Holocaust Studies, 4

~ Clarissa

Where did the Holocaust begin? We all know where it originated – Berlin, obviously, but what geographic area saw the first mass annihilation of all of its sizeable Jewish population within a very short period of time?

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Published by Clarissa

7 thoughts on “Holocaust Studies, 4”

    1. And. . . We have a winner! Which is, admittedly, a weird word to use in this context. Yes, it was Lithuania where there were no Jewish pogroms at all before the Nazis came but there was a great need to wash off the stain of recent collaboration with the Soviets. All of Lithuanian Jews were dead within just a few months. Then it was time for Latvian Jews to die. After that, came the mass murder of Jews in Eastern Ukraine.

      Poland actually held out and resisted being goaded into mass slaughter of Jews for a longer time, in spite of the obvious pre-war antisemitism.

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      1. “All of Lithuanian Jews were dead within just a few months”

        All? As of the late 1990s I was told that it was possible to hear Yiddish on the streets of Vilnius (from someone who was there – I was only in Lithuania once, mainly in Kaunas the most mono-ethnic Lithuanian city). I can’t imagine who else would be speaking Yiddish if not Jews, maybe these were later arrivals. There was an attempt or two to jumpstart Yiddish in Poland in the early 1990s but I don’t think it got very far.

        I’ve also read that Vilnius (historically more a Polish than Lithuanian city) was a major nothern center for both Jews and Muslims (mostly Polish Tatars).

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        1. About 95% of Jews in Lithuania were exterminated during WWII. But, not all in a few months. There were still about 45,000 left alive by 1942. Most of these people were dead by the end of 1944.

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