Israeli president, Lithuanian FM honor Holocaust victims at Paneriai Memorial

VILNIUS – Visiting Israeli President Isaac Herzog and Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys honored Holocaust victims at the Paneriai Memorial in Vilnius on Monday, the Foreign Ministry said.

They observed a minute's silence and laid flowers at the memorial in memory of the victims of the Holocaust who were murdered during WWII. Budrys stressed the importance of not forgetting these events.

"Tens of thousands of innocent lives, mostly of fellow Lithuanian Jews, were cut short in the most brutal way in Paneriai. Today, we stand at this place and send a clear message: we must preserve the memory so that such tragedies never happen again," Lithuania's top diplomat said.

Earlier on Monday, Herzog also spoke about the importance of remembrance in a joint statement with Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda. He said that this was not the first time he visited the Paneriai Memorial, which shows Israel's commitment to remember anti-Semitism and hatred.

"We all remember that the Nazis would not have carried out their diabolical plan without the cooperation of the local population, who committed terrible crimes against their neighbors. But at the same time, countless Lithuanians risked their lives to help the Jews, and they became the righteous of the world," Herzog said.

"I want to remind everyone once again that anti-Semitism and xenophobia are a threat to Jews all over Europe and we have to fight it through legislation, through our determination, and we have to remind ourselves that these crimes will never be forgotten," the Israeli president said earlier in the day.

Situated on the outskirts of Vilnius, Paneriai was the site of the largest mass killing organized and carried out by the Nazis in Lithuania as some 50,000-70,000 people were killed here between 1941 and 1944, most of them Jews from Vilnius and the Vilnius region.