Ponar – an atrocity so monstrous it defied belief Joseph A. Melamed

We are all familiar with the Lithuanians’ continuous efforts to disassociate themselves from the approximate 220 mass graves that hold the bodies of the hundreds of thousands of Jews murdered by Lithuanian battalions and partisans during the course of the war. So effective was this killing machine that the Germans transported Jews from countries in Western and Central Europe to Lithuania where they met the same horrendous fate as their local counterparts. The genocide that took place at Ponar, however, is one event for which the Lithuanians cannot deny direct responsibility as they have done in many other instances. Indeed it stands apart from the other atrocities by sheer virtue of the numbers of victims that were killed there. Over a period of three years a Lithuanian death squad known as the “Ypatingas Burys” numbering around 200 men, operating under directives from the Germans, murdered approximately 100,000 Jewish men, women and children, the largest number of victims to be murdered at a single killing site throughout Lithuania.

Located ten Kilometers south of Vilna, Ponar is a greenbelt area that originally served as a tourism and holiday resort prior to the outbreak of the war. Following their occupation of Lithuania in June 1940, the Soviets built a fuel depot in the wooded area near the rail track to store large quantities of aircraft fuel and amongst other things, excavated a number of large craters designed to house fuel tanks for safe storage. Once the Soviets had gone, the Lithuanians decided that these would be an ideal site for the act of genocide they wished to instigate against the Jews. Mass murders of Jews began with the German invasion even before the arrival of the SS’ infamous Einsatzgruppen. Upon their arrival, the latter designated Ponar as a suitable site for the implementation of the “Final Solution” in Lithuania.

As mentioned above, the notorious Lithuanian death squad known as the “Ypatingas Burys” carried out most of the atrocities at Ponar. Having gained a reputation for their sadism, they were ideally suited to the gruesome task, which they set about performing with alacrity. At first they employed somewhat crude methods to carry out the mass murders but once SS Obersturmfuhrer Shaushitz assumed command, he introduced new techniques designed to kill more people as efficiently as possible.

Very few of the German Einszatzgruppen troops actually took part in the mass murders themselves since there was never any shortage of Lithuanians eager to kill Jews whenever the opportunity presented itself. The Germans attended to all the administrative tasks entailed in organizing the killings and provided and operated the transport infrastructure that brought groups of Jews to be killed at the site on a daily basis. Around 200 people on average were murdered every day. The victims were usually ferried to the site in groups on covered trucks and occasionally by train. Although they usually numbered no more than several hundred at a time, the groups of victims to be murdered sometimes ran into several thousand, depending on the schedule planned jointly by the Germans and their local Lithuanian henchmen.

The first that the outside world knew of the horrifying atrocity at Ponar was when several Jews who managed to escape from the death pit after pretending to be dead by lying still among the masses of corpses covered in slaked lime, made their way back to the nearby ghetto at Vilna and told their stories. But a more extensive account of events at Ponar was produced after the liberation of Vilna by the Soviets with the discovery of a “diary” written by a Polish journalist named Kazimierz Sakowicz who lived near the killing site. Himself an Anti-Semite, Sakowitz befriended several of the killers and kept a record of what he saw (although the reason for this remains unclear). He witnessed the atrocities first hand and wrote down his testimony daily on scraps of paper, notebooks and old calendars all of which he stuffed into lemonade bottles and buried in the earth until he was finally murdered along with everybody else. Sakowitz began his records on July 11, 1941 and kept a continuous account of the atrocities for 835 days or approximately two and half years until November 1943, eight months to the end of the mass murders at Ponar.

In one of his accounts Sakowicz recalls the five different methods employed by the Lithuanians when murdering the Jews. These were as follows:

A. The Jews were taken to another part of the site and ordered to lie on the ground face down. The Lithuanians then led them, a group at a time, to the edge of the killing pit where they beat and abused them. After they had finished they laid a wooden plank across the pit and ordered the victims to undress and walk across the plank. As each victim made his way across the plank the Lithuanians opened fire on him from behind causing him to fall into the pit.

