Paneriai Memorial Museum, Vilnius, Lithuania

Between July 1941, and August 1944, approximately 100,000 people of whom over half were Jewish were murdered at this site by the Nazis and a hotpotch of willing Lithuanians from such sinister organisations as the Ypatingasis Būrys (Vilnius Special Squad). A traumatic but necessary part of any Jewish-related visit to Lithuania, find several monuments and the remains of the pits where the victims were burned.

The typical Soviet-era museum inside a small building on the murder site features exhibits explained in a baffling and irregular mix of languages including everything from stomach-churning photography to the clothing worn by a man whose job it was to sift the remains of the charred bodies for gold. Not recommended for children.

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Museums in Lithuania

User Reviews

Jean-baptiste Guillemot (5 years ago)
Wonderful place, it had a peace feeling being quite apart and in a forest. Free to enter, has some nice monuments.

Emily Oxford (6 years ago)
Sad and solemn place. Visit because we need to keep remembering the atrocities that have happened so we don’t let it happen again.

Eytan Keydar (6 years ago)
This is a hideous sight which is a burial ground for 100,000 souls, 70,000 of which are Jews. This is 1% of all the Jews murdered during the dark holocaust age. Yet, this pastoral looking wood is hidden so well, it took me an extra 40 minute of driving arround, using Maps and Waze apps, to find it. It is a 'must visit', if you have a Jewish soul.

Stas Krupenia (6 years ago)
Surely one of the darkest moments of human history. A tragic area with a tragic history. A sorrowful day that is a must see visit for everyone in the area. The memorial layout is rather well presented with each memorial well explained. There is no overall explanation of the layout available, though the small museum has some maps. The memorial museum itself is very well presented, with appropriate focus on the individuals and their stories as opposed to just the statistics.

David Neumeyer (7 years ago)
Panerai was the wooded execution and pit-burial site of 100,000 Lithuanians, 70,000 of them Jews, plus Poles and Russians, by the SS Sonderkommando from 1941 to 1944. The grassed-over pits are preserved in a park-like setting with a small and moving museum about those who died and those who executed them.

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Photo from Flickr, copyright Infomastern

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Paneriai Memorial Museum

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