March of the Living 2019 — Association of Jews of Vilna and vicinity in Israel

The 23^rd of September, 1943 was a cold, wet day. About five thousand people, who had survived the two years of Nazi occupation and the murders committed by the Lithuanians stood in the Russa (the deportation square) in Vilna, awaiting their fate…who to the death pits at Ponary and who to the labor camps and concentration camps in Latvia, Estonia and other places of torture and death in Europe.

The Lithuanian government declared the 23^rd of September, the day on which the Vilna Ghetto was liquidated, National Memorial Day to mark the extremely cruel genocide of the Jews of the area by the Nazi regime and, especially, by their Lithuanian collaborators, in the ghettoes, forests, homes, streets and hiding places.

Hundreds of schoolchildren, leaders and members of the Vilna and Lithuanian Jewish communities, Yossi Levi, the Israeli ambassador to Lithuania, the Prime Minister of Lithuania, ministers and members of the Lithuanian parliament, the mayor of Vilna and many, many others, participated in the memorial events.  A delegation of the Association attended the March of the Living in the city as far as the railway station and, from there, by train to Ponary which was organized by the International Conference to Examine the Crimes of the Nazis and the Soviets together with the European branch of the March of the Living. The delegation later participated in the official March of the Living at Ponary that was organized by the Lithuanian government and the local Jewish community.

It has been the fifteenth time that the Association is touring the area, together with a group of second and third generations of Litvaks from Vilna, Kovno and Kedainiai, seeking the childhood haunts of their parents and their families who are gone. It has been an incredible group experience in Vilna and Kovno: experiencing, almost first-hand, family stories about carefree childhoods, the horrors of the Holocaust, heroism, salvation and the resurrection in Israel. We heard stories about the escape from the Ninth Fort from Yaarit Glazer and Eli Yitzhaki, whose fathers managed to escape from the Ninth Fort of death as well as stories from Ruth Aloni Kanterowitz and Dorit Yeruham, whose fathers were members of the unit responsible for burning the bodies, and managed to escape from the death pit at Ponary.

How proud we were of our courageous parents! We returned to Israel feeling that we were a united Litvak group with an important mission to fulfill.