Paneriai Memorial

Paneriai (Ponary) Memorial marks one of the most tragic sites of the Holocaust. In the pine forests about 10 km southwest of Vilnius center, between July 1941 and July 1944, Nazi German forces and their Lithuanian collaborators murdered approximately 100,000 people — around 70,000 of whom were Jewish men, women, and children from the Vilnius Ghetto. The victims were brought to large pits originally dug as fuel storage tanks by the Soviet military and systematically shot. The site was later used to burn remains in an attempt to conceal the crimes. Today, memorial stones, monuments, and a small museum mark the killing pits and commemorate the victims. Visiting Paneriai is a profoundly sobering experience. The forest is peaceful now, almost too peaceful given what happened here. The memorial serves as a crucial reminder of the Holocaust's devastating impact on Lithuania, which lost approximately 95% of its Jewish population — one of the highest proportions in Europe.