Before gas chambers, the Nazis exterminated Jews in an idyllic forest setting, says Nick Green

BEFORE the war, the Ponar Forest had been a picnic destination for people from the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius. The story of the forest changed for ever in 1939 when Stalin and Hitler’s peace pact divided up the lands between Germany and Russia. Stalin took Lithuania and after the Russians took control of Vilnius, they began building an infrastructure with which to support their forces. The Red Army needed fuel dumps and they quickly singled out Ponar Forest as a suitable place.

A railway track connected city and forest and the vast density of woodland offered a place to hide the fuel. The Russians set about building large circular concrete fuel dumps. But by the time they were ready to enter service the war had swung in Germany’s favour and they were abandoned.

In June 1941 Lithuania was swallowed up by Hitler’s advancing troops when he invaded Russia. It didn’t take long for the

Nazis to turn on the local Jewish population. They forced them into ghettos and quickly sealed them off from the outside world.

The Nazi official in charge of the Vilnius ghetto was Martin Weiss. This lightweight, bookish individual was responsible for selecting those to be despatched to Ponar. He quickly revealed a talent for brutality. He once shot a man on the spot for trying to smuggle fish and potatoes into the Vilnius ghetto. His inhuman reputation earned him the nickname Weiss das Schwartz or White, the Black.

When the order came to begin the systematic murder of Jews the Nazis began to look for a place that would be functional yet isolated. They quickly found the perfect location: the abandoned Russian fuel pits in Ponar Forest. These huge holes were close enough to the city and yet hidden away. And they were deep enough to contain thousands of bodies. They began using the site as a place of execution almost immediately.

It was here that the SS stumbled on a modus operandi. The Jews were shot in groups: one victim, one shooter. It was a way of avoiding individual responsibility: there would only be collective guilt. It was psychologically better for the murderers.

The SS, as would become typical, logged the numbers, but not the experiences of those involved. But we do know what happened there. The most exposing testimony about the

BLACK TIME: Martin Weiss was the mild-looking monster in charge as thousands of Jewish men, women and children were herded to their deaths in Lithuania