Forty-Six Thousand in Twenty-Four Hours

Lithuania’s own state history identifies the police who drove Vilnius’s Jews into the ghetto. Its current Holocaust chronology makes them anonymous.

The Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania tells readers that on September 6, 1941, Vilnius Jews “were moved to the ghetto by the police.” Eighty-five years later, the police still have no name on that page. The same entry names Hans Hingst, German city commissioner; Franz Murer, his aide for Jewish affairs; and Karolis Dabulevičius, the Lithuanian mayor. Its exact wording says Murer, together with Dabulevičius, selected the ghetto site in the Old Town. When the mass removal begins, the institution switches from names to a generic noun: “the police.”[1]

Lithuania’s Supreme Court has held that international crimes may be denied or minimized through omission as well as direct statement; I set out that ruling in Omission Can Be Denial. Lithuania Said So. Here the omission is of the perpetrators, and it can be tested against the Centre’s own scholarship rather than inference.

Arūnas Bubnys’s chapter on the Vilnius Ghetto supplies the identity the public chronology withholds. The Centre first published the chapter in Lithuanian in 2011 and reissued it in English in 2020. It says, “The transfer went according to plan,” then identifies the Lithuanian public police and self-defense unit soldiers as the forces that carried it out. Bubnys’s own introduction acknowledges that Nazi mass murder in Lithuania could not have proceeded at such speed and scale “without the active assistance of the Lithuanian administration and the local population.”[2]

The chronology itself is credited to Arūnas Bubnys. He took office as the Centre’s Director General in April 2021. The same historian wrote both texts: the chapter that names the Lithuanian public police and the chronology that erases them.[3]

The police chief wrote it down

Antanas Iškauskas was chief of the Vilnius City and District Police. His September 9, 1941 report describes the operation from inside the command structure. The English reproduction, headed “Chief of Police / City & Region of Vilnius,” appears at p. 44 of Lithuania: Crime & Punishment, no. 5. It begins: “The ghetto campaign in Vilnius was begun at 6 a.m. September 6th.”[4]

Vilnius was divided by police-station districts, then into quarters and sub-quarters. Guards were placed on roads out of the city to prevent Jews from escaping. All seven police stations began simultaneously. Police evicted Jews from their homes; self-defense soldiers drove the columns toward designated places. Property left behind was locked and sealed.[5]

Iškauskas recorded the completion times: 9 p.m. for the first precinct, 11 p.m. for the second, 5 a.m. on September 7 for the third, 8 p.m. for the fourth and fifth, 10 p.m. for the sixth, and 7 p.m. for the seventh. The latest listed completion came twenty-three hours after the reported 6 a.m. start.[6]

Police planned sectors, blocked escape routes, entered apartments, expelled families, directed columns, sealed homes and collected keys. The Centre’s footnote and the Melamed reproduction point to the same file in the Lithuanian Central State Archives, f. R-689, ap. 1, b. 10. Bubnys cites leaf 37; the reproduced report carries leaves 28–30. The state holds the folder.[7]

Where forty-six thousand comes from

Arad’s 2005 editorial introduction to Ponary Diary, 1941–1943 gives the figure directly: about 40,000 Jews forced into the two ghettos and about 6,000 sent to Lukiškės in the space of twenty-four hours, with the transfer attributed to Lithuanian municipal police and a Lithuanian police battalion under Iškauskas. Arad describes the unit as a police battalion; the report’s own heading identifies its author as chief of police for the city and district of Vilnius. His later monograph, The Holocaust in the Soviet Union, gives a more granular breakdown: approximately 29,000–30,000 to Ghetto No. 1, 9,000–11,000 to Ghetto No. 2, and about 6,000 to Lukiškės.[8]

Bubnys’s 2020 chapter gives approximately 29,000 people in the Large Ghetto and approximately 9,000 in the Small Ghetto. The Centre’s own note adds that estimates vary but usually do not exceed 40,000 ghetto residents. The Centre’s figures fit the structure of Arad’s account: roughly forty thousand forced into the ghettos, with thousands more diverted elsewhere.[9]

The forty-six-thousand figure describes the scale of the removal operation. It does not mean that all forty-six thousand were deposited inside the ghettos.

