The German army occupied Vilna (Vilnius), Lithuania, on June 24, 1941. The following month, German Einsatzgruppen and their Lithuanian auxiliaries murdered thousands of Jewish residents of Vilna at a killing site in the Ponary (Paneriai) Forest, southwest of Vilna. By the end of 1941, Einsatzgruppen had killed about 40,000 Jews in Ponary. By July 1944, perhaps as many as 75,000 people had been killed at the site, the vast majority of them Jews. These photographs and narratives shed light on the Vilna ghetto and the destruction of its Jewish inhabitants.
We would like to thank Crown Family Philanthropies and the Abe and Ida Cooper Foundation for supporting the ongoing work to create content and resources for the Holocaust Encyclopedia. View the list of all donors.