Genocide

EXCAVATE HISTORY? WWII-ERA TUNNEL UNEARTHS STORY OF LITHUANIA'S JEWS

The diary of Kazimierz Sakowicz opens with his description of a pleasant summer day in the Ponar forest, outside the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius: “July 11: Quite nice weather, warm, white clouds, windy, some shots from the forest. Probably exercises.”

The shots were not exercises, as Sakowicz would very quickly discover. The year was 1941, and the Baltics had been overrun by the Nazi war machine that June. Now the occupiers—with eager help from Lithuanians—were emptying Vilnius of its vibrant Jewish population, which had turned the dense, medieval city into the “Jerusalem of the North.”