IN the abundant historical writings dealing with the Vilna Jewish community, no mention is made of the brief six-week Soviet occupation of the city between 19 September 1939 and 28 October 1939. This may be attributed to various factors:

Although, not surprisingly, the few survivors of the Vilna Jewish community have no clear recollection of this occupation, initial analysis of the available material reveals that this forty-day period was historically significant in its own right. We may observe that despite its brevity, the Soviet occupation of Vilna provided a preview of the general Jewish reaction to the Sovietization of eastern Poland, from Bialystok in the north to Lwów in the south, as well as an illustration of tensions between Jews and the local population, which erupted upon Soviet withdrawal. During the Second World War, Vilna became a major ideological and communications centre for Polish Jewry, and the repeated changes in its regimes directly affected the fate of tens of thousands of Polish Jews.

BACKGROUND

Vilna, the capital of Lithuania, was annexed to Poland in October 1920 and remained severed from Lithuania until 1938. Vilna Jews met their Lithuanian relatives once a year, on the Ninth of Av, in cemeteries near the border. Jews comprised a significant proportion of the city's population prior to the Second World War: of its approximately 200,000 residents, 45 per cent were Poles, 37 per cent Jews, 10 per cent Lithuanians, 5 per cent Byelorussians, 2 per cent Russians, and 1 per cent Tartars, Karaites, and others.

With the outbreak of the Second World War on 1 September 1939, Vilna experienced several bombing raids, but in comparison with other Polish cities suffered only slight damage.