Places of the Holocaust in Lithuania

Much historical material has been published on the topic of the Holocaust in Lithuania. The general researched history of the Holocaust in Lithuania includes the activity of the German Security Police and SD operational and special squads, Lithuanians’ collaboration with the Nazis, and the history of the ghettos, but less attention is paid to the Holocaust in the periphery. Until now, there hasn't been a publication which contains both information about the mass murders of Jews and the geographical locations of those mass murders. Several antecedents are noteworthy, including the two-volume “Mass Murder in Lithuania, 1941-1944: A Collection of Documents” published in 1963 and 1973, and Josif Levinson's book “The Book of Sorrow,” published in 1997, which contains a collection of photographs of about 190 sites and a list of Lithuanian cities and towns where Jews lived as well as information about where they were murdered. In 2010 the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum and the Austrian Verein Gedenkdienst initiated the project “Holocaust Atlas of Lithuania”, aimed at education, spreading of information, and tourism. The atlas consists of structured and concentrated information on all the mass murder sites in Lithuania. It is the first publication with such comprehensive information on each murder site. Until now, similar information was dispersed throughout publications or still unpublished and available only in archives. This work is an important contribution towards revealing the development of the Holocaust in Lithuania and will contribute to the objective elucidation and assessment of these events and provide a principled understanding of what took place. This is an important educational work by us, the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum workers.