Half Day Private Jewish Vilnius Tour with a Litvak: Jewish Quarter, Ponar Forest

5.0 (2 reviews) 6 hours Private tour

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2 reviews

5.0

Half Day Private Jewish Vilnius Tour with a Litvak: Jewish Quarter, Ponar Forest — Photos: the activity supplier, via Viator

Half Day Private Jewish Vilnius Tour with a Litvak: Jewish Quarter, Ponar Forest, photo 2 — Photos: the activity supplier, via Viator

About this activity

This is a unique tour with a litvak Ema Segal. Ema was born and raised in Vilnius in the 80s. During this half day tour you will not only hear and see a lot of interesting facts and stories about the Jewish life before and after WWII, but also hear Ema's personal story of growing up Jewish in the post-Soviet Vilnius.

This tour includes a 3-hour walking tour around the 2 Jewish ghettos (previously known as the Jewish Quarter), and later a drive to the Ponar forest. You will be driven in a comfortable Volvo.

We shall visit the Choral synagogue, the main streets of the Jewish ghettos where buildings tell us a story of what once was a very flourishing Jewish town - the Jerusalem of the North. We will dive into the site of the Great Jewish Synaogue which used to the center of Jewish cultural, religious, and political life.

This private tour is suited for a max. 4 people group. Which allows for an intimate two-way communication.

THE MENTIONED TOUR PRICE IS FOR THE WHOLE GROUP.

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At a glance

Duration: 6 hours
Confirmation: Confirmed within 48 hours
Ticket: Mobile or paper ticket accepted
Group: Your group only
People per booking: 1–15
Guide: Russian, English
Operated by: Private Jewish Guide in Vilnius

What is included

Included

Included: Private transportation
Included: Multilingual local guide: English, Russian, Lithuanian
Included: Unlimited assistance, translation while talking to locals
Included: All Fees and Taxes
Included: Unlimited milage during the travel

Itinerary

Vilnius Old Town

3 hours

We will follow the traces of Jewish culture in the old town where the Great Jewish Synagogue was built in 1633 and Gaon of Vilnius used to live and study. Through pictures that I had prepated you will see the grandness of that site. You will hear a story about Jewish partisans, their fight and the personal fight of Vilna poets, journalists and artists to save multiple Jewish valuables by hiding them in the ghetto. You will see astonishing pictures of ghetto's hiding places ("malinas") and stand next to the buildings where once many Vilna great people lived and created. We shall also walk into the Choral synagogue, and explore a very old mazzes-making machine there. This tour will give you a good feeling what life was like in Vilna before the atrocities of WWII, and what role the Jewish population had in my home-town and beyond.
Stop 2

5 min

The street that seperated the small Jewish ghetto and the big Jewish ghetto. This street also played part in those historical events.
Stop 3

15 min

The main stree of the big Jewish ghetto with many buildings that tell us a story of what happened there during 1941-1944, and the story of Jewish resistance.
Vilnius Choral Synagogue

10 min Admission not included

The only working synagogue in Vilnius.
Paneriai (Ponar)

one hour Admission included

The Ponary massacre was the mass murder of up to 100,000 people by German SD and SS and their Lithuanian collaborators during World War II. The murders took place between July 1941 and August 1944 near the railway station at Ponary (now Paneriai), a suburb of today's Vilnius, Lithuania. Some 70,000 Jews were murdered at Ponary, along with up to 20,000 Poles, and 8,000 Russians POWs, most of them from nearby Vilna (Vilnius), and its newly-formed Vilna Ghettos.