B. The planks were subsequently discarded and instead the victims were forced to step down directly into the pit where they were then shot.

C. Same as above but instead of firing on the victims, the Lithuanian tossed a number of hand grenades into the pit.

D. When using the second method, the Lithuanians forced the victims to step down into the pit fully clothed. As soon as they had undressed, they opened fire on them with machine guns. All the while, the other Jews sat in groups on the side of the road, unaware that they were next in line to be killed.

E. At a later stage, once the murderers were more experienced the Lithuanians forced the victims to strip while they were still on the vehicles that brought them to the site. Thus, they were already naked when they were forced into the pit and then shot.

Following are excerpts from Sakowicz’ diary (free translation from Polish):

“As of July 14, 1941, the Lithuanians strip the Jews of their clothing and offer it for sale at nearby markets. Trade in clothing is booming. Wagons full to the brim with sacks of clothing taken from the victims arrive at the commercial center near Grodzinska where they are offered for sale…..

“The Lithuanian murderers roam the streets carrying satchels laden with watches and other valuables that they try to sell. They are especially keen to trade their wares for alcohol….

“ The shooting resumed on August 23, 1941. They murdered between two hundred and fifty to three hundred people daily for a period of seventeen days. ……

“For the Germans, three hundred dead Jews are three hundred enemies of civilization whilst for the Lithuanians, three hundred dead Jews means three pairs of shoes and other items of clothing…….

“August 11. A private car arrived at one of the pits and two Lithuanian women and one Lithuanian man got out. All three were elegantly dressed and in buoyant spirits. They wanted to enjoy themselves and had come to watch the murders. When the shooting was finally over they got back in the car and drove off. They did not look upset to me……

“On Tuesday, the second of September it was both windy and raining. On the road to the site I could see a long column of people that stretched almost two kilometers back to the church. The guards forced everyone to run all the way to the site, a journey that took around 15 minutes. Jankowski claimed there were around 4,000 people in all. Others said there were more than that. Most of the people in the column were women with babies. When they reached the path that led to the wooded area, they realized what awaited them and began shouting, “help.” A group of 80 Lithuanian murderers opened fire on them while another 100 stood watch to prevent anyone escaping. They were all drunk. Jankowski said that to make sure they had the guts to kill them, the murderers abused their victims first. They beat the men and women and then shot the men separately. They forced the women to strip down to their underwear. The victims believed they were being moved to a ghetto and had therefore brought all their personal property with them. Once they were dead, the fur coats and valuables began to pile up. The Lithuanians made each group stand on top of the row of corpses of the people that had been shot before them. People were literally trampling on the dead. Many of those who lay in the pit with gunshot wounds were still alive. One woman managed to escape to Dolna with only an injury to her hand. She saw her children being murdered in one pit and her husband in another…..

“The day after the mass murder, the Lithuanians organized a large sale of women’s clothing. The next day, they found an infant playing in the sand next to one of the pits so they threw him in the pit and shot him. Krikowa said that during the mass killing the Lithuanians, on seeing a mother breast feeding her baby wrenched him from her arms and murdered him on the spot. On September 3, a Jewish woman who was attempting to escape to Vilna knocked on the door of the Jankowski home. A Lithuanian passing by saw her enter the house and barged in after her. Collaring her on the balcony, he asked if she was a Jew and when she said she was, he beat her and dragged her into the bushes outside where he murdered her……..

“Saturday, October 25 was a nightmare. At around eight thirty in the morning I noticed a long procession of Jews lining the road near the church. When I came nearer, I could see they were all women. Some of them were elderly and others were young with children on their arms or in pushchairs. Some of them had dozed off. It was a fine sunny morning that day. Later, we suddenly heard the sound of gunshots coming from the direction of the nearby forest. They were shooting the women and children that had been brought by truck from Lukiskis Prison. Apparently there were many injured. Some of them tried to escape and the shooting went on throughout the night……

“One young Jewish woman, around nineteen or twenty years old and wearing a gray overcoat with fur collar, carried a three year old boy. She threw herself on the ground in front of a junior officer and pleading for her life, she began kissing his mud-soiled boots. The officer responded by kicking her in the jaw causing her skin to burst and her blood to mingle with the mud. A second soldier standing nearby joined in and beat her with his rifle as she lay on the side of the entrance to the killing site.

