Ponary – miejsce masowych straceń w okręgu wileńskim
Journal Title: Przegląd Wschodni - Year 2016, Vol 14, Issue 53
Abstract
The term “Wilno District”, (Okręg Wileński) was utilized during the Second World War to describe parts of pre-war Poland’s Wilno Voivodeship, added to Lithuania along with the city of Wilno in October 1939. Seventy-five percent of the population of this territory was constituted of Poles, while the largest national minority were Jewish inhabitants. The Wilno District was also inhabited by groups of Russians, Belarusians and Lithuanians, as well as small pockets of Germans and Crimean Karaites. After the Third Reich’s invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, and the occupation of Wilno District and the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, the Germans occupiers created the Generalbezirk Litauen. Alongside the German administration, a Lithuanian auxiliary administration was called into being, while a Lithuanian security police (Saugumas) was created to assist the German Gestapo. A Sonderkommando made up of Lithuanians was also created in Wilno, carrying out executions in the small village of Ponary (Paneriai) – located 10km from Wilno – selected by the occupiers due to the existence of large pits from an uncompleted project dug before the war. The first extermination operations in Ponary were carried out in July 1941, against communists, Soviet prisoners and Jews, representing the very root and biological reservoir of Bolshevism and the creators of the Judeo-Bolshevik state, which the German Reich sought to erradicate. The victims were brought to Ponary, lined up at the edges of the pits and shot in the back with machine guns. The bodies were stacked in subsequent layers and buried. By the end of 1941, 21,000 people had been massacred. In 1942, there was a pause in exterminations, caused by pressure from the German occupying administration and Wehrmacht seeking Jewish labourers. The executions recommenced in 1943, coinciding with the liquidation of the Wilno Ghetto. From the fall of 1941, mass executions were also carried out on Poles arrested in preventative actions. The occupiers, claiming that „ on the entire Trans-Bug River area, Poles have made contact with underground Warsaw”, sought to counteract the Polish independence movement. The German police gathered information on Polish resistance organization from their Saugumas informants, who, knowing the Polish language, attempted to unmask Polish underground organizations. Arrests encompassed the Polish clergy, intelligentsia and youths. Captured individuals were thrown into Łukiszki (Lukiškės) Prison, and after interrogation, were shot in Ponary. In September 1941, 320 Poles from Łukiszki Prison were executed. Arrests of Poles in Wilno District and their executions in Ponary intensified in 1942, the spring and summer of 1943, and at the beginning of 1944. Among those arrested and executed, were individuals associated with producing “legalization papers”, diversion-sabotage cells, as well as publishers and couriers of the bi-monthly underground publication Niepodległość (Independence). At the beginning of 1944, a few hundred AK members from Trok were executed. During the war crimes trials in Nuremberg, it was attempted to precisely establish the number of victims of genocide in Ponary before the International Military Tribunal. The Tribunal estimated that at least 100,000 people were murdered in Ponary. The issue was also addressed by Polish courts. A number of researchers have also attempted to establish a more exact figure. The number of victims is estimated to be anywhere from 50,000–120,000.
Authors and Affiliations
Maria Wardzyńska
Keywords
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