The massacres of Vilnius Jews and the Vilnius Ghetto (1941-1944)
ENThe history of the Jewish community in Vilnius has garnered considerable attention from historians worldwide. Before the Second World War, Vilnius was one of the most important centers of European Jewish culture, science, education, and rabbinical scholarship. When the Nazi-Soviet war began, there were an estimated 58,000 Jews living in Vilnius. However, only a few thousands of them survived to see the end of the war and the Nazi occupation. The tragic loss of “the Jerusalem of Lithuania” is still a matter of concern for both Lithuanian and foreign historians, as well as the general public. This period of Vilnius Jewish history is quite extensively covered in world historiography and individual memoirs. Most of the work written about the genocide of the Vilnius Jews thus far was published in Israel and the United States. In the past few years, however, Holocaust research has been increasing in Lithuania as well. The work by the researchers at the Vilnius Gaon Jewish State Museum stand out the most. However, perhaps the most important academic treatise on the Vilnius Ghetto and the massacre of its Jews is Ghetto in Flames, a book published in New York in 1982 by Israeli professor Yitzhak Arad.1 Arad examined the most important events and stages in the history of the Vilnius Ghetto: the 1941 Paneriai massacre, the period of stability (1942–1943), and the liquidation of the ghetto (September 1943). The book includes statistics on the victims, as well as a description of the structure and function of the ghetto’s internal administration, the ghetto’s anti-fascist underground operation, and the activities of the occupation regime that committed the genocide. [p. 113].
- The Last days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania: chronicles from the Vilna Ghetto and the Camps, 1939-1944.. New Haven (Conn.) ; Yale University Press : 2002. LII, 732 p., [10] iliustr. lap.
- Trumpa žydų istorija Lietuvoje.. Vilnius : Izraelio ambasada; 2000. 205 p.
- Žydų darbo stovykla HKP, 1943-1944: dokumentai. Vilnius : Valstybinis Vilniaus Gaono žydų muziejus, 2002. 188 p.