“Then he grabbed hold of the boy and tossed him over the fence like a strip of timber. The soldier then aimed his rifle through the fence at the boy and was about to shoot him. On seeing this, the mother clambered to her feet and raced towards the nearby entrance in a desperate attempt to reach her son on the other side of the fence and shield him from the soldier’s bullets. The shooting went on until five in the afternoon. Another Jewish woman, on hearing the sound of the shots coming from the nearby forest broke out of the line and tried to run but the Lithuanians caught her and beat her to death on the spot……

“November 19. They brought 200 women and children. It was bitterly cold. The soldiers had run out of bullets so instead, they took the children from their mothers and murdered them with their rifle buts. Even when they had ammunition they didn’t always use it. On some occasions they just threw children alive into the pit……….

“November 21. Another group of women and children plus a few men was brought to the site. The shooting went on incessantly. At the end of the day, an armed Lithuanian came out of the site with a cart full of women’s clothing and footwear, which he began selling to bystanders. The last coat was sold together with a pair of winter shoes for 120 rubles. When one of the peasants asked if there were any clothes left for his wife he replied, “hang on, I’ll pick out a Jewess who’s the same size as her.” The couple panicked and ran off. The Lithuanian was annoyed when he came back and found the peasant had not waited for him after he had gone to the trouble to find a Jewish woman who was the same size as his wife. So after he killed the woman he kept the coat for himself……

“The first Saturday in December was All Saints Day. But that didn’t stop the Lithuanians, themselves devout Catholics, from murdering four truckloads of Jews. On this occasion, they all wore uniforms for a change…..

“July 30, 1942. At nine in the morning, the Lithuanians brought to the site a group of 150 elderly Jews from the ghetto. They were too weak to work and were herded into the site from the entrance on the main road. Many of them were buried alive writhing in agony from their severe agencies…….

“Monday April, 1943. They ordered the remaining group standing on the edge of the pit to undress. The sound of crying and wailing chilled the air. People fell to their feet and begged for mercy, but the soldiers just kicked them and shot them on the spot. The others were beaten and ordered to undress. When they had done so, the Lithuanians shoved them into the pit below and opened fire with their rifles and machine guns. One man who had already taken his clothes off was ordered to haul an unconscious woman into the pit. When he had done so he was shot in the head and fell backwards into the pit. His brains were spattered everywhere. The Lithuanians kept on shooting until the rest of the group was dead. When they finished some of the soldiers went over to the train parked nearby to bring another group of victims.

“The massacre went on and on. The Lithuanians gathered all the victims’ clothes in one big heap. Suddenly one of the soldiers pulled out a small child who had been hiding in the heap. He threw him in the pit and on rifling through the mountain of clothes again, he found several more children. They too were thrown in the pit and another soldier who was standing at the edge shot them all.

“Later, another group of men and women were brought to the pit and murdered. The Lithuanians then ordered four Jewish men to gather the clothes into a heap. As they were moving the clothes they discovered a baby underneath. One of the Lithuanians ordered one of the men to throw the baby back into the pit but instead he grabbed the baby and ran off into the nearby woods. Several Lithuanians gave chase and opened fire but the Jew got away.

“As this was going on, yet another group was being herded into the pit where they met the same fate as the others. One woman spat in the face of one of the German officers and a Lithuanian soldier standing nearby beat her with his rifle butt. Another man tried to resist but to no avail. They shot him and he fell dead in the pit.

“The killing began at six in the morning and went on, group by group until eleven at night. 49 carriage loads of Jews, approximately 2,500 in all, were brought to the site that day. Only 50 managed to escape.”