Ponary massacre

Ponary massacre
Ponary execution pit in which victims were shot, July 1941, ramp leading down from the ground level visible between tree trunks. Below, Jews assembled in columns and guarded by the shooters
Also known as	Polish: zbrodnia w Ponarach
Location	Paneriai (Ponary), Vilnius (Wilno), German-occupied Poland, present-day Lithuania
Date	July 1941 - August 1944
Incident type	Shootings by automatic and semi-automatic weapons
Perpetrators	SS Einsatzgruppe Lithuanian Nazi collaborators
Ghetto	Vilnius Ghetto
Victims	~100,000 in total (Polish Jews: 70,000. Polish intelligentsia: 20,000. Soviet POWs: 8,000)
Documentation	Nuremberg Trials

The Ponary massacre (Polish: zbrodnia w Ponarach) was the mass murder of up to 100,000 people by German SD, SS and Lithuanian Nazi collaborators, such as the Ypatingasis būrys units, during World War II and the Holocaust in Reichskommissariat Ostland. The executions took place between July 1941 and August 1944 near the railway station of Ponary, now known as Paneriai, a suburb of what is today Vilnius, Lithuania. Some 70,000 Jews were murdered in Ponary, along with between 2,000 and 20,000 Poles and 8,000 Russian POWs, many from nearby Vilnius. Lithuania and the Baltic States became the first place outside occupied Poland where the Nazis would mass execute Jews as part of the Final Solution. Out of 70,000 Jews living in Vilnius, only 7,000 (10%) survived the war.

Following the Żeligowski's Mutiny, in accordance with international agreements ratified in 1923 by the League of Nations, the town of Ponary became part of the Wilno Voivodship (Kresy region) of the Second Polish Republic. The predominant languages in the area were Polish and Yiddish. After the Nazi-Soviet Invasion of Poland in September 1939, the region was taken over by the Soviets and after about a month transferred to Lithuania according to the Soviet–Lithuanian Mutual Assistance Treaty.