Which 1943 Nazi massacre murdered Jews at the site of the former Ponary railway station?

The Ponary massacre was the 1943 Nazi massacre of Jews and other victims at the Ponary killing site near Vilnius.

Ponary, also known as Paneriai, was a forested area outside Vilnius in German-occupied Lithuania. Beginning in 1941, German Einsatzgruppen and Lithuanian auxiliaries carried out mass shootings there. Victims included Jews from the Vilna Ghetto, as well as Polish and Soviet prisoners.

The site consisted of large pits that had originally been dug for fuel storage. The Nazis used them as mass graves and later forced prisoners to exhume and burn bodies in an effort to destroy evidence. In April 1944, a group of Jewish prisoners forced to perform this work escaped through a tunnel.

Ponary is sometimes confused with the Rumbula massacre near Riga, Latvia. Both were mass shootings in the Baltic region, but they were separate sites. The killings at Ponary continued over several years and claimed tens of thousands of lives.