Obj. ID: 45500
Jewish Funerary Art Memorial to the First Victims of the Nazi Occupation at Titnago St. in Vilnius, Lithuania, 2011
Memorial name
Memorial to the First Victims of the Nazi Occupation.
Who is Commemorated?
60 VIlnius residents, most of them Jews, shot in July 1941.
Description:
The monument is an uneven high stone narrowing in its upper part, only two sides of the stone are straight, stressing the angle between them. The left side, which bears an inscription in Lithuanian, is not polished and has vertical “passes.” The right side is polished and bears an inscription in Lithuanian and in Yiddish. The inscriptions on the both sides are made in the lower third of the stone, on a straight-cut surface.
Inscriptions:
Left side, in Lithuanian:
Masinių žudynių
Čia 1941 m. liepą nacistai sušaudė
ir užkasė per šešiasdešimt
Vilniaus gyventojų – dauguma jų
buvo žydų tautybės
Translation: Mass murder. / Here, in July 1941, the Nazis shot / and buried 60 / residents of Vilnius – most of them / were of Jewish nationality.
Right side, in Lithuanian:
Aukų kapavietė
Translation: Graveyard of the victims
Right side, in Yiddish:
דאָ האָבן די נאציס אין יולי 1941
דערשאָסן מער ווי זעכציק ווילנער איַיַנוווינער –
די גרעסטע טייל פון זיי זיינען געווען ייִדן
Translation: Here, in July 1941, the Nazis / shot more than 60 residents of Vilnius – / the largest part of them were Jews.
Commissioned by:
The Genocide and Resistance Research Center of Lithuania, together with Vilnius municipality.
sub-set tree:
A mass grave was discovered at this site in 2007. The examination by the Vilnius University Archeological Department, together with the Genocide and Resistance Research Center of Lithuania in 2008, concluded that the remains belong to Vilnius residents, mainly Jews but also Poles, who were taken as hostages by the Nazis and shot here in July 1941. They were buried in a ten-meter-long trench.
On June 15, 2011, the exhumed remains were reburied in the same trench with the participation of Jews and Catholic clergy. The monument was unveiled on the next day, June 16, 2011.
The installation of the stone monument cost 6,599,00 Litas.
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)., 696.
Guzenberg, Irina, Vilnius: Traces of the Jewish Jerusalem of Lithuania. Memorable Sites of Jewish History and Culture. A Guidebook (Vilnius: Pavilniai, 2021)., 712.
Guzenberg, Irina. Vilnius: Pamiatnye mesta evreiskoi istorii i kul'tury (Vilnius: Pavilniai, 2013)., 49.
Holocaust Atlas of Lithuania, MASS MURDER OF THE JEWS HELD AS HOSTAGES IN VILNIUS, http://www.holocaustatlas.lt/EN/#a_atlas/search//page/1/item/182/., http://www.holocaustatlas.lt/EN/ (accessed December 20, 2022)
Jakulytė-Vasil, Milda. Lithuanian Holocaust Atlas (Vilnius: VIlna Gaon State Jewish Museum, 2011), 296.
LIETUVOS GYVENTOJŲ GENOCIDO IR REZISTENCIJOS TYRIMO CENTRAS, 2011 METŲ DARBO ATASKAITA, pp. 24, 84, 112, 139, http://www.genocid.lt/UserFiles/File/Ataskaitos/2011m.pdf (accessed January 18, 2023)