Ukmergė residents read 2,336 names of Holocaust victims at the old Jewish cemetery

gzeme.lt

The sixth annual reading of the names of Holocaust victims took place in Lithuania September 22 and 23 and this year Ukmergė (Vilkomir) joined the commemoration. Names were read at the edge of the Pivonija neighborhood there, at the old Jewish cemetery and at Antakalnis village in the Lyduokiai aldermanship. The latter site has no commemorative markers at all and has been abandoned and left to the elements. One-hundred and fourteen Jews from Ukmergė were murdered there in the summer of 1941.

Neringa Latvytė-Gustaitienė, director of the History Department of the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum, said she was happy the public had responded and assembled at this site where Jews were brought from the Ukmergė jail and murdered during the first days of World War II in Lithuania. “This location is not marked with informational signs or arrows, and has not been entered on the registry of cultural heritage. Neither local residents nor representatives of the aldermanship had even heard of the site until now,” she said.

Full story in Lithuanian here.