Mass killing pit

This 28-meter-diameter shooting pit is similar in structure to an adjacent pit. On the eastern slope of the pit, at the entrance to it, there is a site that is designed for shooting small groups of victims. The structure of the site is similar to an adjacent pit. The site circles the entire pit, leading from all sides to the hole in the embankment, which is believed to have been used by shooters of the SD Vilnius Special Squad. Like the adjacent pit, the edges of this pit on the south-western side were slightly damaged during the building of the railroad back in the 1950s.

In the course of implementing the project of the architectural arrangement of the territory of the Paneriai Memorial, a commemoration stone was erected in this pit 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 not burned in the pits but taken from the pits to bonfires which were up to 4-5 m high. Subsequently, the ashes were spread back into the pit or mixed with sand near the pit. The recent non-invasive geophysical research has shown no evidence of bonfires near this pit.