Paneriai, Lithuania, July 8, (dpa/GNA) – German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, commemorated the Lithuanian victims of the Nazis during World War II in a ceremony on Monday, as Berlin and Vilnius announced plans to extend cultural ties.
Steinmeier laid a wreath at the Paneriai Memorial at the event, also attended by Lithuanian Prime Minister Gintautas Paluckas.
Around 120,000 people were murdered by Nazis and local collaborators in the Paneriai forest during the German occupation of Lithuania between July 1941 and July 1944. Among them were at least 70,000 Jews.
They were shot and burned in pits in the ground. Most of them came from Vilnius, around 15 kilometres to the north.
Steinmeier and Paluckas had earlier laid a wreath at the National Memorial to the Victims of Lithuania’s War of Independence.
Earlier in his visit on Sunday, Steinmeier marked the Baltic country’s national day and highlighted Germany’s commitment to securing NATO’s eastern flank.
Lithuania shares a long border with Russia’s ally Belarus, and with the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.
Cultural ties to be extended
Also on Monday, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda said the two countries’ cultural ties are to be extended.
“We want to develop an ambitious programme of cultural exchanges,” Nauseda said on a visit with Steinmeier to the Thomas Mann culture centre in the resort of Nida.
Now a museum, the house was the summer residence of the famous German author between 1930 and 1932.
The German president awarded the director of the cultural centre, Vitalija Terese JonuÅ¡iene, with Germany’s Order of Merit saying she made the house “a mainstay of Lithuanian-German cultural relations.”
Steinmeier said Vilnius will set up a Lithuanian-German culture year in Germany in 2027. “And I have promised that I will campaign for Germany to do the same in Lithuania,” he added.
GNA