For the eleventh time now in Lithuania the March of the Living walked the route from the Ponar train station to the Ponar Memorial Complex to commemorate the Jews murdered there. Among the marchers were Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky, Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Gercas Žakas, Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman and Švenčionys Jewish Community chairman Moshe Šapiro. Other participants included Lithuanian foreign minister Linas Linkevičius, Lithuanian ambassador to Israel Edminas Bagdonas and Israeli ambassador to Lithuania Amir Maimon, as well as members of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, students from the Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium, members of the Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel and Holocaust survivors Fania Brancovskaja and Sameul Bak.

The Lithuanian foreign minister, the Israel ambassador, representatives of the Vilnius mayor’s office, the LJC and former ghetto and concentration camp prisoners among others laid wreaths at a monument in the center of the Ponar Memorial Complex to the accompaniment of violin music.

Fania Brancovskaja spoke: “Ponar was a murder machine where from 1941 to 1943 before Vilnius was liberated from Nazi occupation murder was carried out continuously. Seventy-thousand Jews were murdered in Ponar just because they were Jews, all that remains of them is ashes mixed with sand. Not many of us are left, but we are here. I am one of those who went through the entire ghetto and please, do not forget them. As long as we live, we ask you to pass on the information to your children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren so that they do not forget the victims who died.”

During the victim commemoration ceremony LJC chairwoman Faina Kukliansky invited Pope Francis who is scheduled to visit Lithuania this year to come and pray for the dead at Ponar.

“We very much hope his excellency the Pope of Rome will also visit Ponar and pray for the Catholics who rescued Jews and condemn those who murdered them,” she said. She said the Pope could visit Ponar on September 23, the 75th anniversary of the destruction of the Vilnius ghetto.

Lithuanian foreign minister Linas Linkevičius said nice speeches are made annually at the mass murder site, but they don’t atone for the guilt which will last forever. He said the Holocaust is a great scar on the face of humanity, and Lithuania. Jewish culture and heritage were destroyed, so the living must continue the march of the living, the foreign minister said. “We must go from darkness to light. Great opportunities are opening up, relations with Israel are currently very good, not just in political dialogue but also in the economic sphere. We can never bring back these people, but the YIVO Jewish cultural artifacts discovered at the Lithuanian National Martynas Mažvydas Library will return to us our shared history and the spirit of the Jerusalem of Lithuania,” he said.

Israeli ambassador to Lithuania Amir Maimon reminded the audience: “Jews were an integral part of Lithuania for many centuries. We have the moral duty to transform the number of dead into the names which hide behind these statistics. There are more than 200 mass murder sites and only a few indicate the names and surnames of those murdered. Jews who experienced and survived the Holocaust have been building the state of Israel for 70 years and this is very important. Whoever has visited Yad Vashem has seen the museum has chosen a quote from Vilnius fighter Abba Kovner. Every year flames are lit to remember the six millions Jews murdered. Heroism during the Holocaust was fighting the Nazis, but heroism was also the rescue of Jews, and we can also call heroic the choice to survive when all of your family members had been murdered. With us today is Fania Brancovskaja who lost her family in the Holocaust. Today I congratulate her on her 96th birthday. She is our hero.”

Holocaust survivor and painter Samuel Bak used the opportunity to speak to his parents and relatives: “I love you and I will never forget. We must always place stones on the graves of those murdered.”

Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium principal Miša Jakobas said: “I always ask myself and others, does it still hurt? Isn’t it time to forget? Your people and mine, our neighbors, with whom we share a children’s ball, a pinch of salt, a friendly smile. But oh, how sad, how humanly sad. I cannot forget this and I have no moral right to forget… I stand here by this monument and I hear the trees whispering as if it were the words of a Jewish mother: ‘Yosel, my child, where are you, little bird of mine?'”

Chairman of the Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel Arie Ben-Ari Grodzensky thanked the Lithuanian Jewish Community for organizing this year’s March of the Living at Ponar. He said leaders and members of his delegation represented Litvaks living in Israel, that their association was founded in 1932 and that it is the largest association of Litvaks in Israel and probably in the world as well. He said his grandparents, uncles and cousins were murdered in a forest outside Alytus very similar to the pastoral scene in Ponar, as happened at 227 sites in Lithuania where Lithuanians murdered Jews who had been neighbors.

Children from the Saulėtekis school in Vilnius sang the Israeli national anthem and other songs at the conclusion of the ceremony.