Paneriai

One of the very few signs leading visitors to the memorial site.

On my way from Vilnius to the northern town of Rokiskis, I took a small detour to the site of the Paneriai massacres. Paneriai can be classified as a suburb of Vilnius - right on the outskirts. In my drive to the site I passed multiple signs telling me I was leaving and then re-entering the city. During pre-Nazi Soviet times, large oil storage facilities were under construction, but the Nazi invasion put a halt to this. When the Germans saw the site, with a bunch of 'pits' already dug out ready for storage tanks, they decided it already fulfilled the criteria of a mass grave. Additionally, there is a railway station right on site, and the whole area was forested in 1940 (and much of it still is today), making a perfect sight and sound barrier from the outside world where executions could take place.

In the parking lot - the inscription translates: Here, in the Paneriai Forest. From July 1941 until July 1944, the conquering Hitler-ites and their local helpers destroyed 100 thousand people, of them 70 thousand Jews - men, women and children.

The memorial at Paneriai forms part of the Vilna Gaon museum, and one wonders whether it were not for this museum, would the Jewish history of Lithuania be preserved at all. There are essentially three types of memorials at this site: monuments, a museum, and remnants of the pits in which people were buried. Sadly, the whole site was rather empty, and barring an Israeli couple, a gentlemen who arrived by bicycle and the curator, in the 1.5 hours I was there I saw no one.

The museum itself is a small building with photo exhibits as well as some items that were excavated by the Nazi war-crime forensic investigative team which was at the site following the war. Reading the stories and seeing items such as children's shoes, scissors, dolls and hair brushes was as chilling as seeing these artefacts at Auschwitz.

Steps leading down to one of the pits.

After the Nazis found Paneriai, they started bringing people there from July 1941 onwards. Eyewitness accounts talk about people being brought by train, lorry and car. Sometimes just a few dozen in a day. Sometimes as many as 5,000. All were summarily executed. Many by gunshot. Quite often, in order to save bullets, the Nazis and their Lithuanian collaborators would simply slam children against trees. All in all, approximately 100,000 people were murdered and buried in mass graves, or pits. Approximately 70,000 of them were Jews. The remainder were Poles and Russians.

Towards the end of the war, as in other places, the Nazis thought it best to try cover up as much of the evil they had perpetrated as possible. A team of Jewish prisoners were brought in to dig up the dead and burn the bodies. Although this group of men eventually escaped, it was not before most of the bodies had been burnt and the ashes reburied in the pits. Unfortunately, more than half of the escapees were captured and killed.

The pits remain as a reminder to all who visit. They are simple in their presentation, and apart from some stone writing in Lithuanian and a stone circle, nothing else remains of them.

The monuments are scattered throughout the area and pay respect to the different groups of people who were murdered. The Jews, the Poles, the Russians, the military.

The crazy feeling one gets when walking around the site, is that at times it feels as though you are on a bush-walk, through a beautiful forest. The plants are lush green, the trees are tall, apart from the odd passing train, the only noise is the constant song of birds. This place, was once a paradise. It is irrefutable proof that a natural paradise can be turned into hell at the hand of man. It also becomes very evident that if it is not for the memory of man, one can see how easy it would be to slide back into the believe that it is in fact a paradise.

The main memorial to the Jews. The transcription translates as: Memorial stone to the seventy
thousand Jews of Vilna and surrounds who were murdered and burned in the Paneriai
valley of murder at the hands of the Nazis and their helpers during the time of the Holocaust,
5702 - 5704 (1941 - 1944). May their souls be bound in the bond of life.

And so I move onto a slightly more political note. And that is, the lesson I have learnt over the past few days, and particularly today. In the past, I have tended to tip-toe around discussions and comments about Israel when it comes to people I am not overly close with. But this experience has just reaffirmed my belief that the Jewish people have an undeniable right to the land of Israel, and that Israel has the right to exist securely and safely within its own borders as a Jewish state. From now on, I do not think I even have the time of day for people who cannot work from that basic assumption. A common philosophical question is "why do bad things happen to good people?" and similarly, "how does the Holocaust fit in to the 'grand scheme of things'?" The closest I have to an answer for this (and this in no way provides justification or even a real explanation for things) is that had it not happened, Israel might not exist. Similarly, any sentiment regarding the destruction of the state of Israel (be it by force, or by forced diminished borders such that it cannot secure itself) is tantamount to spitting in the graves of those who perished in the Holocaust.

Of course the above is just my opinion, but it's also my rationalisation.