by Daiva Savckienė

On the eve of the Day of Remembrance of Lithuanian Jewish Victims of Genocide, the Panevėžys Jewish Community and guests marked this date with a “Road of Memory” procession, meeting at the Sad Jewish Mother monument, then later at the monument at the intersection of Krekenavos and Klaipėdos streets marking the site of the ghetto the Nazis established in Panevėžys, and then in the Kurganava Forest where about 8,000 people were murdered in 1941.

Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman said: “The small towns and large cities are marking the 80th anniversary of the Holocaust with processions.”

It’s not just this tragedy and the innocent people murdered being remembered. All of Lithuania suffered.

“About 200,000 Jews were shot to death. We don’t talk much about how many Lithuanians suffered. Many of them were deported to Germany as slave labor. Many of them didn’t return,” Kofman said.

He said there were those among Jews whose fathers were Lithuanians, who were sent to Germany as labor and didn’t return. Other ethnic minorities who lived in Lithuania before World War II also suffered in the brutal extermination factory.

“It wasn’t just Jews who suffered, it was all of Lithuania, which lost its scientists, teachers, judges, attorneys, craftsmen and workers,” the community chairman said.

Full text in Lithuanian here.