DOCUMENTS | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT: SAGA OF 2015-2026 | EARLIER OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER PROJECT | COMMENT BY ANDRIUS KULIKAUSKAS, SID LEIMAN, JULIUS NORWILLA, DOVID KATZ | 2023-2024 “WORKING GROUP” ON VILNA CEMETERY | LIST OF MEMBERS | MOUNTING OPPOSITION TO “COMPROMISE’ MUSEUM PROJECT” | THE USCPAHA | THE CPJCE | THE AJC | THE CER | THE GWF | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | HUMAN RIGHTS
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Editor’s note: The following is an English translation of the statement posted at the 17 September 2026 opening of the Seimas exhibition “The Jewish Cemetery in Šnipiškės, Vilnius” in the Stained Glass Gallery of the Seimas, Lithuania’s Parliament. The exhibition, running from 17 to 24 September, is being presented under the auspices of Member of Parliament Emanuelis Zingeris. (whose own statement is online). The exhibition was prepared by Artūras Imbrasas together with the association Gerbkime kapines (“Respect Cemeteries”). The creative team also included the association’s chair, Rūta Bloštein, as well as Arkadij Kurliandčik, Andrius Kulikauskas and Edmundas Kulikauskas. The original Lithuanian statement posted at the exhibition is available online. It is thr third of the exhibitions’s eighteen panels posted on the Gerbkime kapines website.
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What Is Lithuania Choosing Today?
The Gerbkime kapines (“Respect the Cemeteries”) Association seeks to ensure that the Lithuanian state respects the Jewish faith and honors those buried here; fulfills the pledge of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to protect them; investigates and publicizes the historical facts; identifies the crimes committed by the Soviet regime; legally recognizes the entire original territory as a cemetery; safeguards its dignity and maintains it properly; allows the international Jewish community to restore the cemetery; and, in doing so, restores justice.
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The tsarist authorities did not “relocate” the cemetery; they closed it to new burials. About 25 percent of the territory was confiscated for the construction of a fortress. The remainder was left untouched because it provided a convenient field of fire.
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Although a small amount of compensation was paid in some cases to relatives of those buried on the confiscated land, this was the city’s oldest burial ground and nearly 400 years had passed since its first burials. The number of surviving relatives was therefore extremely small. We do not know whether the Jewish community was given any meaningful opportunity to move the graves, particularly since the fortress was built in only six months, at a time when the tsarist authorities were brutally suppressing the uprising of 1831.
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The portion of the cemetery that had not been confiscated remained undisturbed for more than another century, until the Soviets finally destroyed it in 1955.
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The Soviet authorities permitted only a few graves to be moved. The virtually extinguished Jewish community of Vilnius was able, at its own expense, to transfer only the remains of the Vilna Gaon and several others buried beside him in his mausoleum
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All of theoriginal burials remained in place. Only the aboveground remains of the cemetery — the gravestones — were destroyed.
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Construction of the Sports Palace destroyed the central part of the cemetery grounds, but burials remained in the surrounding areas, as was clearly demonstrated by archaeological surveys carried out in 1995, 2002 [and geophysical ground radar surveys conducted in 2007-2008].
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The remaining areas have never been investigated. To this day, they contain both graves disturbed during the installation of utility lines and burials that have never been disturbed.
For Jews, a cemetery is an ETERNALLY sacred place, and graves must remain undisturbed.
Under the laws of the Republic of Lithuania, harmonized with international legal instruments, the territory of a cemetery constitutes a sacred monument and is protected regardless of whether visible external features survive.
Neither the Lithuanian Jewish Community nor many international Jewish organizations have ever demanded — and do not now demand — that the territory of this cemetery be transferred to them as real estate. They ask only that the graves of their ancestors — inhabitants of Lithuania — be respected, and that Lithuania’s laws and Jewish religious law be observed.