|
|
| Line 1: |
Line 1: |
| − | The '''Ponary massacre''' (or '''Paneriai massacre''') was the [[mass-murder]] of 100,000 people, mostly Jews, by German [[Sicherheitsdienst|SD]] and [[SS]] and Lithuanian<ref name="IPN-Ponary"/><ref name="WSP-Ponary"/><ref name="Sak_Ard"/><ref name="Rzecz-Ponary"/> [[Sonderkommando]] [[Collaborationism|collaborators]] ([[Ypatingasis bÅ«rys|Special SD and German Security Police Squad "Ypatingasis bÅ«rys"]] units)<ref name="IPN-Ponary"> {{pl icon}} [http://www.ipn.gov.pl/portal.php?serwis=pl&dzial=194&id=3327 Åšledztwo w sprawie masowych zabójstw Polaków w latach 1941 - 1944 w Ponarach koÅ‚o Wilna dokonanych przez funkcjonariuszy policji niemieckiej i kolaboracyjnej policji litewskiej] (Investigation of mass murders of Poles in the years 1941–1944 in Ponary near Wilno by functionaries of German police and Lithuanian collaborating police). [[Institute of National Remembrance]] documents from 2003 on the ongoing investigation]. Last accessed on 10 February 2007.</ref><ref name="WSP-Ponary">{{pl icon}} CzesÅ‚aw Michalski, [http://www.wsp.krakow.pl/konspekt/konspekt5/ponary.html Ponary - Golgota WileÅ„szczyzny] (Ponary — the Golgoth of Wilno Region). ''Konspekt'' nº 5, Winter 2000–2001, a publication of the [[Academy of Pedagogy in Kraków]]. Last accessed on 10 February 2007.</ref><ref name="Bubnys">{{lt icon}} {{cite book | author =[[ArÅ«nas Bubnys]] | coauthors = | title =VokieÄių ir lietuvių saugumo policija (1941–1944) (German and Lithuanian security police: 1941–1944)| year =2004 | publisher = Lietuvos gyventojų genocido ir rezistencijos tyrimo centras | location = Vilnius | url = http://www.genocid.lt/Leidyba/1/arunas1.htm | accessdate =2006-06-09 }}</ref>
| + | nn |
| − | during [[World War II]] and the [[Holocaust]] in [[Reichskommissariat Ostland]]. The executions took place between July 1941 and August 1944 near the railway station of [[Paneriai]] ({{lang-pl|Ponary}}), now a suburb of [[Vilnius]]. The victims were brought to the edge of huge pits and shot to death by machine gun fire. Some 70,000 Jews were murdered in Ponary,<ref name="Jews">Jews of Vilna and Lithuania in general had their own complex identity, and labels of [[Polish Jews]], [[Lithuanian Jews]] or [[Russian Jews]] are all applicable only in part. See also: [[Ezra Mendelsohn]], ''On Modern Jewish Politics'', Oxford University Press, 1993, ISBN 0195083199, [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0195083199&id=g72diKsztnQC&pg=RA1-PA8&lpg=RA1-PA8&ots=Lp4jCR87PK&dq=%22Polish+Jews%22+Wilno&sig=QkiX7XinNQSlnTMDfOicm5MPQ7A#PRA1-PA8,M1 Google Print, p.8] and [[Mark Abley]], ''Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages'', Houghton Mifflin Books, 2003, ISBN 061823649X, [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN061823649X&id=YgSF_be3iUgC&pg=RA4-PA205&lpg=RA4-PA205&dq=%22Polish+Jews%22+Wilno&sig=7qErsS9wsaHyFzGHWPDvxwIZvTI Google Print, p.205]</ref> along with estimated 20,000 [[Poles]] and 8,000 [[Russians]], many from nearby Vilnius.<ref name="IPN-Ponary"/><ref name="Sak_Ard">[[Kazimierz Sakowicz]], [[Yitzhak Arad]], ''Ponary Diary, 1941–1943: A Bystander's Account of a Mass Murder'', Yale University Press, 2005, ISBN 0300108532, [http://books.google.com/books?id=ZNI79jJnsOoC&pg=PP4&lpg=PP4&ots=O_XeZ1ygWQ&sig=qGlw7NriESdK0hGeGvHU2DUeOe8 Google Print].</ref><ref name="Piotrowski_168">[[Tadeusz Piotrowski (sociologist)|Tadeusz Piotrowski]], ''Poland's Holocaust'', McFarland & Company, 1997, ISBN 0-7864-0371-3, [http://books.google.com/books?id=A4FlatJCro4C&pg=PA168&lpg=PA168&sig=Pq-OjHaAP-wfOIIJb_Gqu2GI3aQ p. 168].</ref>
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | ==Background==
| + | |
