The Second World War and The Holocaust
For more details on this topic, see Holocaust in Lithuania.The Lithuanian Republic was occupied by Soviet Union in June 1940, and one year later, in June 1941, occupied by the Germans. During World War II, 91% of Lithuanian Jews were killed – almost all the Jews who had not managed to leave Lithuania and its environs. This was one of the highest casualty rates in the Holocaust.
The only European yeshiva to survive the Holocaust was the Mir yeshiva. With help of the Japanese consul in Kaunas, Chiune Sugihara, its leaders and students managed to escape to the Shanghai ghetto.
See also: Vilna Ghetto, Kaunas Ghetto, Paneriai massacre, and Jewish partisansRead more about this topic: Judaism In Lithuania
Famous quotes containing the words the second, world and/or war:
“Two principles, according to the Settembrinian cosmogony, were in perpetual conflict for possession of the world: force and justice, tyranny and freedom, superstition and knowledge; the law of permanence and the law of change, of ceaseless fermentation issuing in progress. One might call the first the Asiatic, the second the European principle.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“Orthodoxy is the Bourbon of the world of thought. It learns not, neither can it forget.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
““... War on the destiny of man!
Doom on the sun!”
Before death takes you, O take back this.”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)