Jan

I am not so sure the memorial was intended to mislead as part of a Holocaust denial, or Holocaust distortion operation. It is true that anti-semitism persisted in the Soviet Union, but it is also true that the legacy of the October Revolution did a lot to render it much less dangerous (no more Black Hundreds, for instance). That Jews are not mentioned here separately can be the result of this latent anti-semitism, abut also of another fact: Starting with the first Soviet occupation of Lithuania, all those executed in Paneriai were considered Soviet citizens, whether they were originally from the Vilnius region, or not. Alongside the 70 thousand Jews are buried ca. 8 thousand Soviet POWs and 2 thousand mostly Vilnian Poles - both groups were likewise murdered by the German-controlled, but Lithuanian-manned Ypatingasis burys - as well as a small number of Lithuanians who opposed Hitler, and some members of other other ethinc groups. Singling out the Jewish victims is very much legitimate, but Paneriai/Ponary is a site of memory not only to the Holocaust, but also to the largely unacknowledged genocide that was the Generalplan Ost.