| − | Following the incorporation of the [[Republic of Central Lithuania]] into [[Second Polish Republic|Poland]], the town of Ponary became part of the [[Wilno Voivodship]], ([[Kresy]] region). In September 1939, the region was [[Soviet invasion of Poland (1939)|taken over by the Soviets]], and after about a month transferred to Lithuania. After the annexation of Lithuania by the [[Soviet Union]], in June 1940, the Soviets began constructing an oil storage facility near Ponary in conjunction with a military [[airfield]]. That project was never completed, as in 1941 the area [[Operation Barbarossa|was occupied]] by [[Nazi Germany]]. The Nazis decided to take advantage of the large pits dug for the oil warehouses to dispose of bodies of unwanted locals. Their policy was to kill every Jewish individual in Lithuania, and the [[Baltic States|Baltic]] countries became the first place Nazis would mass execute Jews<ref>''One of the areas to first experience the totality of Hitler’s "final solution" for the Jews was the Baltic countries. In a sense the Holocaust, that is the destruction of European Jews, started in the Baltics. It was there that Hitler’s executioners began their first actions of mass genocide.'' - Katy Miller-Korpi, ''The Holocaust in the Baltics'', University of Washington, Department papers online, 1998.[http://depts.washington.edu/baltic/papers/holocaust.html]</ref>. Out of 70,000 Jews living in Vilnius, only 7,000 would survive the war; the Jewish culture in Vilnius, one of the greatest in Europe, ceased to exist.<ref name="Snyder">[[Timothy Snyder]], ''The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999'', Yale University Press, ISBN 0-300-10586-X[http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN030010586X&id=xSpEynLxJ1MC&pg=PA84&lpg=PA84&ots=1QppOvut8l&dq=burys+volunteers&sig=mXfurJEvAIkaH5SSRK0uD0ryiJE Google Books, p.84-89]</ref>
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | ==Massacre==
| + | |
| − | The massacres began in July, 1941, when [[Einsatzkommando 9]] arrived in Vilnius, rounded up 5,000 Jewish men of Vilnius and took them to Paneriai where they were shot. Further mass killings, often aided by Lithuanian volunteers,<ref name="Snyder">[[Timothy Snyder]] ''The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999'', Yale University Press, ISBN 0-300-10586-X[http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN030010586X&id=xSpEynLxJ1MC&pg=PA84&lpg=PA84&ots=1QppOvut8l&dq=burys+volunteers&sig=mXfurJEvAIkaH5SSRK0uD0ryiJE Google Books, p.84-89]</ref> from ''[[Ypatingasis burys]]'', took place throughout the summer and fall.<ref name="Bubnys"/> In September, [[Vilna Ghetto]] was created.<ref name="Snyder"/> By the end of the year, about 21,700 Jews had been killed at Paneriai.<ref name="Snyder"/> The pace of killings slowed in 1942, as slave workers were appropriated by [[Wehrmacht]].<ref name="Snyder"/>
| + | |
| − | [[Image:Paneriai pits.jpg|thumb|200px|left|One of the pits where people were shot]]
| + | |
| − | The total number of victims by the end of 1944 was between 70,000 and 100,000. According to post-war [[exhumation]] by the forces of Soviet [[2nd Belorussian Front]] the majority (50,000–70,000) of the victims were [[Polish Jew|Polish]] and [[Lithuanian Jews]] from nearby Polish and Lithuanian cities, while the rest were primarily [[Poles]] (about 20,000) and [[Russians]] (about 8,000).<ref name="WSP-Ponary"/><ref name="IPN-Ponary"/> The Polish victims were mostly members of Polish [[intelligentsia]] (teachers, professors of the [[Stefan Batory University]] like [[Kazimierz Pelczar]], priests like [[Romuald Åšwirkowski]]) and members of [[Armia Krajowa]] [[resistance movement]].<ref name="WSP-Ponary"/><ref name="Piotrowski_168"/> Among the first victims were approximately 7,500 Soviet [[POW]]s shot in 1941 soon after [[Operation Barbarossa]] begun.<ref name="Rzecz-Ponary">[http://rzecz-pospolita.com/ponary.php3 Ponary]. Last accessed on 10 February 2007.</ref> At later stages there were also smaller numbers of victims of other nationalities, including local Russians, [[Roma (people)|Roma]] and Lithuanians, particularly communists sympathizers and members of general [[Povilas PlechaviÄius]]' [[Local Lithuanian Detachment]] who refused to follow German orders.<ref name="WSP-Ponary"/>
