In 1941, a group of Jewish women were brought to the Pajuste Forest. Just when they were about to be executed, members of the Lithuanian militia forced them to undress and humiliate them before execution. This period of history, like a deep and painful scar, is engraved on the picture scroll of time, which makes people unbearable to look directly at it, but they can't avoid it.
That early morning of 1941, the fog in the Parast Forest had not yet dissipated, and a group of Jewish women were driven to the forest by Lithuanian militias, all of whom knew what would happen next.
But just before the execution, the militia captain suddenly stopped the soldiers who were preparing to be executed, and then issued a puzzling order: "Take off all your clothes."
This order left everyone stunned, and even some militiamen with guns seemed at a loss.
Why do you need to do so? Death is near, so why increase this humiliation?
It was June, and the early summer in the Baltic Sea was still cool, and the women were brought out from the ghetto in only the thinnest clothes.
Many of them had not had enough to eat for several days, trembled slightly in the cold wind of the morning, and many were unwilling to be humiliated like this until a militia shot and killed an innocent girl. At that moment, everyone covered their mouths with their hands tightly, afraid to make a sound.
The first person to take off her clothes was a middle-aged woman. Her movements were slow, her fingers kept trembling, and her tears clicked on the ground without making a sound...
Her daughter, a girl of about sixteen and seven, held her mother’s arm tightly, no one cried, and the silence in the woods was terrible, only the sound of cloth friction could be heard.
This humiliation was not accidental, and historians later discovered, while studying the archives of the Holocaust, that similar behaviors have been recorded in many parts of Eastern Europe.
In 1942, in a village in Ukraine, the German Nazis and local aid forces also forced them to walk around the village naked before executing Jews.
The scholars who study collective violence point out that this is actually an implementation of a psychological mechanism.
When the perpetrators need to massively execute civilians who do not complain to themselves, cognitive disorder arises – they need to “deshumanize” the victim to ease their own psychological burden.
Lithuania's situation during World War II was indeed complicated. The country had just emerged from Soviet occupation, and many people regarded the Germans as liberators.
Some Lithuanians were actively involved in the persecution of the Jews, behind both historical anti-Semitism and the emigration of the Soviet tyranny – some Lithuanian nationalists associated the Jews with Soviet rule.
That morning in the Forest of Parrows, when the women had taken off their clothes, the captain of the militia did not immediately order to shoot, and he walked around the crowd of naked women, and then struck three of them and let them put on their clothes.
The three lucky women were later transferred to labor camps, one of which lived to the end of the war.
"When I put on my clothes again, I didn't know if it was the postponement of another death penalty or the beginning of life, but at that moment, what I felt was not rejoicing, but a deeper shame for those companions who were still naked," she recalled in an interview given in the 1990s.
This random “gift” in extreme violence actually reinforces the unpredictability of violence and plunges the victims into a deeper sense of powerlessness.
In Lithuania in 1941, the social atmosphere was full of contradictions.
Many Lithuanians did participate in the persecution, but many others ventured to help Jews, such as the famous Lithuanian diplomat Chimu Sugihara, who once issued transit visas for thousands of Jews.
This coexistence of extreme behaviors reminds us of the complexity of history-there is still a glimmer of individual conscience in the dark picture of the whole.
Eighty years later, looking back at the early morning of Pajust Forest, we will find that what is truly frightening is not the extreme cruelty of a few people, but how ordinary people can so easily participate in it.
These militias are not born demons, most of them were just ordinary peasants and workers before the war, what caused them to do so in particular circumstances?
Philip zimbardo's Stanford prison experiment, though later controversial academically, does remind us that the environment may affect human behavior far beyond imagination.
When institutional encouragement to do evil, when violence is legalized, how can ordinary people adjust their moral bottom lines?
The tragedy of the Parast Forest remains important today, not only to commemorate the victims, but also to understand the mechanisms of violence.
During the 1994 massacre in Rwanda, Houthi militias also frequently humiliated Tutsi women before they were killed; the same thing happened near Srebrenica during the Bosnian war.
These similarities across time and space tell everyone that humiliation, as a part of violence, has its identifiable pattern. It is usually not explicitly defined from top to bottom, but a "creative idea" spontaneously added by on-site performers.
This implies that in systemic violence, grass-roots executors are not simply instruction recipients, and they often take the initiative to "innovate" the form of violence.
Today, there is a memorial card in the Parast Forest, which contains simple memoirs in Lithuanian and Ethiopian, with no mention of the specific details of that morning, because it is difficult for the language to carry that weight.
But when people stand in front of the empty ground filled with trees, what should be remembered is not only death, but the humiliation before death, because only after understanding the full dimension of violence can the talent truly build up immunity against it.
