Vilnius march honours Holocaust victims on 85th anniversary

A march in Vilnius honoured Holocaust victims on Tuesday, marking 85 years since the Holocaust began in Lithuania, LRT reported. Organisers reversed this year’s route, leading participants from the Paneriai Memorial to Rūdninkų Square instead of in the opposite direction.

About 400 people, most of them students, first gathered at the Paneriai Memorial, where 50,000 to 70,000 Jews were murdered during the Second World War. They then travelled by train to Vilnius railway station, from where the Memory Road march continued to Rūdninkų Square.

Organisers said the route symbolised returning the memory and heritage of destroyed Jewish communities from oblivion to public consciousness and the places where they lived.

“We need not only to commemorate the victims at Paneriai or other places where they were murdered. We also need to return their cultural and intellectual legacy to our daily lives,” Ronaldas Račinskas, director of the International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania, told BNS.

Participants were asked to bring a stone bearing the name of a victim. During the event, the stones were arranged to spell the word “I know”. They were later taken to the Paneriai Memorial.

Israeli Ambassador to Lithuania Shelly Hugler Livne said that although the past could not be changed, people could choose how to treat its memory.

“Today, when antisemitism is once again being expressed openly, this responsibility becomes even more important,” she said.

She said the Holocaust destroyed Jewish communities throughout Lithuania and left wounds, adding that honestly remembering the history was both a sign of respect for those murdered and a responsibility to future generations.

German Ambassador to Lithuania Cornelius Zimmermann said he felt pain, shame and sadness over the events of the past. He said Germany, as the country that organised the Holocaust, bore permanent historical responsibility to preserve the memory of the events, give victims a voice and work to ensure that such a decline of civilisation never happened again.

Zimmermann also welcomed the participation of many young Lithuanians and praised the word “I know” formed from stones.