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by Meir Bulka (Ramat Gan, Israel & Lublin, Poland)

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For many years, I have followed with deep concern the situation of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramont (Shnípishok, today’s Šnipiškės), located beneath all around the ruin of the Soviet-era Sports Palace. The site, historically known as the major cemetery in Lithuania, remains a place of great religious and cultural significance for the Jewish people and for the history of Vilnius itself. Last summer’s announcement confirming intentions to turn it into a national conference center is alarming to good-willed Jews and non-Jews alike. The feelings were reinforced by last week’s event promoting the desecration, for some reason held at Lithuania’s national Academy of Sciences.

It is difficult to reconcile the cemetery’s importance, being the resting place of great Lithunian Jewish scholars going back half a millenniu, with the never-ending plans to renovate the former sports hall and transform it into a convention center on the grounds of this cemetery. Such a development risks being perceived as a desecration of a historic burial site and as a profound affront to the memory of the Jews of Vilnius.

In September, I wrote to the Minister of Culture, in an official letter from the Institute of Holocaust Research at Bar Ilan University, and our NGO J-nerations, based in Lublin, Poland, proposing a simple science-based solution. The proposal? That a professional, non-invasive scientific survey be conducted by an independent specialist firm in order to clarify the exact extent of the current burials beneath and around the building, and throughout the cemetery site. As a researcher of Jewish cemeteries in Europe, I am prepared to facilitate this Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) investigation.

It is a widely accepted archaeological and geophysical method used to identify and map marked and unmarked graves without disturbing the ground. Such a survey would provide clear, objective data regarding the presence and location of human remains and would assist the authorities in taking well-informed decisions that fully respect both Lithuanian heritage and Jewish religious sensitivities. (There is of course one factor not covered by the science: In Jewish law, the cemetery is eternal and inviolable even when vandals of various kinds have removed remains.)

To date, we have not received a response to our constructive, science-based proposal. I respectfully urge the Ministry, and the other concerned branches of the Lithuanian government, to consider this initiative as an opportunity:

• To demonstrate Lithuania’s commitment to the preservation of cultural and religious heritage, including the heritage of its historic Jewish minority, of whom around 96% were annihilated in the Holocaust.

• To avoid irreversible harm to a historic cemetery that remains sacred to many throughout the world.

• To set a responsible precedent for how historic burial grounds are treated in the context of urban development in a way that will bring honor and dignity to Lithuania’s commitment to the equal rights of all its peoples, including the rights of the dead to be left in peace, including in circumstances where genocide has occurred.