OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT | EARLIER OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER | 2023-2024 “WORKING GROUP” ON VILNA CEMETERY | LIST OF MEMBERS | MOUNTING OPPOSITION TO THE NEW MUSEUM/MEMORIAL PROJECT | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES | HUMAN RIGHTS | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS
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VILNIUS—The following is a full translation of the July 25th Lithuanian television evening news segment, on its flagship Panorama program, of that day’s demonstration led by the Vilnius Jewish Community against plans to permanently erase the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery by refurbishing (instead of demolishing) a hated Soviet eyesore. Demolition would make way for the respectful restoration of the most important Jewish cemetery in the Lithuanian lands of Northeastern Europe.
JUMP TO TRANSLATION. TO SCREENSHOTS.
Some of the speakers in the Panorama segment, including Faina Kukliansky and Professor Jurgita Verbickienė, were members of the recent government “Working Group”. Among those who see that group as a rigged entity are Rabbi Elchonon Baron, Rabbi S.J. Feffer, and Professor Bernard Fryshman. See Defending History’s section on the Working Group’s 2023-2024 history; the list of members (including “Orthodox representatives” engineered by the Good Will Foundation, the Conference of European Rabbis and, allegedly, the American Jewish Committee); the dissenting opinion of the one Working Group member who stood up for the cemetery, Professor Sid Leiman, the internationally acknowledged academic expert on the cemetery’s history; and a list of the growing roster of international opposition to the government’s latest plans.
The “Proposals” document for a museum/memorial were furtively circulated last February in an undated, unverified document, which itself seems to omit the main point: that a conference/event center with seating capacity for thousands is being planned for the middle of the most sacred Jewish cemetery in the land. Such a fate would, critics say, never befall a cemetery of a half a millennium’s vintage where, peradventure, great personalities of the Christian majority population lay interred, in plots purchased freehold by their families, for perpetuity, in the heart of an EU/NATO capital city.
Why did the evening news folks omit even a snippet of their major interview with Rabbi Elchonon Baron at the demonstration? Was it the content? Watch the video on youtube.
There has been some particular consternation at the lack of even the most elementary empathy for Jewish sensibilities by the current Professor of Judaic Studies at Vilnius University, hired to replace a specialist professor in the field who dared publicly disagree with antisemitic prosecutions of Holocaust survivors who joined the anti-Nazi resistance, and with Holocaust revisionism. Some observe an analogy to generally concurrent personnel shifts those years to cleanse museums, state-sponsored “Jewish” centers of varying kinds, and painfully, even the official “Jewish community” (once effectively it too became a state-sponsored entity) of scholars who might now and then take the view of the minority rather than deploy “Jewish things” for the public relations needs of the state’s political and history-revisionist units. The instrumentalization of Judaic Studies and Yiddish Studies particularly, on behalf of far-right ultranationalist state policies, and the heavy investments in that instrumentalizing, are topics that will no doubt be studied in detail one day, especially in the context of the history of efforts to rewrite the history of the Holocaust. Around 96.4% of Lithuanian Jewry was annihilated during the Holocaust, one of the highest rates of “Holocaust success” in all of wartime Europe. Now, in 2024, a group from the tiny remnant of today’s Lithuanian Jews, led by their elected chairperson, has politely protested, and pleaded with the government for their ancestor’s graves to be in a cemetery, not a museum/memorial complex. Might not the incumbent Jewish Studies professor at Vilnius University have shown them the slightest respect?
To the contrary. In the comments translated below, Vilnius University’s top Judaic Studies specialist seems rather more concerned about preserving memorabilia of rock and roll and basketball from her 1980s Soviet youth than the integrity of tens of thousands of Jewish graves in Vilnius’s old Jewish cemetery. Graves including scholars and thinkers whose works are studied around the world today. The invoking of Lithuanian independence here is a red herring. The eloquent single dissenting voice in the Working Group, Prof. Leiman’s, made very clear that a restored cemetery could and would have a monument dedicated to Lithuanian independence and other aspects dear to all the citizens and friends of Lithuania. No such arguments have been advanced to save from demolition the other Soviet eyesores whose “landmark status” was withdrawn in recent years. Moreover, arguments about the Soviet Brutalist building being some “unique architectural treasure” have likewise been debunked.
There has also been grave disappointment at the culture minister’s “sudden” inability to understand that a cemetery is a cemetery, not an assembly hall for today’s citizens. What cultural distinction is more ancient and universal in the annals of civilization? Or is this cancelled when it comes to Lithuanian Jewry? His main expressed concern is a “living” building. Would he be saying this if it were a Lithuanian cemetery ravaged by the Soviets, where thousands of stones could be restored based on historic records? Or would he just say that a cemetery is a cemetery, not a conference hall for the living, and that it needs to be restored, with assembly facilities for the currently living suitably erected elsewhere.
This translation appears on the eve of the Jewish Fast Day Tíshebov (Tisha B’Av), which commemorates the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple and the start of the Jewish diaspora. In recent years, a group of Christian and Jewish citizens have on this day gathered at the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery to implore authorities to abandon plans for convention centers and memorial assembly halls, to knock down the Soviet eyesore, and lovingly restore this most sacred Jewish site in Lithuania.
