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The history of Lithuania dates back to settlements founded about 10,000 years ago, [1] [2] but the first written record of the name for the country dates back to 1009 AD. [3] Lithuanians , one of the Baltic peoples , later conquered neighboring lands and established the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the 13th century (and also a short-lived ...
The Vilna Ghetto was called "Yerushalayim of the Ghettos" because it was known for its intellectual and cultural spirit. Before the war, Vilnius had been known as "Yerushalayim d'Lita" [15] (Yiddish: Jerusalem of Lithuania) for the same reason. The center of cultural life in the ghetto was the Mefitze Haskole Library, which was called the ...
Before World War II and the Holocaust, Vilnius was one of Europe's most important Jewish centers. Its Jewish influence has led to its being called "the Jerusalem of Lithuania", and Napoleon called it "the Jerusalem of the North" [19] when he passed through in 1812. Vilnius was a 2009 European Capital of Culture with Linz in Austria. [20]
The genocide in Lithuania was one of the earliest large-scale implementations of the Final Solution, leading some to conclude that the Holocaust began in Lithuania in the summer of 1941. [ 6 ] [ 7 ] ^ Other scholars say the Holocaust started in September 1939 with the onset of the Second World War, [ 31 ] or even earlier, on Kristallnacht in ...
The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, [b] formally known as the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania [c] and also referred to as Poland–Lithuania or the First Polish Republic, [d] [9] [10] was a federative real union [11] between the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, existing from 1569 to 1795.
The following day, the Senate of the Republic of Poland called for the establishment of diplomatic relations and for the Lithuanian renunciation of claims to Vilnius. [18] Upon receiving news that Poland was considering extreme measures, President Smetona was verging towards agreeing to discuss diplomatic relations.
As promised, Mindaugas and his wife Morta were crowned at some time during the summer of 1253, and the Kingdom of Lithuania, proclaimed by the pope in 1251, was soundly established. 6 July is now celebrated as "Statehood Day" (Lithuanian: Valstybės diena); it is an official holiday in modern Lithuania. [15] However, the exact date of the ...
By 1941 refugees had grown the Jewish population of Lithuania to approximately 250,000, or 10% of the total population. [9] During the German invasion of June 1941, 141,000 Jews were murdered. Unlike in Western Europe, Lithuanian Jews were generally killed a short distance from their homes.