Bookpresentation Commemorating International Holocaust Remembrance Day at the Vilna Gaon Museum of Jewish History in Vilnius

On the eve of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the presentation of the new book The Traces of Crimes Do Not Disappear - Mass Killings in the Paneriai Forest,1941-1944 took place at the Samuel Bak Museum, which is a branch of EHRI's partner in Vilnius, the Vilna Gaon Museum of Jewish History. 

This historical research book is based on older and more recent data on Paneriai (the biggest mass extermination site in Lithuania), obtained by non-intrusive survey methods. It was presented by the authors and historians working in the field: Assoc. Prof. Dr Nerijus Šepetys, Dr Stanislovas Stasiulis, Saulius Sarcevičius, Dr Šarūnė Sederevičiūtė and PhD student Mantas Šikšnianas. The event was moderated by Assoc. Prof. Dr Aurimas Švedas. 

Content

During the war, Paneriai was a site of mass extermination of the residents of Lithuania, mostly Jews. From 1941 to 1944, the territory of the Paneriai "base" was transformed into an efficient and ever more effective massacre site. Realising their impending defeat, the Nazi's and their collaborators went to great lengths to destroy the traces of their crime. The main message of the team of authors of this book is that the traces of crimes do not disappear even after many years. This is what they attempted to demonstrate and prove by searching for answers to a number of questions raised in the course of research. The material presented to the readers reveals that the traces of the tragedy that took place in Paneriai are preserved to the present day, whether these are found in the changes on the territory or the terrain of the "base", or in the search for the killing pits, or the identification of the escape tunnel.

The book was published by the Lithuanian Institute of History and the Vilna Gaon Museum of Jewish History in the Lithuanian language in 2021. The English version will be released in 2022. 

Image: Vilna Gaon Museum of Jewish History