Reformed Evangelical Church (Vilnius)

Jewish Gravestone Steps of Reformed Evangelical Church in Central Vilnius Finally Removed

Posted on 21 January 2019 by Defending History

CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | ANTISEMITISM | CEMETERIES | HUMAN RIGHTS

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One of the stones with visible Jewish lettering stepped on for decades during its stint as a step at the front entrance of the Reformed Evangelical Church on central Vilnius’s Pylimo Street. Photo: DefendingHistory.com.

VILNIUS—More than five years after Defending History’s September 2013 article (“Where You Have to Step on Old Jewish Gravestones to go to Church”), almost four years after Julius Norwilla’s May 2015 impassioned plea (“A Protestant Pastor in Vilnius Speaks Out About Church Steps Still Made of Pilfered Jewish Gravestones”), and almost five since Genrich Agranovski’s 2014 survey (“The Stones Tell Me. After All, They Lived Here”) of Jewish gravestones pilfered for public space in Vilnius, the steps were finally removed last week in the face of mounting international pressure.

See Defending History reports over the years on the Jewish gravestones at the Reformed Evangelical Church in Vilnius

Posted in Cemeteries and Mass Graves, Human Rights, It Pays to Defend History: Success Over the Years..., Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Reformed Evangelical Church (Vilnius) | Tagged Jewish cemeteries in Europe, Jewish cemetery in Liithuania, Jewish cemetery in Vilnius, Jewish gravestonees as steps, Jewish gravestones as paving stones, Reformed Evangelical Church (Vilnius) | Comments Off

Vilnius Mayor Plays with Fire: Yiddish, Pilfered Jewish Gravestones, and an Olympics of “Barbarism”

Posted on 11 November 2015 by Defending History

O P I N I O N / C E M E T E R I E S / P I R A M Ó N T / P A P E R T R A I L

by Dovid Katz

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VILNIUS—This city’s dashing young new mayor, Remigijus Šimašius, elected last spring, has now added Yiddish to the previously bilingual (Lithuanian-English) signs, wrought of expensive metal in rounded-edged casement, in times of austerity for pensioners and others in town. These signs are being placed near Soviet-era edifices made of pilfered Jewish gravestones (matséyves) that are a blot on this charming East European capital. This is the latest model featured on the mayor’s office website:

Photo: Vilnius Municipality / Mayor’s Office.

Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Cemeteries and Mass Graves, Christian-Jewish Issues, Collaborators Glorified, CPJCE (London), Double Genocide, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Human Rights, Legacy of 23 June 1941, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Politics of Memory, Reformed Evangelical Church (Vilnius), Vilnius Mayor Remigijus Šimašius, Yiddish Affairs | Tagged Jewish cemeteries in Vilnius, Lithuanian-Jewish affairs, mayor of Vilnius, Piramont (Snipiskes), Remigius Simasius | Comments Off

A Protestant Pastor in Vilnius Speaks Out About Church Steps Still Made of Pilfered Jewish Gravestones

Posted on 4 May 2015 by Defending History

O P I N I O N

by Julius Norvila

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“And Rachel died and was buried on the road to Ephrath—the same is Beth-lehem. And Jacob set up a gravestone upon her grave, it is the Tomb of Rachel unto this very day.”

(Genesis 35, 19-20)

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Back in 1989 I had become a minister in our Reformed Evangelical Church here in Vilnius. The end of the 1980s in Lithuania had been a particularly pivotal period for church-state relations. The government changed its policy radically. There was a liberalization of religious activities and along with religious revivals came the idea of restitution of church properties that had been nationalized under the communist policies of the Soviet state. In order to bring to realization that idea, and to speed the process of restitution, we as reformed protestants organized a number of open air meetings and worship services on the street in front of historical church buildings in Vilnius and Kaunas, Lithuania’s two major cities.

Posted in Cemeteries and Mass Graves, Julius Norwilla, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Reformed Evangelical Church (Vilnius) | Tagged Christian-Jewish relations, Dovid Katz, Genrich Agranovski, Irina Guzenberg, Jewish cemeteries in Lithuania, Jewish gravestones in Lithuania, Julius Norvila, Julius Norwilla, Pinchos Fridberg, Reformed Evangelical Church Lithuania | Comments Off

Advertisement for Church Service Flaunts Congregation Stepping on Old Jewish Gravestones

Posted on 12 April 2015 by Defending History

CEMETERIES / REFORMED EVANGELICAL CHURCH / CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS

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VILNIUS—The website of the Reformed Evangelical Church services this weekend advertised today’s Sunday service with a previously-made photo of pastors and worshippers posing for a photograph with their shoes pressing into the pilfered Jewish gravestones, some of which still have visible writing, of which the steps to the church are made. The church has still issued no public statement on its retention of the Soviet-era made-of-pilfered-Jewish-gravestones steps even after its much-celebrated reconstruction and restoration less than a decade ago.

