My father was from Kaunas. He fled to the forests as a young man, maybe 16-17. Lithuania had an impossible number of collaborators. Shameful.

Am I the only one who thinks in his looks he is similar to John Paul II? Both of them were great Poles.

There was no official representation for Lithuanian Jewry, and as a result, Zionism became the largest political group among Lithuanian Jews. A number of clandestine Jewish organizations dealing with educational, monetary, and social communal needs also sprouted during this time. 2024.

this is my favourite part

I am an Israeli. I love watching the history of jews in the diaspora. My mom came from a yiddish backround from Brooklyn. My dad comes from the jews of Morroco. They also lived in special jewish quarters, and continued the jewish tradition for hundreds of years. My parents met in Israel.🇮🇱💙💙🇮🇱

עם ישראל חי💙🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱💙🇮🇱

If they are Hebrew how and when did they get from the middle East to the Baltic?

Excellent production about a very important historical episode, for Jews and for the world.

Share with everyone you know and love. This is our job for the younger generations know little. Antisemitism is on the rise. We need to spread this knowledge so this never happens again.

We know well your collective thousands years goal or dreams and also your hypocritical and deceptive mind of innate traits which will never change because Almighty made you eternal cursed for your endless unforgivable sinfulness after the time of Prophet NOAH (AS). You think you only will dominate the world for forever by eliminating rest of the people of the world after this great nuclear war. For you to save from this war making billion dollars bunkers?? What a pity joke you're?? Your technology and magical power of Antichrist will save you that's what you believe??? Hahahaha..... Antichrist is the biggest test for all humanity, he made you utter diabolical but you will never trust it cause you are blind, deaf, imprudent and arrogant of all. Your limited rationale never understand it because Almighty permanently sealed your heart, eyes, ear by invisible veil. Hey crusaders or Knight templars, colonizers by the help of Antichrist you made the world modern based on Electricity, change every aspect of human life but not the truthful mind of people. You're enslaving mankind through the power of fake money, technology. Remember Eternal destruction is very near to you, your all world power and all jinns can never save you. The creator is above all and he encompassing all his creations.

People forget, the Nazis had plenty of local, willing, assistance in Europe, from France to Russia.

THIS episode of German history will keep that nation ashamed for another 920 years. I hope they regain their pride and redeem themselves in the coming times; and too, I hope they never forget the actions of those Germans long dead.

Excellent documentary!

❤🇧🇷

Thanks a lot for a such amazing documentary about the Jewish history and how they were living before the Nazi's genocide against them. I was reading a book ( Vilnius -- the lost Jerusalem ). I always said that the HOLOCAUST is the whole human being tragedy and it never gonna happen again !

it took me 45 years to find out who I was.

Amazing! Thank you!

I am looking for this song -- the name of the song with these words. It does not come up on a simple search. If you know the name, let me know. Maybe it is here somewhere and I missed it.

As the American son of an American born Lithuanian , this grieves me. I’ve spent half my life studying the Holocaust and there seems to be no end to the depravity of the Nazis. I’m hoping to visit Vilnius maybe in a year or so.. My Dad did his part in crushing the Nazi war machine.

The documentary doesn't indicate the crucial role of lituanian nazi collaborators in roundind up, murdering not only 250,000 jews (some brought from west) but also over 100,000 native polish inhabitants of the occupieind 2nd Polish Republic Wilno Region.

Pilsudzki was a jew like most of the others deported from the Russian empire to the occupied territories of the Polish Commonwelth. His family name was zelman. So jews in Wilno were largely not native to the city and rather the symbol of the russian forceful occupation. policies.

This is the most moving holocaust video I have seen so far and I ha0ve watched many. They were such a well established community. Full of life art and happiness. May the all rest in peace.

False information: Vilna was never renamed to Vilnius. Vilnius is the original name of the Lithuanian capital city. Vilnius is the historical and present-day capital of Lithuania, established by the Lithuanan king Gediminas. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilnius

This makes me so proud of my Grandmother’s country. She told me stories about Lithuania, but I never thought of Vilna as being so cultural. PS: Anybody know any Urbonivicius families over there?

A wonderful documentary " if they can preserve their books, they can preserve their culture". My own mother was a vivid historical books and other great books vollector.

I’m grateful that I found this wonderful documentary just two days before the 80th anniversary of the extermination of the Vilna ghetto. It’s a reminder of the ‘good’ that political liberation gave the Jews of Vilna after centuries of struggle and the ‘evil’ of identity politics that led to their annihilation in WW2.

How wonderful to see and hear this great human being; his warmth, his humanity, his depth, come over even on screen.thank you.

I was from Salonika the Jerusalem of the balkans untill Greece took it.And Vilna was quiet rightly called the Jerusalem of the north.But we still live,Am Israel Chai !

Looking at the current state of the world, what were you thinking?

All religions sustain that they are “the chosen people” by God and are in that sense superior to others. “Others have to be guided by them like fools” because others were not the “chosen” by God like them. Muslims, Jews and Catholics believe this. ItS hard to fathom that they keep sustaining this, when it’s exactly what the Nazis thought.

My grandmother was from Vilna

this documentary concentrated on the secularized jews why does it not mention the probably overwhelming majority of religious Jews of Vilna and their legacy. The famous yeshivas in Vilna and all the religious institutions that were also destroyed by the nazis and the Lithuanians.

The long shadow of socialism on a national level.

Anti-semitism, or anti-socialism?

