Obj. ID: 45579
Jewish Funerary Art Monument to the children of the Vilnius Ghetto in the Third (Šeškinė) Jewish Cemetery in Vilnius, Lithuania, 1991
To the main object: Third (Šeškinė) Jewish cemetery in Vilnius, Lithuania
Memorial name
Monument to victims of the children's Aktion of March 17, 1944
Who is Commemorated?
Children of the Vilnius Ghetto
Description:
The monument is located near the cemetery’s fence. It is a rough stele to which a black marble round-headed plaque is attached. On the plaque’s head the traditional abbreviation “Here are buried” flanks a small Star of David. The plaque’s body is divided into two parts. The left one bears a long Hebrew inscription, while the right one features two words in Lithuanian, “Ghetto children.”
A small granite plaque with a donor’s inscription is placed on the back of the monument.
Inscriptions:
In Lithuanian:
Geto
vaikai
Translation: Ghetto children
In Hebrew:
פ"נ
כאן גנוז אוצר
נשמות של ילדי
גיטו ווילנא
שהובלו לטבח
ונרצחו הומתו
ונקברו במקום
זה בידי צוררי
ישראל הנאצים
הגרמנים
וגרוריהם בימי
סער וסופה
במלחמת העולם
השניה
על אלה אני
בוכיה [איכה א, טז]
ת.נ.צ.ב.ה. [תהיה נשמתם צרורה בצרור החים]
על נפש עולליך [איכה ב, יט]
Translation: Here are buried. Here is hidden a hoard of souls of the children from the Vilnius Ghetto that were brought for massacre and murdered, killed, and buried in this place by the haters of Israel; German Nazis and their followers, in the days of gale and storm in the Second World War. “For these things I weep” [Lamentations 1:16]. May their souls be bound in the bundle of life. “for the lives of your children” [Lamentations 2:19].
On the back side:
In Hebrew:
נתרם ע"י משפחת
ישעיהו אפשטיין
תל אביב תשנ"א
In English:
Donated by Fam.
Shaya Epstein
Tel-Aviv 1991
Commissioned by
Family of Yeshayahu (Shaya) Epstein
14 image(s)
sub-set tree:
width of the plaque - 61 cm
The monument commemorates victims of the children’s Aktion, conducted on March 27, 1944, at the “Kailis” and HKP labor camps.
According to Vilna yerushalayim de-lita hareva (p. 18), in 1990 a local gentile who claimed his father was a caretaker of the cemetery told Michael (Moshe) Shapira, who was an engineer working on the monument to the ghetto victims and rearrangement of the graves of the people who died in the ghetto at the time, that children were buried at this place. According to this person, the Germans brought dump trucks full of children's corpses there. Basing on this information, Yeshayahu Epstein erected a monument on this place in 1991. However, there is no proof of mass killing and burial of the children and it seems that the victims of the children’s Aktion were sent to death camps in Poland.
Agranovskii, Genrikh and Irina Guzenberg. Vilnius: Po sledam Litovskogo Ierusalima. Pamiatnye mesta ereiskoi istorii i kul’tury, 2nd ed. (Vilnius: The Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum, 2016)., 691.
Guzenberg, Irina, Vilnius: Traces of the Jewish Jerusalem of Lithuania. Memorable Sites of Jewish History and Culture. A Guidebook (Vilnius: Pavilniai, 2021)., 707.
Guzenberg, Irina. Vilnius: Pamiatnye mesta evreiskoi istorii i kul'tury (Vilnius: Pavilniai, 2013)., 68.
Itzhak Alfasi (ed.), Vilna yerushalayim de-lita hareva! haita ve-einena od (Tel Aviv, 1993), 17-18.
Levinson, Yosif, Skausmo knyga. The Book of Sorrow. Dos bukh fun veytik. Sefer ha-keev (Vilnius: VAGA Publishers, 1997)., 50-51.