There were many events to commemorate the Holocaust in September at the Panevėžys Jewish Community. In August members of the Panevėžys Community took part in ceremonies marking the anniversary of the destruction of the Jewish communities of Biržai, Kupiškis and Rokiškis.

The series of commemorations of victims ended on September 30 with a trip to Poland where Panevėžys Jewish Community members visited the Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps.

During the trip Panevėžys Jewish Community members heard many tragic stories about the events of the World War II era. The tours of the death camps Auschwitz and Birkenau deeply affected children and parents. Over 1.5 million Jews, Russians, Roma and people of other ethnicities were murdered there. The Nazis murdered prisoners in the gas chambers and burnt the bodies of their innocent victims in the furnace.

The Panevėžys delegation visited the children’s barracks in Birkenau where children aged 2 to 16 were murdered and saw the horrible conditions in which they lived without parents, hungry and diseased. Our children weren’t able to stop their tears.

After group members saw the brutal conditions under which elderly women and children were murdered at the Auschwitz and Birkenau camps, it wasn’t possible to come to any other conclusion except that the Nazis had sought to erase and annihilate the entire Jewish people from the world map.

Is it possible to sleep soundly after such a trip, when you’ve seen the blood-curdling and horrible sites? The heart constricts, it becomes impossible to utter words and all you can do is try to swallow the lump in your throat.

The Community delegation also visited the Jewish cemetery in Cracow, one of the oldest Jewish cemeteries in Europe where members of the Cracow Jewish community were buried. Sadly, what we saw was a depressing scene of a graveyard very much left to the mercies of the elements and grown over with nettles. The city municipality has no desire to renovate this site visited frequently by tourists.

We thought we should remind the municipality of Cracow that it is their duty to maintain cultural heritage sites, since it is connected with Jewish history.

Currently about 2,000 Jews live in Poland, 500 of them in Cracow, and the majority are elderly people.

Before World War II 3,002,000 Jews lived in Poland and every city had hundreds of synagogues, there were schools and gymnasia and charity associations. Poland was famous for its Talmudic masters and scholars.

The Panevėžys Jewish Community is grateful to Yuri and Svetlana Grafman for their support in making the tour possible.

Gennady Kofman, chairman
Panevėžys Jewish Community