Ponary massacre

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Polish memorial in the forest near Paneriai (2006)

The Ponary massacre ( Paneriai in Lithuanian ) is the name given to the mass murders of over 100,000 people between 1941 and 1944, mostly Jews , but also Russians , Poles and Lithuanians , by German SD and SS troops during the Second World War as part of the Holocaust in the Reichskommissariat Ostland .

massacre

In the summer of 1941, the forest near Aukštieji Paneriai became the scene of a mass execution of Baltic Jews. The Soviets had dug large pits there to store fuel. The German occupation authorities used these pits as mass graves for tens of thousands of Jews, Soviet prisoners of war, and Lithuanian and Polish political prisoners . At the beginning of July 1941, Einsatzkommando 9 of Einsatzgruppe B moved into Vilnius and immediately set about carrying out their assignment. From August 1941, the main branch of the Einsatzkommando 3 under SS officers Peter Eisenbarth and Erich Wolff was responsible. They acted largely independently according to Karl Jäger's instructions ; Whether Jäger was present at the mass shootings in Ponary could not be determined with certainty.

According to the historian Christina Eckert, the perpetrators' division of labor and strict organization became the decisive prerequisites “for the deadly speed and efficiency with which the Jews in Paneriai were murdered”. The victims were transported to Paneriai by truck or train. The almost 5000 square meter shooting site was cordoned off and the area mined. Around 100 Lithuanian riflemen were posted around the forest. The dimension of the annihilation was already clear from the fact that "in the autumn of 1941, after almost four months of murders, more than six tons of clothing had [accumulated]". By the end of December 1941, three quarters of the Jews in Vilnius had been murdered. Units of the Wehrmacht , SS , Einsatzkommandos and Lithuanian militias ( Ypatingasis būrys ) were involved in the massacre . At the end of 1941 the number of people murdered was 47,447. Between 1941 and 1944, the Germans murdered around 56,000 to 70,000 Jews, 17,000 to 20,000 Poles (mainly members of the Vilnius intelligentsia and the Polish Home Army ), up to 6,000 Russians and numerous Roma and Communists with the help of the voluntary Lithuanian Sonderkommando of the SD Security Service . Witness to this crime was the Polish writer Józef Mackiewicz , who published the text "Ponary-Baza" in 1945, and the journalist Kazimierz Sakowicz .

The shootings continued until the end of 1943, when the Vilna ghetto was dissolved . This increased the number of those murdered to over 70,000. The coordinators of this mass murder were Franz Murer ("The Butcher of Wilna"), Bruno Kittel and Martin Weiss . The standard work The Persecution and Murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 speaks of “Ponary” as “the central Lithuanian murder site” and mentions the high proportion of Lithuanian auxiliaries in the murders. "Mainly Lithuanian protection team members who were instructed by a few Germans had shot."

Trace removal

In December 1943, under the orders of Franz Murer and in close cooperation with Martin Weiß, the mass graves were opened as part of the special action 1005 and the corpses were burned to destroy the traces. On August 14, 1946, at the Nuremberg trial , the testimony of Szloma Gol was read:

“This work, which consisted of opening the graves and setting up the pyre, was supervised by around 80 guards ... In the course of this work, the Lithuanian guards themselves were shot, probably so that they could not divulge what had been done. The commander of the entire square was SA leader Murer, (the clerk for Jewish questions). "
“Our job was to open mass graves and haul out bodies and then cremate them. I was busy digging up these bodies. My friend Belic was busy sawing and trimming wood. "
“We dug up a total of 80,000 bodies. I know this because two Jews who lived with us in the pit were employed by the Germans to count these corpses. That was their only job. The corpses consisted of a mixture of Jews, Polish priests and Russian prisoners of war. "

Song of Ponar

The song of Ponar was written in 1943 as part of a competition organized by the Vilnius Jewish Council . It was composed by Alek Wolkowisky , who was 11 at the time , and Shmerke Kaczerginski wrote the text.

Processing and reception

At the site of the mass shooting there is a Polish memorial, which is not signposted on site.

As announced in June 2016, an international team of archaeologists discovered an escape tunnel on the site of the extermination site. At that time, more than three dozen Jews tried to escape the mass murder via this secretly dug tunnel.

gallery

  • Here the excavated victims were burned to destroy evidence

  • Memorial to the Jewish victims

  • Memorial to the Polish victims

  • A memorial for the "Victims of Fascist Terror" erected during the time of the Soviet Union, which replaced a previous memorial for the Jewish victims

  • The forest at Ponary

literature

Web links

Commons : Ponary massacre  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ According to Polish estimates, up to 20,000 Poles, e.g. Partly from the Polish intellectual class from Vilna - see: Ponary: miejsce ludzkiej rzeźni . Instytut Pamięci Narodowej . S. 26. 2011. Accessed December 25, 2012.
  2. ^ Wolfram Wette: Karl Jäger. Murderer of the Lithuanian Jews . Frankfurt / Main 2011, ISBN 978-3-596-19064-5 , p. 107.
  3. ↑ Christina Eckert: The murder site Paneriai (Ponary) near Vilnius . In: Holocaust in Lithuania. War, murder of Jews, and collaboration in 1941 . Edited by Vinas Bartusevicius / Joachim Tauber / Wolfram Wette. Böhlau, Cologne 2003, pp. 132–142, here p. 134.
  4. ↑ The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 . Vol. 7. Soviet Union with annexed areas. - 1. Occupied Soviet territories under German military administration, the Baltic States and Transnistria. Edited by Bert Hoppe and Hildrun Glass. Oldenbourg, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-486-58911-5 , p. 59; see also in this volume, p. 562, doc. 203 The Vilna department of the raw materials center reported on October 22, 1941 that 6.33 tons of clothing had been removed from the Ponary murder site near Vilna .
  5. ↑ The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 . Vol. 7, p. 81.
  6. ↑ The Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal. Vol. 21, p. 178 ff. ( Affidavit D-964)
  7. ↑ dpa: Researchers find escape tunnels from the Nazi era . In: Rheinische Post , June 30, 2016, p. C1.