OPINION | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT: 2015-2025 | EARLIER OPPOSITION |  2023-2024 “WORKING GROUP” ON VILNA CEMETERY | LIST OF MEMBERS | MOUNTING OPPOSITION TO NEW “MUSEUM PROJECT” | USCPAHA  (UNITED STATES COMMISSION FOR THE PRESERVATION OF AMERICA’S HERITAGE ABROAD) | THE CPJCE (COMMITTEE FOR THE PRESERVATION OF JEWISH CEMETERIES IN EUROPE) | THE AJC (AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE) | THE CER (CONFERENCE OF EUROPEAN RABBIS) | THE GWF (GOOD WILL FOUNDATION) | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES | HUMAN RIGHTS

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VILNIUS—Lithuanian media (including Lrt.lt and Alfa.lt)  reported today that 53 signatories of Lithuania’s 1990 declaration of independence have signed a petition addressed to the nation’s president and prime minister calling on them to proceed rapidly with renovation of an old Soviet ruin in the heart of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Shnipishok, today’s Šnipiškės district). They demand preservation of the hated Soviet ruin to commemoration of national Lithuanian heroes of 1990 and 1991 whose universally acclaimed deeds and fate have no connection to this site — where ground radar has shown that thousands of Jewish graves lie undisturbed all around the hated Soviet relic. There is no mention of this, in other words that it is still a cemetery by anyone’s definition. There is however a “concession” that outside the building there would be some memorial to the “former” Jewish cemetery.

Would any of this be happening if this were a hallowed half-millennium old cemetery of the majority ethnicity and religion in the country? One housing national heroes of the majority? Have these signatories considered the damage to Lithuania’s standing in the West and the world by an irreparable act of desecration of the graves of thousands of Vilna citizens who have no descendants in town to fight for their graves (purchased in freehold perpetuity by their families) because of “something called the Holocaust”?

Possibly by coincidence, the announcement came on the eve of the first Passover seyder, when the few Jewish organizations and leaders who have spoken up could not react in real time because of the holiday. In recent months, both active rabbis on the Vilnius scene have spoken out eloquently. Rabbi Sholom Ber Krinsky, Chabad rabbi for 32 years, issued a powerful statement on this year’s March 11th independence day. Earlier, in January, Rabbi Elchonon Baron, president of JewishLita.org, was booed at a rally for the “convention center in the cemetery” convened (rather shamefully) at Lithuania’s Academy of Sciences during his one-minute protest speech at the rally. Meanwhile, a major international activist for preservation of Jewish cemeteries, Meir Bulka, continues to call for a new and complete non-intrusive ground-radar survey.

A question on a positive note:

Is there a single signatory of the declaration who will now speak up for preservation and restoration of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery as a matter of principle?

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UPDATE: DH editor’s response on Facebook of 6 April 2026.