Ponary massacre

The Ponary massacre , or the Paneriai massacre (<a href="/facts/Lithuanian_language/p0bS9M0R">Lithuanian</a>: Panerių žudynės), was the <a href="/facts/Mass_murder/BoUmJhpA">mass murder</a> of up to 100,000 people, mostly Jews, Poles, and Russians, by <a href="/facts/Nazi_Germany/8kRbqRpo">German</a> <a href="/facts/Sicherheitsdienst/3fRyhRLu">SD</a> and <a href="/facts/Schutzstaffel/nMNcQEHa">SS</a> and the Lithuanian <a href="/facts/Ypatingasis_b%C5%ABrys/Sqxb8kER">Ypatingasis būrys</a> killing squads, during <a href="/facts/World_War_II/2efV5L1U">World War II</a> and <a href="/facts/The_Holocaust/vGQsAb2y">the Holocaust</a> in the <a href="/facts/Generalbezirk_Litauen/WqKJGxGE">Generalbezirk Litauen</a> of <a href="/facts/Reichskommissariat_Ostland/dukAxGgC">Reichskommissariat Ostland</a>. The murders took place between July 1941 and August 1944 near the railway station at Ponary (now <a href="/facts/Paneriai/zGdLktcQ">Paneriai</a>), a suburb of today's <a href="/facts/Vilnius/ecy21qeQ">Vilnius</a>, Lithuania. 70,000 Jews were murdered at Ponary, along with up to 2,000 Poles, 8,000 Soviet POWs, most of them from nearby Vilnius, and its newly formed <a href="/facts/Vilna_Ghetto/RW1se2D3">Vilna Ghetto</a>. 
Lithuania became one of the first locations outside <a href="/facts/Occupied_Poland/qIIryAJw">occupied Poland</a> in World War II where the Nazis mass-murdered Jews as part of the <a href="/facts/Final_Solution/9epKHlVr">Final Solution</a>. According to <a href="/facts/Timothy_Snyder/GSMtDL3A">Timothy Snyder</a>, out of 70,000 Jews living in Vilna, only about 7,000 survived the war. The number of dwellers, estimated by Steven P. Sedlis, as of June 1941 was 80,000 Jews, or one-half of the city's population. More than two-thirds of them, or at least 50,000 Jews, had been killed before the end of 1941.

Ponary massacre open-in-new

Ponary massacre