbers of victims of other nationalities, including local Russians, Roma and Lithuanians, particularly communists sympathizers and members of general Povilas Plechavičius' Local Lithuanian Detachment who refused to follow German orders.^[2]

As Soviet troops advanced in 1943, the German-led units tried to cover-up the crime. A unit of eighty workers was formed from nearby Stutthof concentration camp prisoners and was forced to dig up the bodies, pile them on wood and burn them. The ashes were then mixed with sand and buried.^[2] After six months of this gruesome work, aware that eventually they would be executed themselves, the brigade managed to escape on April 19, 1944. Eleven of them managed to survive the ordeal, and their testimony contributed to revealing the massacre.

Legacy

Original Soviet built memorial to the Soviet Victims in the Panieri Woods (Ponary massacre).

The information about the massacre began to spread as early as 1943, due to the activities and works of Helena Pasierbska, Józef Mackiewicz, Kazimierz Sakowicz and others. Nonetheless the Soviet regime, which supported the resettlement of Poles from the Kresy, found it convenient to deny that Poles or Jews were massacred in Paneriai; the official line was that Paneriai was a site of massacre of Soviet citizens only.^[9][4] This Soviet denial, as well as the fact that it was one of the biggest massacres on Poles in the East, led some - like Polish Prime Minister, Jerzy Buzek - to compare this to the Katyn Massacre.^[2] On 22 October, 2000, a decade after the fall of communism, in independent Lithuania, an effort by a several Polish organizations resulted in raising a monument (a cross) to fallen Polish citizens, during an official ceremony in which representatives of both Polish and Lithuanian governments (Bronisław Komorowski, Polish Minister of Defence, and his Lithuanian counterpart), as well as several NGOs, took place.^[4][10][2]

The site of the massacre is commemorated by a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, a memorial to the Polish victims and a small museum (currently closed). The executions at Paneriai, are currently a matter of an investigation by the Gdańsk branch of the Polish Institute of National Remembrance.^[1]

See also

• Bogdanovka

• Palmiry

Execution site of Jews and Soviet soldiers (Ponary massacre), with memorial stone. "Hitlerite forces used this site as a mass grave for corpses."

Stone with inscription: "In this eight meter deep pit, the Hitlerite Invaders brought those who were rounded up, burned their corpses and disposed of their bones."

Recently built memorial for non-Jews killed in Panieri.

Notes

External links

• Chronicles of the Vilna Ghetto: wartime photographs & documents - vilnaghetto.com
• Ponary Forest via Internet Archive
• US Holocaust Museum article on death of Vilna's Jews
• RTFT article on death of Vilna's Jews
• (Polish) Konferencja „Zbrodnie na Polakach w podwileńskich Ponarach 1941–1944” – Gdańsk, 9 maja 2003 r. (Conference "Poles as victims in Ponary near Wilno 1941–4) — IPN
• (Polish) Zbrodnia w Ponarach (Crime of Ponary) - reprints of articles from Nasz Dziennik, Nr 109 (1605) z 12 maja 2003
• (Russian) Понары. Рассказ инженера Ю. Фарбера (Ponary. The story by engineer Yu. Farber). From Black Book (World War II)

Further reading

• Ernst Klee, Willi Dressen, and Volker Riess, eds., The Good Old Days: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders, Free Press, 1991, ISBN 0029174252
• Algis Kasperavičius, ""Lithuanian-Jewish relations in 1935-1944
• Helena Pasierbska "Ponary. Największe miejsce kaźni koło Wilna (1941-1944)", Zarząd Ochrony i Konserwacji Zespołów Pałacowo-Ogrodowych, Warszawa, 1993, ISBN 83-8554-823-8

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