Mass killing pit

The embankment structure of this 26 meter-diameter-pit is well preserved, even though on the western side it was slightly damaged during the building of the railroad back in the 1950s. On the right-hand side, near the foundation, there are remnants of a stone wall erected during the building of fuel storage by the Soviet Army in 1941. A distinguishing feature of this object is the site on the southern slope of the pit, which is designed to accommodate small groups of victims. Such sites were found in only two pits – this pit and the adjacent pit.

The lower site-ramp (a sloping plane) for lining up the victims rises westward, almost from the entrance to the pit. There is a trench at the back of the site which is supposed to prevent prisoners from ascending. The site then turns in the opposite direction like a streamer. This part is slightly above and is designed for shooters of the SD Vilnius Special Squad. In the northern part of the pit, there is another similar site-ramp that surrounds the pit with a bow. To the north-east of the pit, on the outer side of the embankments, there are several multi-layer sites where the executioners would line up.

In the mass killing pit, a commemoration stone was erected in 1985 with the inscription (in Lithuanian and Russian): ‘Corpses exhumed from mass killings sites were burned here’. The inscription is not entirely accurate, because exhumed human bodies were taken from the pits and burnt at special sites next to each pit in bonfires up to 4-5 m high. The recent non-invasive geophysical research has shown no evidence of bonfires near this pit.