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.
References:The Pilgrimage Church of Wies (Wieskirche) is an oval rococo church, designed in the late 1740s by Dominikus Zimmermann. It is located in the foothills of the Alps in the municipality of Steingaden.
The sanctuary of Wies is a pilgrimage church extraordinarily well-preserved in the beautiful setting of an Alpine valley, and is a perfect masterpiece of Rococo art and creative genius, as well as an exceptional testimony to a civilization that has disappeared.
The hamlet of Wies, in 1738, is said to have been the setting of a miracle in which tears were seen on a simple wooden figure of Christ mounted on a column that was no longer venerated by the Premonstratensian monks of the Abbey. A wooden chapel constructed in the fields housed the miraculous statue for some time. However, pilgrims from Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and even Italy became so numerous that the Abbot of the Premonstratensians of Steingaden decided to construct a splendid sanctuary.