The police called it orderly

Bubnys says the seven police-station reports described the transfer as orderly and without interference. One report describes military guards at the city exits, soldiers herding Jewish columns toward prearranged places, and police carrying out apartment evictions under precinct officials. The chapter says property left in Jewish apartments was locked and sealed and that keys, marked with the address and former owner’s name, were delivered to police stations.[10]

Yitskhok Rudashevski recorded September 6 from inside the column. In Solon Beinfeld’s English translation, “The streets are cordoned off by Lithuanians.” The next line is equally specific: “Jewish workers are allowed through.” Later in the same entry: “Lithuanians drive us forward, won’t let us rest.”[11]

The police report and the child’s diary describe the same cordon from opposite sides. “Orderly” was the administrator’s description. Rudashevski recorded what that order required from the people being driven through it.

Lukiškės was not overflow

The Jewish communal history reproduced in Pinkas Hakehillot says thousands were taken directly to Lukiškės prison; a few hundred essential workers were returned, while an estimated 6,000 were taken to Paneriai on September 10 and 11 and murdered. The Lukiškės-to-Paneriai machinery is documented more fully in The Murder Was Administered.[12]

The surviving numerical records do not produce one exact total for an identically defined killing action. Jäger’s report prints 3,334 Jews shot at “City of Wilna” on September 12, although its own component figures—993 men, 1,670 women and 771 children—add to 3,434; Bubnys uses 3,434. Arad reproduces the 3,334 figure and notes that it is lower than the 6,000 in Jewish sources. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum gives approximately 4,500 Jews murdered at Ponary in mid-September. Jewish communal sources give about 6,000 for those taken from Lukiškės to Paneriai on September 10 and 11. They describe overlapping actions on different dates.[13]

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum dates the sealing of the two Vilna ghettos to September 6, 1941 and names German SS and police and their Lithuanian auxiliaries in the mid-September killings at Ponary. It does not identify who cleared the apartments. Bubnys’s chapter does.[14]

The state already has the evidence

The central evidence does not come from an accusation Lithuania can dismiss as foreign hostility. The Centre’s own historian gives the police reports. He identifies Lithuanian public police and self-defense unit soldiers. He records guarded exits, apartment evictions, columns, sealed property and keys delivered to police stations. His note points into the Lithuanian Central State Archives.

Bubnys’s chapter is more candid than the Centre’s public summary. The volume that carries it is not uniformly so. Its opening chapter, by Darius Furmonavičius, describes the Lithuanian contribution as “supporting cast and thus essentially marginal” and concludes that the evidence supports limiting Lithuanian complicity to “informal groups of citizens.” The same book therefore contains the documents that identify institutional police participation and an interpretive frame that minimizes Lithuanian participation.[15]

The Centre has done this before: it turned a single “I think” into standing state history and left the page uncorrected, as Stancikas Turned “I Think” Into State History records.

The public chronology names Hingst and Murer. It names Dabulevičius when the ghetto site is selected. At the moment tens of thousands of Jews are expelled from their homes, Iškauskas disappears and the Lithuanian public police become simply “the police.” The German order and the Lithuanian execution are both in the documents; the Centre’s chronology keeps the German names and removes the Lithuanian ones.

The Centre first published Bubnys’s chapter in 2011. It issued the English volume in 2020. Bubnys became Director General in 2021. Four days before this anniversary, the Centre announced its Director General’s nomination for a European memory prize; I examined that nomination in Did PEMC Check the History?. On the anniversary, his own Holocaust chronology still anonymizes the police. The Centre corrected its state history on 26 August when it chose to, as Lithuania Corrected One Word records. What remains is to print the names its own historian printed.[16]

Forty-six thousand people are not removed from their homes in a single day by passive voice.

 Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania, Dr. Arūnas Bubnys, ‘Trumpa holokausto Lietuvoje istorija’ [Short History of the Holocaust in Lithuania], entry for 6 September 1941, retrieved 6 September 2026. The entry reads: ‘Jis kartu su Vilniaus miesto burmistru Karoliu Dabulevičiumi parinko getui vietą senamiestyje’ [‘Together with Vilnius mayor Karolis Dabulevičius, he selected the site for the ghetto in the Old Town’], followed by: ‘1941 m. rugsėjo 6 d. Vilniaus žydai policijos buvo perkelti į getą’ [‘On 6 September 1941, the Jews of Vilnius were moved to the ghetto by the police’]. Author’s translations. Current page: https://www.genocid.lt/centras/lt/1344/a/ ; official print-version page: https://www.genocid.lt/centras/lt/1344/a/print_version/ . Page text retrieved and preserved by the author on 6 September 2026.

[2] Arūnas Bubnys, ‘The Massacre of Vilnius Jews and the Vilnius Ghetto (1941–1944),’ in The Holocaust in Lithuania 1941–1944 (Vilnius: Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania, 2020), pp. 121–122: ‘The transfer went according to plan’; the chapter then identifies the Lithuanian public police and self-defense unit soldiers. Bubnys, ‘Introduction,’ p. 15: the genocide could not have been implemented so quickly or on such a scale without the active assistance of the Lithuanian administration and local population. The volume states that it was translated from the 2011 Lithuanian compilation and updated in 2020. English PDF: https://www.atmintiesknygos.lt/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/2020_holocaust_lithuania.pdf ; 2011 edition record: https://www.atmintiesknygos.lt/leidiniai/knygos/tyrimai-studijos/holokaustas-lietuvoje-1941-1944-m/ .

 Institute of National Remembrance (Poland), 3 August 2021, reporting Bubnys’s first foreign visit since taking office in April 2021: https://eng.ipn.gov.pl/en/news/8513,The-meeting-of-the-Deputy-President-of-the-Institute-of-National-Remembrance-Kar.html . LGGRTC leadership page, identifying Dr. Arūnas Bubnys as Director General and recording his appointment on 22 April 2021: https://www.genocid.lt/centras/lt/817/c/ ; official print version: https://www.genocid.lt/centras/lt/817/c/print_version/ . Page text retrieved and preserved by the author on 6 September 2026.

[4] Antanas Iškauskas, report of 9 September 1941, reproduced at p. 44 of Lithuania: Crime & Punishment, no. 5 (January 1995), under the English heading ‘Chief of Police / City & Region of Vilnius,’ archival locator LTSR CVA, f. 689, ap. 1, b. 10, ll. 28–30: https://www.grantgochin.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/lithuania-crime-and-punishment-volume-5.pdf . The body standardizes the office as chief of the Vilnius City and District Police.

[5] Bubnys, ‘The Massacre of Vilnius Jews,’ pp. 121–122, describing the police-station reports, guarded exits, apartment evictions, the Lithuanian public police and self-defense unit soldiers, sealed property, and keys delivered to police stations. Note 32 appears on printed p. 157 and cites LCSA, f. R-689, ap. 1, b. 10, l. 37. https://www.atmintiesknygos.lt/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/2020_holocaust_lithuania.pdf .

[6] Iškauskas report, 9 September 1941, p. 44 reproduction, giving the reported 6 a.m. start and precinct completion times through 5 a.m. on 7 September: https://www.grantgochin.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/lithuania-crime-and-punishment-volume-5.pdf .

[7] Compare Bubnys, note 32, printed p. 157, LCSA f. R-689, ap. 1, b. 10, l. 37, with the Iškauskas reproduction, p. 44, which prints the locator as LTSR CVA, f. 689, ap. 1, b. 10, ll. 28–30. English volume: https://www.atmintiesknygos.lt/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/2020_holocaust_lithuania.pdf ; report reproduction: https://www.grantgochin.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/lithuania-crime-and-punishment-volume-5.pdf .

[8] Yitzhak Arad, ed., Kazimierz Sakowicz, Ponary Diary, 1941–1943: A Bystander’s Account of a Mass Murder (Yale University Press, 2005), editorial introduction, p. 26; publisher record: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300108538/ponary-diary-1941-1943/ . See also Yitzhak Arad, The Holocaust in the Soviet Union (University of Nebraska Press/Yad Vashem, 2009), pp. 144–145 and p. 561 n. 25; publisher page: https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska-paperback/9780803245198/the-holocaust-in-the-soviet-union/ ; WorldCat OCLC 466441935: https://search.worldcat.org/title/466441935 .

