This is a photograph of the Lithuanian president, Algirdas Brazauskas, taken during his visit to Israel in 1995. Brazauskas, wearing a navy suit and red tie, is looking at the name “Vilna” engraved on the wall in Yad Vashem’s Valley of the Communities. The wall is made of Jerusalem stone and resembles the walls of the Kotel (Western Wall). The names “Vilna” and “Vilnius” are written in English and next to them, in Hebrew, are the words meaning “Jerusalem of Lithuania” – the name given to Vilna due to its rich and vibrant Jewish life before the Holocaust. During the Nazi occupation of Lithuania, which began in 1941, at least 90% of the city’s Jews were killed. This was the highest casualty rate of any country during the Holocaust.
The Lithuania president, like many other heads of state, visited Yad Vashem, Israel’s national memorial to the Holocaust. During his visit, Brazauskas said:
"I have come to apologize for the bestial acts committed in my country. As president of Lithuania I feel obligated to state: the fact that Lithuanians participated in the murder, deportation, arrest and torture of Jews during the Second World War generates a deep shame and imposes a difficult burden. Words of truth and repentance are needed."
Yad Vashem’s Valley of the Communities is an enormous monument that commemorates over 5,000 Jewish communities that existed for hundreds of years and were destroyed during the Holocaust.
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The Jews of Vilna, Lithuania – Jews were officially granted approval to live in Vilna, the capital of Lithuania in 1593. By the mid-seventeenth century, Jews made up a quarter of the city’s population. However, after the city was occupied in 1655 by Russia, the Jewish population declined. Jewish life continued despite pogroms and blood libels, and at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the city began to transform into a centre for Torah studies, culminating in the eighteenth century with the Gaon of Vilna who founded the Mitnagdim movement against the Hassidic movement. By the nineteenth century, the city was also home to Hassidic communities, Mitnagdim communities, and members of the Haskalah (secular enlightment movement), and a variety of schools, yeshivahs, and cultural and political societies were formed. Vilna was also a hub for the written word, with some of the first Hebrew journals printed in its printing presses. Vilna was so vibrant with Jewish life that it was nicknamed the “Jerusalem of Lithuania.” In the late nineteenth century, a large number of Jews emigrated from Vilna to the United States and other countries. In the twentieth century more Jews left for Palestine as a result of the city’s very active Zionist movement. When the Nazis invaded Vilna in June 1941, the Jewish population was about 60,000. In the first two months approximately 20,000 Jews were killed. The Vilna Ghetto was established in August 1941. A strong resistance movement in the ghetto carried out a number of successful operations against the Nazi rule. Most of the Jews of Vilna were shot to death in the forest of Ponar or deported to the camps, but some survived by escaping to the forests and joining the partisans. After World War II about 16,000 Jews lived in Vilna, but under Soviet rule there was no organised community in the city. Lithuania became independent in 1990, and it is estimated that the majority of the approximately 2000-strong Lithuanian Jewish community live in Vilna. The community has two active Jewish schools.
Valley of the Communities in Yad Vashem – The Valley of the Communities commemorates over 5,000 communities that were destroyed in the Holocaust. The memorial covers 2.5 acres of land and consists of large, stone walls with the names of communities engraved on them. The purpose of the monument is inscribed at the entrance: “This memorial commemorates the Jewish communities destroyed by Nazi Germany and its collaborators, and the few which suffered but survived in the shadow of the Holocaust. For more than one thousand years, Jews lived in Europe, organizing communities to preserve their distinct identity. In periods of relative tranquility, Jewish culture flourished, but in periods of unrest, Jews were forced to flee. Wherever they settled, they endowed the people amongst whom they lived with their talents. Here their stories will be told.”
