Vilna remembered and Vilna imagined : the struggle of the Vilna Jewish community to recreate its past

Abstract

Vilna, Lithuania was the heart and soul of the Jewish Diaspora for much of the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth century. It was the religious, cultural and political cauldron that stirred the pot of the great contributions made to the world by this dynamic community of people. When the Germans entered Lithuanian territory in 1941 it signaled the beginning of the end of this wonderful period of Jewish European history. When the war began, there were 250,000 Jews in the country but by the time of the liberation by the Soviet troops, ninety-five percent of them had been killed by their murderous occupiers and the Nazis' willing Lithuanian collaborators. The Jews of Vilna at the beginning of the war were forced into two ghettos that within a brief period of time became one as the attrition of the population took place. The killing fields of Ponar were in constant use as Jews were rounded up and send to their deaths. Within the ghetto, the Nazi appointed Jewish leadership, called the Judenrat, tried to placate the enemy while the many Jewish political and social organizations combined to create a resistance movement. The fact that so many disparate groups were able to coalesce to form this resistance was unique in eastern European Jewish ghettos. Their leadership was correctly convinced that the Germans were going to kill them all, regardless of their level of cooperation or their political affiliation. The final liquidation of the Vilna ghetto took place on September 23 and 24, 1943. Over time, the Jewish remnant there as well as those who struggled back from the labor and death campus tried to re-establish a Jewish presence in the city. After Lithuania regained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, this group began the task of preserving the heritage which was virtually destroyed under the Nazis and then suppressed by the Soviets. As this slow process evolves, time will show whether the proud and deep heritage found there will be instrumental in the eventual success of failure of this endeavor.