Ponar Memorial — Association of Jews of Vilna and vicinity in Israel

Before the Second World War, the beautiful forest around Ponar was a very popular recreational area for residents of Vilnius and its surroundings. After Lithuania regained Vilnius and the environs in 1939, the country was forced to admit Red Army forces, for whom fuel tanks and ammunition stores were set up at Aukštieji Paneriai (Upper Ponar). When Germans entered Vilnius in 1941, they took notice of the unfinished liquid fuel tank base next to the Ponar railway station. At that time, seven pits were dug. The Nazis used these for mass extermination operations.

Ponar can be counted as the second biggest (as per number of people killed) place of mass execution in all of Eastern Europe (after the Babi Yar massacre in Ukraine). In August 1944 the Soviet Extraordinary State Commission determined that about 100,000 people were killed at Ponar. Nowadays the number of murdered Jews is estimated to be about 60,000. In total around 70,00 people were killed. The other victims were Lithuanian soldiers from the Lithuanian Local Squad, Roma, communists, Polish resistance fighters, Catholic priests, Soviet POWs, and local residents.

The monument at Ponar for the exterminated Jews was erected by Holocaust survivors in June 1945. Unfortunately it was demolished by Soviet authorities who instead build a Soviet style monument for all Fascism victims in 1952. The museum was opened in 1960 at the mass murder site and was a branch of the Vilnius Regional Museum. In 1985 a new museum building was constructed and the exhibition overhauled. The land belonging to the memorial was also renovated. In 1991, the memorial museum in Ponar was given over to the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum; in 2013, the memorial land was also placed in charge of the museum.

At present, a new concept of the memorial in Ponar and the immortalisation of the victims is being developed.

From: Gaon Museum