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| Ponar Forest Memorial -- Completely Inaccessible to anyone who speaks a language other than Lithuanian, Russian, Yiddish or Hebrew |
Unless you can read Lithuanian, Russian, Yiddish or Hebrew, you would never know of the 100,000 lives that were brutally taken in the Ponar Forest in Lithuania during World War II. And, even if you could understand those languages, the message is so vague that it fails to tell the full story.
My husband and I visited the Ponar Forest having heard of it, but not knowing much. If we had not been led by an expert guide, we would have learned very little.
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| Ponar Memorial -- For What? You might ask.... |
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| Svetlana Shtarkman, an excellent guide, telling the story of what happened in Ponar; at a small killing pit |
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| Pit Where Nazis forced Jews to live so they could work in the killing forest, digging up bodies from the pits and burning them to destroy evidence |
There is a curious holdout in Lithuania. The place is called Ponar Forest. It is just outside of Lithuania's capital city, Vilnius, and until World War II, was a pleasant summer retreat from the city. Before the Nazis invaded Lithuania, Russia's Red Army had occupied this area and had dug pits for military fuel storage tanks. The Nazis pushed out the Red Army and invaded Vilnius. The Nazis took over Ponar and between 1941 and 1944, they transported about 100,000 people to the forest in trucks. They were dumped into pits and killed. Many were Soviets and about 70,000 of them were Jews.
A Polish journalist named Kazimierz Sakowicz lived in view of the forest and surreptitiously kept notes on what he observed in terms of numbers of people transported, sounds, and activities day and night. He buried his notes in bottles in his garden. He was killed during the war. His diary notes were later unearthed and published in 2005 by Yale University Press to reveal the gruesome story.
But, the Nazi horrors is only part of the significance of Ponar.
Lithuania's government avoids talking about what happened. Yes, there is a monument, but No, it is not accessible to most people in the world. When a delegation from Israel visited the monument, which was only in Lithuanian at the time, they asked for a translation. It said, "For the memory of innocent Soviet citizens who died during the Nazi regime".
What? No mention that 70% of those who were killed there were Jewish? The Israelis asked why nothing was said about the Jews. The Soviets had erected the monument; and told the history as they saw it. They honored the Soviets who died at Ponar. Ironically, the dead were Red Army soldiers who perished at Ponar because they were left abandoned when the Soviets pulled out.
But, according to our guide Svetlana, the thing that stings the most now is that Lithuania does not acknowledge the collaboration by local Lithuanian citizens. Half the population (i.e. the Jews) was forced by the Nazis to leave their homes, while the other half of the population (i.e. the Lithuanians) were silent. People still talk today about how Lithuanian villagers would openly enjoy the belongings of their persecuted Jewish neighbors, wearing their coats or using their household goods.
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| Memorial in Ponar Forest erected by Jews who raised their own money for this gravestone to "Our Beloved People Who Died in World War II" |