On September 23 we mark the Day of Remembrance of Lithuanian Jewish Victims of Genocide, honoring the victims of the liquidation of the Vilnius ghetto in 1943. This was a blood-curdling day when the last surviving Jewish residents of Vilnius were either murdered or sent to concentration camps [sic, the liquidation took place over several weeks–trans.].

From that day onward there were officially no Jews left in Vilnius, only those who hid with families who dared preserve humanity, and also those remained who joined the Soviet partisans in the forests. The Jerusalem of the North had been strangled and we were all left the poorer.

Christians know the resurrection is impossible without the crucifixion. To raise the history of the Holocaust on the cross of our memory, first we have to confess in our hearts that it wasn’t THEIR agony and tragedy but OUR agony and tragedy. This is not the story of an oppressed people who demand vengeance.

Full text in Lithuanian here.