OPINION | 2023-2024 “WORKING GROUP” ON VILNA CEMETERY | WHO ARE THE MEMBERS? | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT | OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER | THE “CPJCE”  | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES | HUMAN RIGHTS

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VILNIUS—The major Jewish Orthodox publication Yated Ne’eman featured a full page eve-of-Passover protest today against the most recent Lithuanian government plans to desecrate the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in the Shnípishok/Šnipiškės district) by retaining, remodeling and converting a huge and widely hated Soviet dump plonked in the middle of the cemetery into a modern de facto museum commemorating an array of Jewish, Lithuanian and general historical issues. Religious Jews, secular humanists, and human rights activists for whom the rights of the deceased to lie in peace are indeed human rights, all continue to argue that the cemetery belongs to those buried in it. Thousands are still buried in this cemetery in plots purchased in perpetuity by their families over around half a millennium.

It is widely agreed that no Christian Lithuanian cemetery would be subject to such desecration. For news of the last year, including the appointment of yet another international commission (“The Working Group” with made-for show “coopted religious members”), Orwellian “minutes of the proceedings” released, and the courageous historic dissent of one American member of the commission, Professor Sid Leiman, please see Defending History’s continuous coverage of the last year, itself part of the much longer history (which Defending History has been covering in detail since 2015).

Today’s Yated Ne’eman protest is available as PDF, and is reproduced below. It was received as two PDFs. Please use the handles in the upper left hand corner to turn pages.