On This Day: Nazis liquidate Vilnius Ghetto, slaughter Lithuanian Jews

• Published date: 23 September 2021
• Author: AARON REICH
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

The Baltic nation has a rich Jewish history, with Ashkenazi Jews having maintained a presence since at least the 1300s. During the height of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Jewish community there experienced what many considered a Golden Age. However, fortunes would later change in the latter half of the 1600s when Hetman Bogdan Khmelnytsky of the Cossacks began what would be known as the Khmelnytsky Uprising, which in turn led to the Khmelnytsky Massacre, a massive and brutal wave of pogroms that saw Jewish communities throughout the commonwealth ravaged in what was the largest slaughter of Jews in Europe at the time.

But Jewry still thrived in parts of the commonwealth, specifically in Lithuania's greatest city, Vilnius. Known by some as the "Jerusalem of the North," the city had maintained a prominent Jewish population for centuries, and in the 17th century was home to the Vilna Gaon, one of the greatest and most influential rabbis of the Early Modern Era.

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The city was also the birthplace of the Litvak movement, also known as Misnagdim — Jews who opposed hassidut. While their traditions have changed, Litvak Jews remain one of the largest segments of ultra-Orthodox Judaism to this day, being led in Israel at the time of writing by Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky.

Poland and Lithuania would both suffer heavily in the coming centuries and ended up being partitioned multiple times between the neighboring great powers of Austria, Russia and Prussia.

After World War I, Lithuania and Poland were separated and Poland retained control of Vilnius, renaming it Wilno.

In September 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union both invaded Poland, seizing control of the entire country. On October 10, the Soviet Union handed Wilno (renamed Vilnius) back to Lithuania as part of a mutual assistance treaty. However, in 1940, the Soviets would annex Lithuania.

According to the Lithuanian Statistics Department, there were around 208,000 Jews in the country at the start of 1941. These Jews suffered heavily later in the year after the Germans launched Operation Barbarossa and invaded the Soviet Union, quickly seizing control of Soviet-occupied Poland, the Baltics and Ukraine.

The destruction of Lithuanian Jewry was arguably one of the worst in the Holocaust, with Jews massacred in pits, as the Nazis had given the extermination of Lithuanian...