On March 22-23, conference “As Mass Murder Began: Identifying and Remembering the Killing Sites of Summer-Fall 1941”, organized by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), was held at the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum.

Participants and lecturers included Holocaust historians, museologists, representatives of governmental and non-governmental organizations from Lithuania and over dozen other countries. The opening event was attended by Darius Skusevičius, Lithuania’s Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dainius Junevičius, Ambassador at Large, ambassadors of the United States of America, Germany and Latvia as well as other honourable guests.

The conference was opened by Markas Zingeris, Director of the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum, Francois Wisard, Head of the Swiss Delegation to IHRA, Piotr Trojański, interim Chair of the IHRA Committee on Killing Sites, Faina Kukliansky, Chair of the Jewish (Litvak) Community in Lithuania, and Parliamentarian Emanuelis Zingeris.

According to P. Trojański, “remembrance often focuses on the concentration camps but this was not the majority experience. We have a responsibility to capture the nuances of the history of the Holocaust, which includes mass shootings, and to contribute to changing the perception that the Holocaust began and ended in the camps. This is our responsibility to the victims.”

The conference, which is a continuation of the conference “Killing Sites – Research and Remembrance”, held in Krakow in 2014, included lectures by Dr. Christoph Dieckmann (Fritz Bauer Institute, Frankfurt am Main), and Paul Shapiro (Director of International Affairs and Director Emeritus of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum), presentations, discussions and workshops, dedicated to three central themes – identification, marking and commemoration of killing sites. Participants of the conference had the opportunity to share good practices and discuss the challenges arising in these fields.

A lot of attention was dedicated to the Holocaust research and remembrance in Lithuania. Neringa Latvytė, Head of the Museum’s History Research Department and temporary Head of the Paneriai Memorial, and Saulius Sarcevičius, Head of the Urban Research Department in the Lithuanian Institute of History, presented the latest research conducted in the territory of Paneriai mass killing site as well as the plans for site’s reconstruction, with the modern Visitors Center to be opened in approximately 2020. Other Lithuanian representatives – Diana Varnaitė, Director of the Department of Cultural Heritage under the Ministry of Culture, and Ingrida Vilkienė, Educational Programs Coordinator at the International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania, participated in presentations and discussions about marking and commemoration of killing sites.