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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Professor Sid Leiman, the Distinguished Professor of Jewish History and Literature at Touro University’s Graduate School of Jewish Studies, reacted today to Rabbi Sholom Ber Krinsky’s declaration on the fate of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery in the following letter to the editor. See also Prof. Leiman’s earlier publications in Defending History.

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Superb declaration by Vilnius’s devoted Rabbi, Rabbi Sholom Ber Krinsky, of why Vilna’s Old Jewish Cemetery needs to be preserved and restored, and not buried under a Sports Stadium, or a Convention Center, or a Museum of any kind — whether Lithuanian or Jewish.

It is a shame that the very site that Vilna’s greatest rabbi in the Interwar period — Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzenski — saved from destruction, is about to be destroyed by the Lithuanian government. Vilnius was under Polish rule then, and the government tried to wrest the Old Jewish Cemetery from Vilna’s Jewish community.

Rabbi Godzenski, who also served as the leading halachic authority of world Jewry at the time, defied the Polish authorities, rallied world Jewish leaders for support, and saved the Old Jewish Cemetery. He ruled out any compromise, such as allowing some of Vilna’s most famous rabbis, including the Gaon of Vilna, to be moved elsewhere for reburial, so that all others in the cemetery (men, women, and children) could be buried under the new construction.

He stated unabashedly that a Jewish cemetery is a sacred site that may not be desecrated, and had the full support of Vilna’s pre-war Jewish community. It’s because of him that the Old Jewish Cemetery survived the Holocaust, and we have photographs of tombstones that were still standing in place in 1950. It was under Soviet rule that many of the tombstones were stolen, which ultimately led to the destruction of many of the tombstones.

The burials are mostly still in place, despite the construction of the Sports Palace under Soviet rule, in 1971. Today a monstrosity, the Sports Palace needs to be demolished, and the Old Jewish Cemetery restored in a manner fitting for its setting in beautiful, modern, democratic, international Vilnius.

Sid Leiman