Despite mortal danger, the Vilnius Ghetto saw a resistance movement sprout among its 40,000 prisoners. However, it was eventually suppressed and the Jewish ghetto was liquidated – almost everyone perished.
The history of the Vilnius ghetto is somewhat different from its counterparts in Kaunas in Šiauliai, according to Arūnas Bubnys, director of the state-funded Lithuanian Genocide and Resistance Research Centre (LGGRTC).
The Vilnius Ghetto was established a while later, in September 1941, while the Kaunas and Šiauliai ghettos were set up in mid-August 1941 and continued to operate until the end of the Nazi occupation in July 1944. The Vilnius ghetto, however, was liquidated on September 23-24, 1943.
Further reading
It was done earlier because "the local administration in Vilnius was maybe unable to control such a large mass of people", said Bubnys in an interview with LRT. "Vilnius was home to the largest Jewish community, with 58,000 Jews living there before the outbreak of war," he added.
In September 1941, the large and small ghettos were set up in the Old Town of Vilnius, with a total of about 40,000 people imprisoned there.
According to Bubnys, the worst period of the ghetto's existence was the period from July to December 1941, when mass murder campaigns were carried out. They began even before the ghetto was established when Jews were rounded up in the streets and taken to Lukiškės prison, from where they were later transported to Paneriai to be executed.
"According to official data, in the second half of 1941 about 20,000 Jews were killed, while some historians claim between 32,000 and 33,000 Jews were murdered at that time," said Bubnys.
Further reading
According to the historian, the small ghetto, which mainly housed the elderly, sick and people with disabilities, was liquidated during several massacres in late October 1941.
According to official data, the remaining large ghetto was inhabited by about 13,000 people, but the reality was different – at that time, around 20,000 Jews could have lived in the ghetto area, said Bubnys.
After the mass killings were over, a period of stabilisation began when the administrative structure of the ghetto was established and cultural life took place. Although criticised by some, the ghetto housed a school and a theatre. According to Bubnys, this period lasted until March 1943.
The conditions in the ghetto were terrible – initially, almost 40,000 Jews were imprisoned there, with about one and a half square metres of living space per person.
"People did not fit in the rooms, they slept wherever they could – in kitchens, attics, and staircases. The Nazis dealt with this problem in their own way – through mass murder campaigns. That way, the number of ghetto prisoners was halved," Bubnys said.
During the Holocaust, taking up work was seen by Jews as the only way to stay alive.
"Various workshops were set up in the ghetto, and many men and women of working age were taken outside the ghetto into the city to work in various factories and enterprises. The work was particularly important for the ghetto management and the Jewish Council, which tried to employ as many Jews as possible in various enterprises to save their lives," said Bubnys.
Resistance
Was it possible to resist the Nazis while living in the ghetto? According to Bubnys, the first weeks and months of the occupation were a great shock.
"The Jews themselves did not expect that this could happen. People were living a normal life, and suddenly they were rounded up, taken to Paneriai and shot,” said Bubnys. “It was a huge shock and it took time for people to somehow get out of that state of fear and panic.”
There were also no weapons, which made it extremely difficult to organise any kind of resistance movement. However, in January 1942, a resistance organisation was set up in the ghetto – an underground movement called the United Partisan Organisation.
According to Bubnys, the underground began to recruit members and two battalions numbering around 300 people were set up in 1943. Their main task was to obtain weapons.
"Jews were working in various warehouses and some managed to steal weapons and bring them into the ghetto. It was very risky and difficult because they were checked at the gates and even food was forbidden," said Bubnys.
They managed to bring weapons, as well as several machine guns. Initially, the strategy was to organise an uprising, but they then decided to send members of the resistance to link up with Soviet partisans who were operating in the Rūdnininkai Forest, just south of Vilnius.
"This movement was quite massive. For example, at the end of 1943, there were about 600 Soviet partisans in the Rūdininkai Forest, 500 of whom were Jews," Bubnys said.
Shootout in the ghetto
Despite the majority of resistance members joining the Soviet partisans, there was one shoot-out in the ghetto itself.
"In early September, ghetto prisoners were rounded up en masse and transported to labour camps in Estonia. But a barricade was erected in a street and a shootout took place, but it was small-scale and the Nazis quickly suppressed the Jewish resistance, blowing up many houses where many of them were hiding in the basements," said Bubnys.
If a full uprising had taken place in the ghetto, it would have been suppressed immediately, just like the armed uprising at the Warsaw Ghetto, according to Bubnys.
"The tactic of moving from the ghetto uprising to the partisan movement was the right one. In this way, many of the Jews who had escaped from the ghetto remained alive and lived to see the end of the German occupation," said Bubnys.
The liquidation of the ghetto began in the first days of September 1943, when most of the prisoners were transported to labour camps in Estonia and Latvia. Those unable to work were taken to Auschwitz, Bubnys said.
Meanwhile, others were shot in the ghetto or taken to Paneriai and murdered. Several thousand were left alive to work in Vilnius.
"There were also several labour camps, the biggest one being in a fur factory," said Bubnys.
Of the 58,000 Jews who lived before the outbreak of the war, only between 2,000 and 3,000 survived.
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