Members of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, Lithuanian foreign diplomats, politicians and members of the community at large marked Yom haShoah at Ponar Thursday with a solemn ceremony, an air-raid siren, a moment of silence and speeches. Yom haShoah is one of several days on the calendar dedicated to remembering the six million victims of the Holocaust in Europe. In Israel air-raid sirens sound and all activities cease in memory of the dead on this day.

“I call myself a Lithuanian woman of Jewish ethnicity and I would like to live in my own country not in fear, and it’s not Jews who must combat anti-Semitism, it’s the state which must provide for the safety of all its citizens,” Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky said at the event. She also noted there is still no monument to the Righteous Gentiles who saved Jews from the Holocaust in Lithuania, despite seven years of discussion.

“History isn;t just lines in a textbook and facts. History includes feelings which we must pass on to our children, that they might understand what children who witnessed the murder of their parents felt. What anguish mothers experienced seeing their children murdered. These are what should be the lessons of history,” she continued. She is one of the few left in Lithuania who heard stories of the Holocaust directly from her parents and grandparents who were victims of it.

Israeli embassy chargé d’affaires Erez Golan spoke and recalled his grandmother unwilling to talk about the horror she experienced. He said while he respected that position, he now regrets it, with an ever-diminishing number of eye-witnesses surviving able to tell others their experience of the Shoah. He said it was everyone’s duty to do everything possible to pass on the story of the Holocaust to our children. He said there were still steps which needed to be taken for the Lithuanian people to recognize their own past and to teach their children that, while the past cannot be altered, the future can be different.

German embassy chargé d’affaires Ruedigeri Zettel spoke movingly, among others, and US embassy chargé d’affaires Jonathan Herzog participated in the ceremony as well. The Lithuanian Jewish Community would like to thank everyone for attending.