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Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Cemeteries and Mass Graves, Christian-Jewish Issues, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Reformed Evangelical Church (Vilnius) | Tagged Chief rabbi of Lithuania, Christian-Jewish relations, Christianity in post-Soviet space, Evangelikų reformatų bažnyčia, Jewish cemeteries in Lithuania, Jewish gravestones in Lithuania, Lithuania, Rabbi Chaim Burshtein, Reformed Evangelical Church in Lithuania | Comments Off

The Stones Tell Me. After All, They Lived Here.

Posted on 16 May 2014 by Defending History

O P I N I O N

by Genrich Agranovski

Genrich Agranovski is co-author (with Irina Guzenberg) of Vilnius: Sites of Jewish Memory as well as other works on Jewish Vilna. This comment was translated from the Russian by Ludmila Makedonskaya. See also DH’s section on old Jewish cemeteries and mass graves.

At the beginning of the 1990s a commission tentatively called “Memorial” was founded at the Jewish Community of Lithuania. Its aims included collecting information about the mass murder and burial sites of the World war II period, Jewish cemeteries, as well as other issues connected with the memory of the perished. The commission was headed by Joseph Levinson. Being a member of the commission, I was in charge of collecting information on Jewish cemeteries in Vilnius. There had been two large Jewish cemeteries in Vilnius before the war: the “old one,” founded, according to Vilna Jewish lore, at the end of the fifteenth century and used till 1830, and Zarechenskoye [“beyond the river”; in Yiddish Zarétshe] (Antokolskoye), which was used from 1828 up to June 1941. The latter was the biggest in the city. According to the Jewish ethnographer Solomon Shik, seventy thousand people had been buried there by 1937. In Soviet times both cemeteries were destroyed and the gravestones were used for construction purposes.

Posted in Bold Citizens Speak Out, Cemeteries and Mass Graves, Genrich Agranovski, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Reformed Evangelical Church (Vilnius) | Tagged Genrich Agranovski, Jewish cemeteries in Vilnius, matseyves (matsevot) in Lithuania | Comments Off

Where You Have to Step on Old Jewish Gravestones to go to Church

Posted on 11 September 2013 by Defending History

C E M E T E R I E S / C H R I S T I A N – J E W I S H R E L A T I O N S

by Dovid Katz

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The following are translated (and edited) excerpts from a longer letter in Yiddish received from a survivor who has asked to remain anonymous, about the Jewish gravestones that form the steps going up to the Reformed Evangelical Church at Pylimo 18 in Vilnius.

Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Cemeteries and Mass Graves, Christian-Jewish Issues, Dovid Katz, Exotic Jewish Tourism, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Reformed Evangelical Church (Vilnius) | Tagged Antisemitism in Lithuania, Christian-Jewish relations, Jewish gravestones as steps to church, Lithuania, Reformed Evangelical Church in Vilnius, Reformed Evangelical Church Lithuania | Comments Off

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Scholars & journalists: When you use DH, please cite DH.

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Litvak Heritage

• Towns and cities

• Kaddish

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Yiddish

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Reformed Evangelical Church (Vilnius)

CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | ANTISEMITISM | CEMETERIES | HUMAN RIGHTS

O P I N I O N / C E M E T E R I E S / P I R A M Ó N T / P A P E R T R A I L

by Dovid Katz

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O P I N I O N

by Julius Norvila

◊

“And Rachel died and was buried on the road to Ephrath—the same is Beth-lehem. And Jacob set up a gravestone upon her grave, it is the Tomb of Rachel unto this very day.”

(Genesis 35, 19-20)

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CEMETERIES / REFORMED EVANGELICAL CHURCH / CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS

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O P I N I O N

by Genrich Agranovski

Genrich Agranovski is co-author (with Irina Guzenberg) of Vilnius: Sites of Jewish Memory as well as other works on Jewish Vilna. This comment was translated from the Russian by Ludmila Makedonskaya. See also DH’s section on old Jewish cemeteries and mass graves.

C E M E T E R I E S / C H R I S T I A N – J E W I S H R E L A T I O N S

by Dovid Katz

**Scholars & journalists: When you use DH, please cite DH.**