Vilnius - Holocaust

Vilnius is the capital and largest city of Lithuania, with a population of about 600.000. Before WWII, Vilnius was one of the largest Jewish centers in Europe which led to the nickname "the Jerusalem of the North".

Vilnius has been regarded as one of the most liberal cities in Europe, offering protection to persecuted Jews from Central Europe and Russia, among others, throughout its history. Vilnius became the centre of Jewish culture and enlightenment. Around 1900 about 40% of the population was Jewish.

On June 24, 1941, Vilnius was occupied by German troops, and from then on the remaining Jews were persecuted and murdered. By September 1941, when the Vilnius Ghetto was established, several thousand Jews had already been murdered. By the end of October 1941, there were two ghettos in Vilnius, a large one and a small one. Most of the Jews in the large ghetto were qualified specialists and skilled workers, while the small ghetto was the ghetto of unemployable, elderly, and sick Jews. By the end of 1941, German and Lithuanian police units and "Sonderkommandos" had murdered about 30.000 Vilnius Jews in a forest outside the city. The smaller ghetto had ceased to exist. As the need for labor in the German war economy increased, there were no mass killings until March 1943, but from then on the remaining Jews were deported to concentration camps and murdered there. Only 2.000-3.000 of Vilnius´ more than 60.000 Jews survived the Holocaust.