Vilnius

Napoleon called Vilna the "Jerusalem of the North." For centuries, in the middle of nowhere, it was an extraordinarily advanced center of civilization where Jews were the single largest constituency of the population. In 1916, there were 148,840 inhabitants of Vilna, of which 61,263 were Jews. There has never been a place anywhere in the world with this Jewish demographic density. Vilnius tells the story of the highly methodical eradication of the Vilna Jews during World War Two, and the events of the interwar period (1920–1940) that enabled the Nazis to accomplish this.