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Jewish settlement began in the 14th century, when Jews were invited into Lithuania by the Grand Duke Vytautas. Later in that century, Vilnius became a centre of Jewish Orthodox resistance to the Hasidic religious movement then sweeping eastern Europe. Gaon Street in the centre of the city's old town is named after the Gaon or "Genius" of Vilna, the rabbi who led the Orthodox, and whose prayer house stood on that street until it was demolished by the Nazis together with most of the rest of the ghetto.
Before the Holocaust, Jews made up 7,6 percent of the population of what is now Lithuania, and a much larger proportion of Kovno and Vilnius. Many Lithuanian Jews had also moved to Latvia, and there was a small population of 5,000 or so in Estonia. The Nazis were to wipe out those populations almost completely, and today the few thousand that remain are being steadily diminished by emigration.
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