[9] Bubnys, ‘The Massacre of Vilnius Jews,’ printed p. 122: approximately 29,000 Jews in the Large Ghetto and approximately 9,000 in the Small Ghetto. Note 35, printed p. 157: estimates by authors and witnesses vary but usually do not exceed 40,000. https://www.atmintiesknygos.lt/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/2020_holocaust_lithuania.pdf .

[10] Bubnys, pp. 121–122 and note 32, printed p. 157: https://www.atmintiesknygos.lt/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/2020_holocaust_lithuania.pdf .

 Yitskhok Rudashevski, diary entry, ‘It is the 6th of September,’ in Vilna Ghetto Diary of Yitskhok Rudashevski, English translation by Solon Beinfeld, YIVO Bruce and Francesca Cernia Slovin Online Museum, PDF pp. 4–5: https://museum.yivo.org/general-docs/YR_Diary_EN.pdf . The text gives verbatim: ‘The streets are cordoned off by Lithuanians,’ ‘Jewish workers are allowed through,’ and ‘Lithuanians drive us forward, won’t let us rest.’ YIVO exhibition: https://museum.yivo.org/ . Jewish Quarterly 258 (2024), ‘The Diary of Yitskhok Rudashevski’: https://jewishquarterly.com/jq/the-diary-of-yitskhok-rudashevski/402 .

[12] ‘Vilna, Lithuania,’ Pinkas Hakehillot Polin, reproduced by JewishGen, on the diversion to Lukiškės and subsequent Paneriai murders: https://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/pinkas_poland/pol8_00060.html .

[13] Karl Jäger report, entry for 12 September 1941, ‘City of Wilna,’ printing 993 men, 1,670 women, 771 children and a total of 3,334: https://phdn.org/archives/holocaust-history.org/works/jaeger-report/htm/img006.htm.en.html . The components total 3,434. Bubnys, The Holocaust in Lithuania 1941–1944, printed p. 123, states ‘According to the Jäger report, a total of 3,434 Jews were killed’ and repeats the components: https://www.atmintiesknygos.lt/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/2020_holocaust_lithuania.pdf . Arad, Ponary Diary, editorial introduction, p. 26, also gives Jäger’s printed 3,334 and notes that it is below the 6,000 in Jewish sources. USHMM gives approximately 4,500 Jews murdered at Ponary in mid-September: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/1941-key-dates . JewishGen gives an estimated 6,000 for those taken from Lukiškės to Paneriai on September 10–11: https://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/pinkas_poland/pol8_00060.html .

[14] United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia, ‘1941: Key Dates,’ September 6 entry: German authorities seal off two ghettos in Vilna; the same chronology names German SS and police and their Lithuanian auxiliaries in the approximately 4,500 mid-September killings at Ponary. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/1941-key-dates .

[15] Darius Furmonavičius, ‘Lithuanian Resistance Against the First Soviet Occupation and Nazi Occupation, and the Determination to Remain in Europe,’ in The Holocaust in Lithuania 1941–1944 (2020), printed pp. 40 and 43: ‘supporting cast and thus essentially marginal’; and the conclusion that the evidence supports limiting Lithuanian complicity to ‘informal groups of citizens.’ https://www.atmintiesknygos.lt/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/2020_holocaust_lithuania.pdf .

 LGGRTC leadership page, identifying Dr. Arūnas Bubnys as Director General: https://www.genocid.lt/centras/lt/817/c/ ; official print version: https://www.genocid.lt/centras/lt/817/c/print_version/ . LGGRTC, 2 September 2026, ‘LGGRTC vadovas nominuotas pretstižiniam [sic] prizui,’ identifying Arūnas Bubnys as Director General: https://www.genocid.lt/centras/lt/4947/a/ . Page texts retrieved and preserved by the author on 6 September 2026.