paneriai memorial museum

we went to the holocaust museum that the lithuanians ran. it was so moving. i cant believe it. it was a "mass grave" over 100,000 bodies were found. but a lot of them were burned before they got there to count the bodies because they were trying to lower their conviction... so insane. there were journal entries and one of them said that for like 3 weeks straight they would bring truckloads of people and shoot. they said there were constand gunshots for 8 hours, all day everday. the gastapo also had reciept things that kept tally of how many peopl they were killing and there was 4636 children killed in 3 months............ i cannot believe people still had the fight inside of them to persevere and want to live through this. the weirdest thing that kept amazing me was to think, this all didnt happen too long ago. We read a part that was about these 5 men who were brought to the camp and were put on the job of burning the bodies.  They were to stay in a bunker at night and were highly guarded 24-7.  They talked about how they start digging a tunnel to escape. It took them months to escape. How incredible is that?

this was in ONE of the circles....

There were 5 large circles in areas like this where people were shot and buried.

This was where they burned the bodies to hide the evidence towards the end of the war. They used this bridge to carry the body and dump into the middle of the fire. 

on a brighter note, you all may know that my favorite seasons are fall and winter... the leaves are changing and they  both are on their way!  these pictures were taken on our train ride back to Vilnius.