The Holocaust began in Lithuania in July of 1941 when the Nazis started rounding up Jews from Vilnius and began mass shootings in burial pits that had been previously excavated in the nearby Ponar Forest. As the Soviet army inched closer to taking Lithuania in 1943 the Nazis gathered 80 Jews to burn the evidence of their murders of 100,000 people. These prisoners knew that they would be the Nazi's last victims and hatched a plan to construct an escape tunnel from inside the shack where they were living inside of a burial pit. 12 escapees survived.