“THE JERUSALEM OF LITHUANIA”

On the Baltic coast there were three small countries, Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia. They were taken over before the beginning of World War II by Russia, but then, they were overrun by Germany when the war started in that part of Europe, in June 30, 1941. The city of Vilna was known as the Jerusalem of Lithuania because of the many Rabbinical and Talmudic schools there. The same was true of the city of Telz. It had many Jewish centers of learning that fed the Jewish congregations of northern, eastern, and western Europe.    The Soviet Union annexed Lithuania in the summer of 1940, but by the spring of 1941, Lithuania's Jewish population reached 250,000 including 15,000 who had fled German occupation of Poland. Some 6,000 of these succeeded in emigrating to the Holy Land, the Far East, and elsewhere several thousand more were deported by Soviet officials to remote parts of Russia.    When the Germans arrived they actually began their killings in Lithuania, starting with 500 Jews in three border towns—Gargsdai, Kretinge, and Palanga—at the end of June 1941. Both the citizens of Lithuania and those sympathetic with the Germans were killing Jews right and left! The SS German commander observed how enthusiastic and willing the Lithuanians and the Romanians (who came with the Germans) were willing to kill Jews. The sadists, the German Einsatzgruppe (the killing teams of Germans) moved around the country killing every Jew they could find. The job was so difficult, some of these men went mad because of the slaughter they were involved in.    From the city of Kovno, and other towns, in three days several thousands of Jews had died. In a few more months, 7,800 Jews had been liquidated. The Germans had killed 80 percent of Lithuanian Jewry by the end of 1941, and over 95 percent by the end of the war. Those not killed were herded into ghettos and destroyed by starvation, forced labor, diseases, and murder. One Jewish leader urged his people to resist. "Let us not go like sheep to the slaughter," he said. When the Red army reached Lithuania in the summer of 1944, they found very few Jews alive. Possibly there were only 2,500 survivors in and around Vilna, with 5,500 elsewhere in the republic.    Because the Germans wanted to kill every Jew in Lithuania, with the help of the population, only the Holy Land was the place of safety for the people. Only a small group made it to the Promise Land! Most of Europe was judged because of the slaughter of six million European Jews! With Russia, and Europe, some 40 million or more Gentiles died because of their diabolical hatred of God's earthly people! –Dr. Mal Couch (Apr., 10)