A WWII German Soldier Who Made the Ultimate Sacrifice

Vilnius, Lithuania Old Town Skyline
Photo by DAVID ILIFF. License: CC BY-SA 3.0. Courtesy of Wikipedia

During the early years of WWII, the Soviets occupied Lithuania in the Baltics. In June of 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, including the Baltics and captured Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. Vilnius was twenty-five percent Jewish and was an "important center of Jewish cultural life in Eastern Europe." 

By late summer of 1941, the SS Einsatzgruppen, Hitler's elite killing squads, began taking Jewish men, women, and children to large pits in the Ponary Forest outside the city to shoot them. Tens of thousands of Jews as well as Poles and Russians were murdered there. 

Read More . . .