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Panorama, LRT TV, 25 July 2024
At: https://www.lrt.lt/mediateka/irasas/2000352196/panorama-su-vertimu-i-gestu-k. Time code: 23:28–27:07.
Marijus Žiedas [host]: Following the Government’s acceptance of the proposal to establish the memorial of the Old Jewish Cemetery at Šnipiškės, a protest took place next to the former Vilnius Palace of Concerts and Sports. According to the participants, the Jewish tradition forbids all activity at cemetery sites. The Minister of Culture says that, as the Government was considering the verdict, commemoration of Jews was the main priority. The protesters claim that they have not been consulted. Part of the Jewish community is happy with the decision.
Julius Norvila [independent intellectual, longtime DH author, holding a historical drawing]: This, indeed, is the cemetery gate. This is the historical cemetery gate. And here we see Gediminas’s Castle and, as well, so to say, we see Gediminas’s Castle in perspective.
Reporter [referring to a Defending History commissioned visualization of cemetery restoration]: The drawing depicts the Old Jewish Cemetery at Šnipiškės. This was one of the banners that a small group of protesters brought to the rally by the Vilnius Palace of Concerts and Sports. Last week, the Government accepted the proposal to establish a Jewish memorial in the Palace of Sports and its surroundings.
Arkadij Kurliandčik [member of the Vilnius Jewish Community]: To carry out activities there, in the Palace, it needs to be reconstructed, because the building is falling apart and one can do nothing here without a reconstruction. So we are against any sort of construction or reconstruction work here.
Reporter: The protesters argue that this is a cemetery.
Aleksandras Černovas [chairperson of the Vilnius Jewish Community]: We are and we will always be against any activities that could take place here, if we have already agreed that this is a Jewish cemetery. I have read the text carefully and found it suspicious. One gets the impression that it will not be a memorial, but rather a functional building that will have certain spaces and some sort of activities will be carried out in it.
Arkadij Kurliandčik: The thing that was done in the Soviet times, it was done exactly to show that the Soviets, they did not give a damn about the Law, or the traditions, and so on.
Reporter: The Minister of Culture says that, while considering the decision on the fate of the Palace of Sports, the main task was precisely the commemoration of Jews. And, in the working group formed by the Government, there were people who had the sensitivity to understand this issue.
Simonas Kairys [Minister of Culture]: Not so long ago, we were talking, or, rather, there was an active discussion about a congress center or some, well, similar object of business or business tourism, and now we are looking for a way, what could be there, and we are talking about a memorial, which would be both respectful and, at the same time, a living thing.
Faina Kukliansky [chairperson of the Lithuanian Jewish Community]: In my opinion, the Government has found the best and wisest possible way, first of all, to fence off the cemetery territory so that people wouldn’t bring their dogs for a walk or go for walks themselves, and thus expressed its respect.
Reporter: Vilnius University professor Jurgita Verbickienė says that the place is multi-layered, therefore, all decisions are compromises. According to her, the Jewish tradition has no such thing as a former cemetery, so it is a place of respect, as well as a demonstration of Soviet heritage politics. It is also a place where the freedom of Lithuania begins.
Dr. Jurgita Verbickienė [professor of Judaic Studies at Vilnius University]: This is a place where the Sąjūdis[1] founding conference took place, and it’s a place where the wake of the January Events’[2] victims took place, and, if we went even a bit further back, we would also clearly see that it is a place where basketball matches[3], which also unified the nation, took place, and a place where Roko Maršas[4] took place.
Reporter: The working group suggested dedicating at least 75% of the memorial to the Jewish Cemetery, the people buried there, and Jewish life in Lithuania. The remaining quarter would be devoted to the Soviet policy of desecrating the cemetery, the building’s history and role in the Lithuanian independence movement.
Translator’s notes:
[1] The Reform Movement of Lithuania, known as simply Sąjūdis (“Movement”), was a political formation that led to Lithuanian independence from the Soviet Union in 1990. Its founding conference took place in the Vilnius Palace of Concerts and Sports on 22-23 October, 1988.
[2] Confrontation between civilian inhabitants of Lithuania and the Soviet Armed Forces, known as the January Events (Sausio įvykiai), took place on 11-13 January, 1991. On 13 January, 1991, the Soviet Army killed 14 civilian defenders of Vilnius. They were killed near the Television Tower, not the cemetery, but they indeed lay in state at the Palace of Concerts and Sports.
[3] Namely, the famous basketball matches between Žalgiris Kaunas and CSKA Moscow for the title of the USSR Premier Basketball League from 1985 to 1987.
[4] The March of Rock (Roko maršas) was a rock and roll music festival held in various Lithuanian cities, including Vilnius, from 1987 to 1989, which helped spread the ideas of Sąjūdis to young people.
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SCREENSHOTS FROM THE 25 JULY 2024 EDITION OF LRT’S PANORAMA:
