In 1942, they were taken into the Ponary forest outside of Vilna and killed by the SS and Lithuanian collaborators. Born in 1906, Pinchas Zygielbojm was an actor and brother of Szmul Artur Zygielbojm, a leader of the Jewish socialist Bund in interwar Poland and later a member of the National Council of the Polish Government-in-Exile in London.
Shooting is heard from the forest…Ponary, the murder site of the Jews of Vilna and the surrounding area, was situated 10 km south of Vilna on the road to Grodno. Before the war it was a forested area used for holidays and recreation. Vilna residents used to go there for their summer holidays and to gather berries and mushrooms. The site was chosen for murder due to its proximity to the ...
From June 1941 to July 1944, over 75,000 people, mostly Jews, were brought to Ponary, a once idyllic forested area located south of Vilna, and brutally shot and buried in open pits thus creating Lithuania's largest mass grave. Join Jacob Shoshan, esteemed and highly sought-after International March of the Living guide and historian for a
On Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day, we turn our attention to the haunting and lesser-known massacre site of Ponary in Lithuania. As part of the tragic destruction during the Holocaust, Ponary saw the execution of 100,000 people, including 70,000 Jews, in death pits surrounded by forests. This article delves into the horrific events, the brutal role of local Lithuanians, and the haunting ...
The Ponary massacre (Polish: zbrodnia w Ponarach), or the Paneriai massacre (Lithuanian: Panerių žudynės), was the mass murder of up to 100,000 people, mostly Jews, Poles, and Soviet citizens, by German SD and SS and the Lithuanian Ypatingasis būrys killing squads, [3][4][5] during World War II and the Holocaust in the Generalbezirk Litauen of Reichskommissariat Ostland. The murders took ...