The Untold Stories. The Murder Sites of the Jews in the Occupied Territories of the Former USSR

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Community:

Alytus

Murder Sites:

The Prison

The Vidzgiris Forest

Commemoration:

Commemoration of Jewish Victims

The mass graves in the Vidzgiris Forest, which remained abandoned at the end of World War II, were subsequently vandalized and looted. In response to a request by Jewish survivors from Alytus, in 1959 the authorities erected a monument bearing the following inscription in Lithuanian and Russian: “Here lie Soviet citizens and prisoners of war, victims of the Hitler murderers”.
In 1993, a large metallic monument shaped like a broken Star of David was unveiled in the Vidzgiris Forest. A pyramid structure atop a round black base was placed above the nine pits that held the murder victims. A plaque was placed on the road leading to the site, with the following inscription in Yiddish and Lithuanian: “Here, at this site, the Nazis and their local collaborators murdered tens of thousands of Jews – children, women, men and the elderly – the majority from foreign countries. May they rest in peace”.

Video

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Commemorative visit to the Alytus murder site, 1991.
(Interview in Russian)
Jewish Cemeteries and Monuments of Lithuania
(USSR, 1991)
Producer: Boris Kaplan
Yad Vashem, The Visual Center V685

Related Resources

Pages of Testimony