[1] During the approximately two years of its existence starvation, disease, street executions, maltreatment, and deportations to concentration and extermination camps reduced the ghetto's population from an estimated 40,000.

[citation needed] The Jewish population of Vilnius on the eve of the Holocaust was at least 60,000, some estimates say 80,000,[8] including refugees from German-occupied Poland to the west, minus a small number who managed to flee onward to the Soviet Union.

The kidnapping and mass murder of Jews in the city commenced before the ghetto was set up by the advancing German forces, resulting in an execution of approximately 21,000 victims prior to 6 September 1941.

[citation needed] Murer, Hingst, and Vilnius mayor Karolis Dabulevičius selected the site for the future ghetto and staged a distant sniping at German soldiers in front of a cinema, from a window on the corner of Stiklių (Glezer, meaning Szklana in Polish) and Didžioji (Wielka, Great Street in Polish, hence the name for the event) streets, by two Lithuanians in civilian clothes who had broken into an apartment belonging to Jews.

[citation needed] Jewish Vilna was known for its distinguished medical tradition, which inmates of the ghetto managed to maintain to some degree during the Holocaust.

It contained a library of 45,000 volumes,[16] reading hall, archive, statistical bureau, room for scientific work, museum, book kiosk, post office, and sports ground.

[18] Performances included poetry readings by Jewish authors, dramatizations of short stories, and new work by the young people of the ghetto.

[18] The last theatrical production, Der Mabl (The Flood), was produced by the Swedish dramatist Henning Berger and opened in the summer of 1943, in the last week of the ghetto's existence.

Jacob Gens, appointed head of the ghetto by the Nazis but originally chief of police, ostensibly cooperated with German officials in stopping armed struggle.

Poet Hirsh Glick, a ghetto inmate who later died after being deported to Estonia, penned the words for what became the famous Partisan Hymn, Zog nit keyn mol.

The Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye organized an uprising and was able to rescue him after he was seized in the apartment of Jacob Gens in a fight with Jewish ghetto police.

[20] Gens brought in heavies, the leaders of the work brigades, and effectively turned the majority of the population against the resistance members, claiming they were provoking the Germans and asking rhetorically whether it was worth sacrificing tens of thousands for the sake of one man.

[citation needed] The FPO was demoralized by this chain of events and began to pursue a policy of sending young people out to the forest to join other Jewish partisans.

In the Vilna Ghetto, a 'family' often included a non-relation who registered as a member of the family in order to receive housing and a pitiful food ration.

Gens took control of the liquidation in order to keep the Nazi forces out of the ghetto and away from a partisan ambush, but helped fill the quota of Jews with those who could fight but were not necessarily part of the resistance.

[citation needed] From the establishment of the ghetto until January 1942, task groups of German and Lithuanian Einsatzgruppen regularly carried out the surprise operations called Aktionen, often on Jewish holidays.

The same month the Germans liquidated the small ghetto, where they had relocated 'unproductive' individuals (i.e., who were old, ill, or otherwise considered unfit for labour); most of the prisoners were taken to Ponary and shot.

The quiet period continued until 6 August, when the Germans commenced the deportation of 7,130 Jews to Estonia on the order of Heinrich Himmler; this was finished on 5 September.

Following an order of Rudolf Neugebauer, the head of the Vilnius Gestapo,[22] the ghetto was liquidated on 23–24 September 1943[23] under the command of Oberscharführer Bruno Kittel.

[citation needed] A small group of Jews remained in Vilna after the liquidation of the ghetto, primarily at the Kailis and HKP 562 forced labour camps.

[23] Inmates of HKP 562 repaired automobiles for the German Army; the camp was commanded by the Wehrmacht Major Karl Plagge who, with the cooperation of his officers and men, was able to shield the Jewish auto-workers from much of the abuse slave laborers were ordinarily subjected to.