Paneriai diary 1941-1943

Paneriai diary 1941-1943

Until World War II, Vilnius was one of the most important European Jewish cultural, scientific, educational and rabbinic activity centers. The pre-World War II numbers are staggering: by 1939 about 58.000 Jews lived and worked in Polish Wilno. The atrocities of WWII and Nazi occupation destroyed Vilnius Jewish community almost completely, so only a few thousand Jews remained in the new capital of Soviet Lithuania.

During Nazi occupation, the arrested Jews from Vilnius ghetto would be first taken to Lukiszki Prison and then to Ponary (now Paneriai) where the Soviets had dug deep pits for fuel tank storage, for execution by German SS and SD units, Lithuanian police, and Lithuanian "self-defense" units.

Kazimierz SAKOWICZ was a Polish journalist who lived near the place of execution (called "base") and became a happenstance witness and chronicler of many massacres. On separate sheets of paper of different size, calendar sheets from 1941, July 11 to 1943, 6 November, Sakowicz left his inscriptions, placed in chronological order, which are called “K. Sakowicz Paneriai diary”. 

The diary describing mass massacres of Vilnius Jews in Paneriai and other war crimes was deciphered by the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum researcher dr. Rachile Margolis.

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