When a similar pattern first appears in any corner of the world today, the eye of historical education should be able to recognize it earlier.
Per this is why memories like the Parroquial Forest, although painful, must be passed on by generations.
That early morning of 1941, the fog in the Parast Forest had not yet dissipated, and a group of Jewish women were driven to the forest by Lithuanian militias, all of whom knew what would happen next.
But just before the execution, the militia captain suddenly stopped the soldiers who were preparing to be executed, and then issued a puzzling order: "Take off all your clothes."
This order left everyone stunned, and even some militiamen with guns seemed at a loss.
Why do you need to do so? Death is near, so why increase this humiliation?
It was June, and the early summer in the Baltic Sea was still cool, and the women were brought out from the ghetto in only the thinnest clothes.
Many of them had not had enough to eat for several days, trembled slightly in the cold wind of the morning, and many were unwilling to be humiliated like this until a militia shot and killed an innocent girl. At that moment, everyone covered their mouths with their hands tightly, afraid to make a sound.
The first person to take off her clothes was a middle-aged woman. Her movements were slow, her fingers kept trembling, and her tears clicked on the ground without making a sound...
Her daughter, a girl of about sixteen and seven, held her mother’s arm tightly, no one cried, and the silence in the woods was terrible, only the sound of cloth friction could be heard.
This humiliation was not accidental, and historians later discovered, while studying the archives of the Holocaust, that similar behaviors have been recorded in many parts of Eastern Europe.
In 1942, in a village in Ukraine, the German Nazis and local aid forces also forced them to walk around the village naked before executing Jews.
The scholars who study collective violence point out that this is actually an implementation of a psychological mechanism.
When the perpetrators need to massively execute civilians who do not complain to themselves, cognitive disorder arises – they need to “deshumanize” the victim to ease their own psychological burden.
Lithuania's situation during World War II was indeed complicated. The country had just emerged from Soviet occupation, and many people regarded the Germans as liberators.
Some Lithuanians were actively involved in the persecution of the Jews, behind both historical anti-Semitism and the emigration of the Soviet tyranny – some Lithuanian nationalists associated the Jews with Soviet rule.
That morning in the Forest of Parrows, when the women had taken off their clothes, the captain of the militia did not immediately order to shoot, and he walked around the crowd of naked women, and then struck three of them and let them put on their clothes.
The three lucky women were later transferred to labor camps, one of which lived to the end of the war.
"When I put on my clothes again, I didn't know if it was the postponement of another death penalty or the beginning of life, but at that moment, what I felt was not rejoicing, but a deeper shame for those companions who were still naked," she recalled in an interview given in the 1990s.
This random “gift” in extreme violence actually reinforces the unpredictability of violence and plunges the victims into a deeper sense of powerlessness.
In Lithuania in 1941, the social atmosphere was full of contradictions.
Many Lithuanians did participate in the persecution, but many others ventured to help Jews, such as the famous Lithuanian diplomat Chimu Sugihara, who once issued transit visas for thousands of Jews.
This coexistence of extreme behaviors reminds us of the complexity of history-there is still a glimmer of individual conscience in the dark picture of the whole.
Eighty years later, looking back at the early morning of Pajust Forest, we will find that what is truly frightening is not the extreme cruelty of a few people, but how ordinary people can so easily participate in it.
These militias are not born demons, most of them were just ordinary peasants and workers before the war, what caused them to do so in particular circumstances?
Philip zimbardo's Stanford prison experiment, though later controversial academically, does remind us that the environment may affect human behavior far beyond imagination.
When institutional encouragement to do evil, when violence is legalized, how can ordinary people adjust their moral bottom lines?
The tragedy of the Parast Forest remains important today, not only to commemorate the victims, but also to understand the mechanisms of violence.
During the 1994 massacre in Rwanda, Houthi militias also frequently humiliated Tutsi women before they were killed; the same thing happened near Srebrenica during the Bosnian war.
These similarities across time and space tell everyone that humiliation, as a part of violence, has its identifiable pattern. It is usually not explicitly defined from top to bottom, but a "creative idea" spontaneously added by on-site performers.
This implies that in systemic violence, grass-roots executors are not simply instruction recipients, and they often take the initiative to "innovate" the form of violence.
Today, there is a memorial card in the Parast Forest, which contains simple memoirs in Lithuanian and Ethiopian, with no mention of the specific details of that morning, because it is difficult for the language to carry that weight.
But when people stand in front of the empty ground filled with trees, what should be remembered is not only death, but the humiliation before death, because only after understanding the full dimension of violence can the talent truly build up immunity against it.
When a similar pattern first appears in any corner of the world today, the eye of historical education should be able to recognize it earlier.
Per this is why memories like the Parroquial Forest, although painful, must be passed on by generations.