Paneriai

There won't be any photos accompanying this entry. A couple of reasons for this. First, I haven't uploaded (Downloaded? Can't keep it straight.) any pictures in the last two days because our problems with the internet make me want to use any available time online, not fooling around with cameras and wires. And second, well, I was pretty much incapable of taking more than one or two pictures in Paneriai.

This place. Nothing can ever be the same after you've been here. I've been accused more than once of being an exaggerator. Maybe so, but I assure all of you that exaggeration is impossible for a description of the events at Paneriai.

In 1941, Jews in Vilnius were kept behind walls in two separate ghettos: the big ghetto and the small one. None of the residents of either ghetto had any clear idea what would happen to them. Both places were autonomous communities, with their own schools, medical facilities, police forces, leaders. Life was terrible but the citizens made it work well enough to keep alive. There was always the debate about whether it was better to be 'good' so that the Nazis would reward them with food or goods or freedom. Or whether it was better to arm themselves and fight back against the German invaders. Neither, as it turned out. Nothing would change their horrible fate, no matter what how well behaved or rebellious.
A while before events at Paneriai occurred, the Russians had dug seven or eight huge pits close to the trains, for the storage of fuel. The soil around these parts is sandy, like beach sand, and extremely difficult to work. When the Germans came to Vilnius, they found these gigantic holes extremely well made and useful for their work. Saved them a lot of time, these ready-made craters.

Paneriai was a train station situated in a forest, 10 kilometers outside Vilnius. The land was sometimes used, in much better times, as a place for Jews and anyone else to leave the city and enjoy nature. There were Lithuanian as well as Jewish resorts here in the woods. Families could enjoy a picnic on a warm, sunny day, while their children could play in the woods and have a relaxing, fun time away from school and daily chores.

The Germans, without warning, stormed the big ghetto of Vilnius. They systematically removed the most able bodied in order to ship them to other countries as slave labor. The weaker ones were taken out of their homes and driven by foot to the forest at Paneriai, a long, difficult walk for woman, children, old people, men who were no longer young and strong. It still must have seemed to them that they werealso just being moved. Even when their valuables and their coats and shoes were taken away, there was no way imagine the level of destruction and evil that the Nazis were capable of. Families tried to stay together. Mothers tried to hold on to their children. Men tried to keep their wives and children safely with them. The unthinkable was about to happen.

German soldiers marched the Vilnius Jews to the edges of these large holes and began shooting. As people were shot, Nazis then threw them into the pits. As each group of people were shot, they were tossed on top of those at the bottom of the hole. This process  continued until the holes were completely filled with bodies. Then the another group would be sent toa  different crater and the same procedure followed.

Some Jews were designated as 'burners.' It was their job to pour gasoline on the bodies and set them on fire, knowing that when their job was done, they were going to be shot and thrown on the flames themselves.

Pictures of this abomination survived. Photo of the burners. Bodies being thrown into the pits. Pictures of a special pit for children. There was a young girl who survived by staying beneath the dead, pulling herself loose, and then escaping into the forest when the Germans were not looking. We watched a short film of her telling how the Germans threw people into the pits dead or alive 'like laundry, like shirts and clothes, something not human.'

100,000 were slaughtered at Paneriai. 70,000 were Jews. The rest were various kinds of undesirables: Poles, Lithuanians, Russians- anyone who rebelled against the ruling Nazis.

This place, Paneriai, is considered to be a more difficult place to visit than Auschwitz by some of our group who had been to both sites.It must be the pristine setting. It's a forest, strangely quiet, without visible birds or insects. (Or maybe we were too shellshocked to notice.) There are many varieties of beautiful trees and edible berries. There are just a few stone monuments with engravings in Hebrew or Lithuanian. Not much English

The pits vary in size and the bottoms are covered by with grass; some are circled by stones. They are bigger than I thought they'd be. Spaceship sized. Football fields underground. They are far apart; the walk from one pit to another is on a series of well-groomed forest paths. There are no signs leading from one hole to another.

I didn't think I could write all this. It difficult to think about being there today without forcing my brain to go a place it doesn't want to be. There are not a lot of words to tell how it felt. At least not yet.

My body reaction (like a lot of our group) was to burst into tears. Others went limp, unable to talk. Becca will have to give this blog her own reaction to Paneriai- if she wants to and is able to. All I can say now is to repeat that nothing will be the same for me- I have seen evil as I never imagined it. Nothing in my experience, in my life, can ever explain how it is possible for human beings to do this.