Wednesday, 16 p.m. The March of the Living procession will be held for the tenth time at the Paneriai Memorial, which will honor the memory of the victims of the Holocaust.
The March of the Living is a procession from the Paneriai railway of the station to the Paneriau Memorial - a part of the road that the prisoners of the Vilnius ghetto used to walk before the massacre in the Paneriau Forest. The March of the Living means to the Lithuanian Jewish community that "we - the Jews are alive, we - the children of the victims do not give in to hatred, violence and cruelty, that the Nazis and their henchmen failed to kill all the Jews". Vilnius poet Hiršas Gliks, a prisoner of the Vilnius ghetto, wrote a song expressing the feelings of those who walked the Paneriai road: "Never say that you are walking your last road". The song is now called the anthem of the Vilnius ghetto.
Participating in the sad forest of Paneriai, where the ground still shakes under our feet and every time our eyes are uncontrollably wet with tears, we remember the terrible tragedy that happened here, when thousands were killed because they were born Jewish, they shot babies, children, young people and the elderly without mercy. Before the Second World War, 220 thousand people lived in Lithuania. Jews. More than 90 percent were killed during the Nazi occupation. Seven decades later, today it is already recognized that the pain of Holocaust survivors and their relatives is a tragedy for the whole of Lithuania.
Would our Lithuanian towns be so empty today if the Jews of Lithuanian shtetls were alive? Are they still whispered about and remembered? Maybe in the towns there will be marches of the living in the name of the memory of those who, big and small, were killed just because their nationality was not suitable.
The ceremony of the march of the living will end with the anthem of the Vilnius ghetto, which will be performed by the singer of the ensemble Fajerlach, Michailas Jablonskis, with the support of Boris Kirzneris.
