Today was the warmest day of the week and it was sunny, so we jumped on a train for a quick 10 minute ride to the little town of Paneriai (PAN-er-ay). This day was supposed to happen the day after we saw the Jewish Museum so we could build the story of what happened to the Jews, but we will have to do it out of order.
Paneriai was the sight chosen for the massacre of the Jews during WWII. There were 2 ghettos in Vilnius. The large ghetto was for the workers who were still useful to the Lithuanians. The small ghetto is where you were taken if you were old, sick or useless in any way. Jews were regularly gathered from the small ghetto, put on a train and then marched to pits dug out in Paneriai. There they were lined up and shot, and then they would fall into the pit, followed by the next group and the next until the train was empty, and then a layer of dirt would go over the dead. When one pit was full, they just moved onto the next. I'm sure it was even Jews who were forced to dig the pits. Before the war, there were 250,000 Jews in Lithuania. By the end of the war, only about 4,000. Over 70,000 were killed at Paneriai. Poles, Africans and I'm sure others were also shot and killed there.
Today we followed that route. We took the train, then walked down the road from the station to memorials marking filled pits and to sites of open pits. It was sobering and sacred there.
Train tracks in Paneriai.
Road away from the town to the pits.
Paneriai Memoral entrance
Some of the memorials:
This was a memorial specifically for the Polish who died here.
The pits that still remain:
It was actually quite beautiful there with this incredible blue sky that we enjoyed all day.
My puddle shot - it was next to our bench where we ate our picnic lunch.
There were 3 men and a woman walking around the memorial, all dressed in suits and looking very formal and official. When we were walking by them, one of the men stopped and introduced himself to us and told us he was from Poland. We introduced ourselves as well, stating we were from the United States. We talked for a minute and as they were leaving, he handed us his business card. He wasn't just a guy from Poland. He was the Polish Ambassador to Vilnius!
We bought our tickets for a round trip, but we were done much earlier that our return ticket time. We thought we could maybe get an earlier train, but we were too unsure of which train and so we missed the earlier one we could have taken. That meant we had about an hour to kill before the next train, so we decided to walk around the little town. It basically consisted of the train station, a medium sized grocery story and some type of warehouse area. There was an eclectic assortment of houses from old to new, and old apartment style buildings and then about 5 communist-style apartment buildings. It does make a person wonder who would live in a town like that. But I've wondered that about some of the small towns when we've driven through Montana.
Almost everyone has a greenhouse in their backyard. During the Russian occupation, they all learned to garden because there was often a shortage of food. And the older population still does it a lot.
A great backyard shot.
A cool old apartment building,
and several of these horrible communist ones.
We got a great graffiti shot with Jacob yesterday, so it was Tyson's turn today.
Sarah was having fun getting track shots while we were waiting for our train, and I had fun getting this great shot of her.
The long 10 minute ride home.
I tried to get a few shots from the train.
And I love this huge statue guy who greets us as we pull into the station.
Across the street from the Vilnius train station is a McDonalds. We enjoyed fries and icey Cokes while we waited for a driver to come get us and drive us out to set. I wish I could say more about being there to watch Adam, but I what I can say is that Sarah and I got to be in the room for most of what was shot today. It is so fun to watch everything live and see how everyone works together. I feel so proud of the Kaleidoscope Pictures team and the members of Baltic Films!
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