in the post below, i promised that i would write about klaipeda later. well, it appears that i won't get around to it. sorry (as if anyone really cares) so much happens during my travels that klaipeda already seems like a long time ago--even though it was only yesterday morning.
instead i want to talk about today. today, mrs. noz and i went to paneriai. paneriai is where most of the vilnius jewish population was liquidated by the nazis during world war two (along with a bunch of poles and lithuanians). prior to he war, vilnius had one of the largest proportions of jews in europe. the city was called "the jerusalem of the north." 94% died in world war two. and most of those few who survived left. vilnius is a very different place now because of what happened at paneriai. it is literally a different city than it would have been if the nazis never came.
when you're in a place where some kind of atrocity happened, you almost expect the place to feel different than anywhere else. maybe a cloud will hang above it; maybe there will be a strange chill in the air; maybe the air will taste a little different; or maybe when the wind blows you will hear the moans of the people who died. i'm not a superstitious person, i don't believe in ghosts or hauntings, but part of me still expects something like that. the magnitude of what happened almost demands it that it be different.
instead, when mrs. noz and i reached paneriai (itself a bit of an ordeal--the locals do not make it easy to find), we found a peaceful wooded area. the place didn't feel any different from anywhere else. it's like the banality of evil; the ordinariness of the place makes it all the more frightening. if such a horrible thing could happen in such a normal place, then it could happen anywhere. we attribute the actions of history to a place, a spot of land, or whatever. but the ground in paneriai didn't do anything. specific people did. people who were there over 60 years ago and are now gone.
there are a couple of plaques and monuments at paneriai, and a small museum that was closed even though we were there during its posted hours. but the plaques don't make the place especially horrifying. it was still a beautiful and peaceful woods. it was hard for me to imagine what it must have been like six decades ago.