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | As Soviet troops advanced in 1943, the German-led units tried to cover up the crime. A unit of eighty workers was formed from nearby [[Stutthof concentration camp]] prisoners and was forced to dig up the bodies, pile them on wood and burn them. The ashes were then mixed with sand and buried.<ref name="WSP-Ponary"/> After six months of this gruesome work, aware that eventually they would be executed themselves, the brigade managed to escape on [[April 19]], [[1944]]. Eleven of them managed to survive the ordeal, and their testimony contributed to revealing the massacre.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | ==Commemoration==
| + | |
| − | [[Image:Paneriai monument 2b.jpg|thumb|right|200px|Memorial for Soviet victims of Ponary massacre]]
| + | |
| − | The information about the massacre began to spread as early as 1943, due to the activities and works of [[Helena Pasierbska]], [[Józef Mackiewicz]], [[Kazimierz Sakowicz]] and others. Nonetheless the Soviet regime, which supported the resettlement of Poles from the [[Kresy]], found it convenient to deny that Poles or Jews were massacred in Paneriai; the official line was that Paneriai was a site of massacre of Soviet citizens only.<ref name="chgs">[http://www.chgs.umn.edu/Visual___Artistic_Resources/Public_Holocaust_Memorials/Memorial_to_the_Murdered_Jews_/memorial_to_the_murdered_jews_.html Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Lithuania at Ponary] (with photo gallery). Last accessed on 15 March 2007.</ref><ref name="Rzecz-Ponary"/> This Soviet denial, as well as the fact that it was one of the biggest massacres on Poles in the East, led some - like Polish Prime Minister, [[Jerzy Buzek]] - to compare this to the [[Katyn Massacre]].<ref name="WSP-Ponary"/> On [[22 October]], [[2000]], a decade after the [[fall of communism]], in independent Lithuania, an effort by a several Polish organizations resulted in raising a monument (a cross) to fallen Polish citizens, during an official ceremony in which representatives of both Polish and Lithuanian governments ([[BronisÅ‚aw Komorowski]], [[Ministry of National Defence of the Republic of Poland|Polish Minister of Defence]], and his [[Ministry of National Defence of Lithuania|Lithuanian counterpart]]), as well as several [[NGO]]s, took place.<ref name="Rzecz-Ponary"/><ref name="adw">{{pl icon}} StanisÅ‚aw Mikke, [http://www.adwokatura.pl/aktualnosci_sprawozdania_1112.htm 'W Ponarach']. Relation from a Polish-Lithuanian memorial ceremony in Panerai, 2000. On the pages of Polish Bar Association</ref><ref name="WSP-Ponary"/>
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | The site of the massacre is commemorated by a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust<!--when was it raised and what is it?-->, a memorial to the Polish victims and a small museum (currently closed). The executions at Paneriai, are currently a matter of an investigation by the [[GdaÅ„sk]] branch of the Polish [[Institute of National Remembrance]].<ref name="IPN-Ponary"/>
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | ==References==
| + | |
| − | {{reflist}}
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | ==External links==
| + | |
| − | *[http://www.vilnaghetto.com Chronicles of the Vilna Ghetto: wartime photographs & documents - vilnaghetto.com]
| + | |
| − | * [http://web.archive.org/web/20060420212303/http://www.noarfamily.com/PONARYFOREST.html Ponary Forest] via [[Internet Archive]]
| + | |
| − | * [http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005173 US Holocaust Museum article on death of Vilna's Jews]
| + | |
| − | * [http://www.rtrfoundation.org/map12a.html RTFT article on death of Vilna's Jews]
| + | |
| − | * [http://www.holocaustresearchproject.net/einsatz/ponary.html holocaustresearchproject]
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | ==Further reading==
| + | |
| − | *Ernst Klee, Willi Dressen, and Volker Riess, eds., ''The Good Old Days: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders'', Free Press, 1991, ISBN 0029174252
| + | |
| − | *Algis KasperaviÄius, ''""Lithuanian-Jewish relations in 1935-1944''
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | [[Category:Nazi Germany]]
| + | |
