OPINION | HUMAN RIGHTS | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH ISSUES | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT | OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER
◊
Is this what “Jewish cemetery restoration in Holocaust-stricken Europe” looks like? For details of the results here of new builds and refurbishments on Jewish cemeteries, click on the image. As the buildings on the cemetery were going up, there was a long parade of government (and builders’) assurances that the dignity of the cemetery would not be violated there. Photo by William Pahl for DefendingHistory.com
◊
by Dovid Katz
◊
On the 4th of May this year, Defending History published the official document issued by the Office of the Prime Minister of Lithuania announcing the members appointed to the latest commission (“Working Group”) on the fate of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in the historic Shnípishok district, today’s Šnipiškės district of modern Vilnius). In the accompanying Opinion piece, the DH community expressed the view that “Never before has a state commission been empaneled on such a ‘Water is wet’ question. Of course the capital’s last Soviet eyesore (and symbol of brutal foreign domination) should be demolished and the 500 year old Vilna Jewish Cemetery restored. […] The argument that it can’t be touched because its preservation status is sacred and immutable to the end of time is an insult to modern democratic Lithuania and all who hold her dear.”
Scarcely had the document become public, when local media reported that the Working Group would be deciding what to do with the Soviet ruin preserved, rather than providing for frank discussion on the actual issue: whether to rescind the preservation order (as has been done with other Soviet eyesores) and actually restore the cemetery. By the time of the first actual meeting of the Working Group (1 June), the government published a photo gallery, and then a statement in English, explaining candidly the purpose: “the Working Group has convened for its inaugural meeting to develop proposals and a concept for commemorating the old Jewish cemetery of Šnipiškės and establishing a memorial site within the current Vilnius Concert and Sports Palace.” Orwell would have loved this one: a commission to decide the fate of the cemetery not even allowed to consider removal of the huge Soviet dump in its center, but told that the cemetery will be commemorated within the (preserved, restored, refurbished) Soviet dump. As if a cemetery can be restored in a Soviet building whose removal is the sine qua non for said restoration (see the takes of Norwilla, Kulikauskas, and Katz.)
„אַ גוט מאָרגן, רבותי! ברוכים הבאים! קומט זשע אַרײַנעט אויף אונדזער ווילנער בית⸗עולם!“