Learning about what you are told to know is not learning. It is being a dupe, a parrot.

People rarely talk about what is a semite, actually. It is always anti-semitism this, and anti-semitism that. How many people on the street do you think could actually tell you what a semite is, and still less, why anyone would really care?

It’s hard to take, when one human wipes out the other, out of hate. I lived in Europa for 12 yrs and the spirit of the Jewish People is in the air, and it will never leave. They intelligentsia n survival skill is beyond any human on the planet. Humanity has been rippled by their absence. Creation itself is thriving for wholesomeness as a unit of humanity. THUS THE EARTH SUFFERS. THE AIR FIRE, WATER, comes in many forms. Right now it is appears that the CROCODILE INTELLIGENCE HAS TAKEN OVER. Industries abuse n blackmail people for work. World wide abuse is ruling the EARTH and I like to see those 79,000 JEWISH people back, for they were respecting each other, helped where they can, The save is Grace is that we really don’t die, they cannot kill the spirit of humanity.

Unfortunately, there are people in this World who are so perverted and us any lame brained reasoning combined with envy , jealousy and perverted hatred of others, be they Jewish, Irish, Black People, Chinese or whatever, to justify their belief. So, to address one persons comment herein, the whole population of Vilna who remained in there after 1939 were Communist and the action by the Germans and their Allies in the murder of the Jews all 6 Million of them had nothing to do with antisemitism and you really believe such brainless garbage! You and your kind are poor misguided, brainwashed individuals. Never again Vilna never again will Jews stand and believe, surely someone shall step in and stop such barbaric activity. We shall stop any such prospective monstrous activity it has time to unfold. The IDF and Israel shall make sure of it. The so called leaders of the free World have praised Israel and the Jewish people for taking such action. The attack on the Nuclear Plant is but one of many examples. G-d bless Israel the saviour of the free “non-communist” World. shalom

Thank you for producing this very moving story of Vilna. As I listened and watched, I thought of my friend Marvin Flat and his relations who immigrated to Canada in the 1920s and went back to vilna in the late 1920s early 30s as they missed the the Vilna way of. Life only to perish at the hands of the Germans. Thank G-d Marvin’s Family remained in Ottawa and moved to Toronto in later years. Marvin has passed on now and his sons and Grand Children and Great - Grand Children carry on the Family Heritage thanks to Marvin my loving friend who was very kind to me, and I think of every day. shalom.

WW1: "There was a common belief among the Poles that most Jews were Bolsheviks and Communists, in league with the enemy of the Polish state, Soviet Russia. The Polish army stated that any Jews it killed were militants and collaborators engaged in actions against the Polish army. Having been fired at from Jewish homes, Polish soldiers took this as an excuse to break into many Jewish homes and stores, [...] arresting hundreds and deporting them from the city; such abuses were, however, not supported - and even specifically forbidden - by the Polish high command. The US Army representative on the scene, Colonel William F. Godson, agreed with the version of events presented by the Polish general staff. In his reports, Godson wrote that "Jews constituted at least 80% of every Bolshevik organization" and that, unlike the "harmless Polish Jews" (who really "had become Poles"), the "Litwaks (Lithuanian Jews) or Russian Jews" are "extremely dangerous", making the "Jewish question the most important one [for the country]". Wikipedia

WW1: This has nothing to do with anti-semitism, most Jews were communists and were fighting with Russia against Poland in 1919. So the conflict was anti-communist and not anti-semitic as was the case in most countries. Since many Jews were Russian communist agents involved in spreading communism and destabilizing other nations, most countries treated them as enemies of the state, kind of like we treat terrorists now.

Yes, it breaks our hearts more to see how happy people were before the nazi hell began ...My Polish parents were both born near Vilno, in the 1930s. The whole family fled to Poland in 1939, but I heard stories later about life there, how about 70 percent of people there were Jewish. I read a lot of personal accounts from the survivors, and I mourn what I never knew but what was just such vibrant, human LIFE.

never again !!!!! לעולם לא עוד !!!!

We are disgusted at what the nazis did to jews. Now we have a very similar situation in Palestine, in India, where ethnic cleansing is still going on against the Muslims. We never learn.

You forgot to talk about how many Jews the Soviet Union saved through evacuation how many Jews were communists and how many fascists our people came back and shot. Also you forgot to talk about how many rich Jews hated the Soviet Union and ended up getting murdered by their own system, capitalism.

Rich Jewish families like the Rothschilds should have subsidized the mass immigration of Jewish refugees from Europe in the 1930s.

its such an injustice what happened to the jews in ww2, i actuakly blame the gentile collaborators much more than the german nazis, germans didnt know who was jewish when they entered a village or town, only the horrible POLES, LATVIANS, LITHUANIANS, UKRANIANS etc... gladly told the germans who the jews were and even helped to kill them, not just round them up, their WILLINGLY collaborated with the german nazis, this is totally unforgivable, this is why i say the ukranians are getting their just desserts and KARMA with the russian attacks, the poles and latvians and others will be next, god has a long memory, he hasent forgotten who helped kill his special people, god thinks LONG TERM, it will be a sort of INTER GENERATIONAL KARMA, the great grand children of the collaborators will pay for their great grandparents murderous deeds one day

There is way more to this.

Great vid, very interesting. Thanx.

... Nothing Has Been Learnt... Because Nobody Listened With Both Ear's Or Saw With Both Eye's... So Round & Round We Go... Again 😢 4:23