Simnas: The Memorial

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There were no roads or other signs pointing to the forest where the Jews of Simnas were killed, or to the surprisingly beautiful memorial that we knew had been erected there, so we went to the municipal office and asked for help. Since nobody could speak English, the locals called up Marija Taputiene, a retired English teacher (who had served at the Simnas secondary school), to come and help us. It was she who guided us to the town’s outskirts to see the forest and, in a clearing, the haunting memorial. The monument appears to depict a Jew praying enveloped by a ritual shawl (talit), and is accompanied by two plaques reading, in Yiddish and Lithuanian plus Russian, respectively: “In this place in July 1941 the Hitlerite assassins and their local collaborators killed some 1,000 Simnas Jews – children, women, men and elderly.” As mentioned previously, however, there are two independent accounts that the correct date is September 12th 1941, and that the count was less than 500.