Lithuanian Jewish community remembered in country’s annual March of the Living

Hundreds of students, ambassadors, and Lithuanian officials joined the annual March of the Living in Lithuania commemorating the destruction of the country’s Jewish community in the Holocaust, with a survivor urging participants to “help the State of Israel”. 

The event last Friday began with a ceremony at the site of the former Vilnius Ghetto. Before the Holocaust, Lithuania was home to approximately 200,000 Jews, with 70,000 living in the capital city of Vilnius (previously known as Vilna), where the main ghetto was later established.

In the summer and autumn of 1941, the Nazis and their local collaborators nearly obliterated this vibrant community in what has become known as the “Holocaust by Bullets,” when Jews across eastern Europe were executed and buried in mass graves.

More than 200 Jewish communities in Lithuania alone were destroyed.

Among those remembering was Holocaust survivor Arnold Cleves, who recounted how his family was captured in 1941 by Lithuanian soldiers and sent to the Ninth Fort.

His mother convinced an officer that her husband had served in the Lithuanian army during World War I, and the family was temporarily released. They were later deported to a labour camp and then to Birkenau.

Cleves endured the camp, a death march, and was ultimately liberated from Dachau by American forces, together with the group later known as the 131 Lithuanian Boys.

He said: “To march as a Jew, as a free man, with my children and grandchildren, is the greatest victory for me. The Jews contributed so much to Lithuanian culture. We were very patriotic Lithuanians, but unfortunately, we were not treated well.”

Cleves urged students taking part in the march not to repeat history’s mistakes. telling them to “help the State of Israel.”

Those taking part in the event then continued with a solemn march to the mass graves of Ponary, on the outskirts of Vilnius, which became one of the most infamous symbols of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. There, 70,000 Jews were murdered and buried in mass graves.

Another notorious site was the Ninth Fort near Kovno (now Kaunas), originally built in the 19th century. Between 1941 and 1944, over 50,000 Jews — mostly from Kovno — were executed there by Nazis and Lithuanian collaborators.

Michel Gourary, European director of the March of the Living, added: “While many Lithuanians collaborated and participated in the crimes against the Jews, there were also Lithuanians who chose not to remain bystanders but to act with courage. They risked everything to save Jews during the Shoah, and I call upon you today to follow their example. Choose the path of civic courage. Learn from the tragedies of the past to build a better future.”

Since its inception in 1988, the International March of the Living  organises commemorative marches and educational activities across Europe — in Poland, Germany, Austria, Hungary, France, Latvia, Lithuania, Greece, and Romania. Nearly four decades on, more than 350,000 participants, most of them students, have walked these paths of memory alongside Holocaust survivors.