What We Talk About When We Talk About Going To The Forest Where They Killed Everyone

What's the point?

Last week, I went to a forested area of Ponary, a neighborhood of Vilnius well southwest of the city center (Paneriai in Lithuanian). That’s where the Nazis murdered a horrific number of people. “According to Monika Tomkiewicz, author of a 2008 book on the Ponary massacre,” explains Wikipedia, “80,000 people were killed, including 72,000 Jews, 5,000 Sov…