Holocaust Victims Remembered at Ponar

Holocaust Victims Remembered at Ponar

To mark the Day of Lithuanian Jewish Victims of Genocide proclaimed by the Lithuanian parliament in 1994, different groups converged on the Ponar Memorial Complex on September 23, 2022. One group held a different commemoration in the Vilnius ghetto territory, Vilnius Old Town, and arrived by train. Other groups came by bus and private automobile. Near the railroad tracks in Ponar where Holocaust victims were unloaded and sent to the killing pits, March of the Living participants, the Lithuanian Jewish Community, the International Commission for Assessing the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes in Lithuania, Lithuanian politicians, foreign diplomats and members of the public assembled and walked the same route to the Ponar Memorial Complex where short speeches were delivered in front of the central monument there.

Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky said: “We lived in peace, we couldn’t have imagined at all there would be war and in such a manner. Confidence in life, confidence in the future can be broken. And the young people need to hear about this. Because the young people are also responsible for our future, not just because we want to teach them to be good citizens.”