When the synagogues were full, Germans and Lithuanians entered Vilna’s ghetto. The state chronology prints October 1941 as “several actions.”

Yom Kippur 5787 begins at sundown on September 20, 2026. Eighty-five years earlier, Yom Kippur 5702 began at sundown on September 30, 1941, and continued through October 1. In Vilna, October 1 became an Aktion.[1]

Yad Vashem’s Vilna history records that in the smaller ghetto, when the synagogues were packed with worshippers, Germans and Lithuanians entered and began arrests. About 1,700 Jews were seized. In the larger ghetto, SS officer Horst Schweinberger demanded 1,000 Jews from the Judenrat by 7:30 that evening; roughly 2,200 people were taken during the operation. Up to 800 were freed through intervention by German employers or through bribes. Others were held at Lukiškės Prison and then shot at Ponary.[2]

The victims dated the day

Norma Dimitry was eighteen. She remembered the date, the holiday and the actors: Germans and Lithuanians. “They did it then because they knew it was our highest holiday.” Her father hid her under a table in a factory. Her memoir also describes Lithuanian collaborators seizing Jews in Vilna before the ghetto was established and taking people away under the pretext of work.[3]

Herman Kruk wrote from inside the ghetto. In The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania, his September 30 entry describes the prayer houses as “full to........

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