The historical marker provides text in Lithuanian and Hebrew. The Lithuanian text reads:
"Cia 1941.09.06-1941.10.29 Buvo Mažojo
Žydu Geto Vartai, Pro Kuriuos Buvo
Išvaryti Mirciai Daugiau Kaip 11.000 Žydu"
[ENGLISH TRANSLATION]
Here during 06/09/1941-10/29/1941 was the little
Jewish ghetto gate through which
11,000 Jews were expelled and killed
The following information is from Wikipedia (
visit link) :
"The Vilna Ghetto, Vilnius Ghetto, Wilno Ghetto or Vilniaus Getas was a World War II Jewish ghetto established and operated by Nazi Germany in the city of Vilnius in the territory of Nazi-administered Reichskommissariat Ostland. During roughly two years of its existence, starvation, disease, street executions, maltreatment and deportations to concentration camps and extermination camps reduced the population of the ghetto from an estimated 40,000 to zero. Only several hundred people managed to survive, mostly by hiding in the forests surrounding the town, joining the Soviet partisans, or finding shelter among sympathetic locals."
The following additional information is from the Jewish Virtual Library (
visit link) :
"The streets were also the sites of two ghettos, which were sealed on September 6, 1941. The smaller of the two lasted only six weeks but long enough to massacre 10,000 people in a wooded area called Paneriai, some ten kilometers from the city.
Thousands more (perhaps 70,000 in all) were served a similar fate. Even before the ghettos were established some 10,000 Jews had been murdered in the capital. There were 29,000 people caught between the ghettos, the larger of which was liquidated on 23 September 1944. It was only then that the remaining 8,000 or so survivors were herded off to death camps in Poland and concentration camps in Latvia and Estonia."