OPINION | 2023-2024 “WORKING GROUP” ON VILNA CEMETERY | LIST OF MEMBERS | MOUNTING OPPOSITION | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT | EARLIER OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER | INVOLVEMENT OF THE AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE (AJC) | CONFERENCE OF EUROPEAN RABBIS (CER) | THE “CPJCE” | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES
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VILNIUS—The tragi-comic charade of the “museum & memorial complex” in the middle of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Shnípishok, today’s Šnipiškės district of modern Vilnius, capital of modern democratic Lithuania) took another bizarre turn today. A triumphant BNS press release, speaking for the government, gives the misimpression of universal agreement to setting up a museum in the huge Soviet ruin plonked in the cemetery’s heart. This would be the only museum on the planet in a Jewish cemetery. It would be surrounded by thousands of extant Jewish graves (not stones or memorial houselets; those were all pilfered by the Soviets; a vast number can be reconstructed thanks to photos and transcriptions from the most important Jewish cemetery in the Lithuanian lands).
The media coverage did not so much as mention the renewed and mounting international opposition, or the public protest and dissent issued by a single courageous member of the state commission (“Working Group”) appointed to come up with solutions. Why not? Does not a free media opt to inform readers of an extant second opinion?
Two visions for the major Jewish cemetery in Northeastern Europe (DH artist’s visualizations not to scale)
The English and Lithuanian versions carried by LRT today are quite similar with one striking exception: the Lithuanian version contains a prominent photo of famed playwright Marius Ivaškevičius, one of the members of the “Working Group” set up in 2023. But there is no photo — or mention — of the one member who had the courage to speak out and issue a dissenting opinion. Following the conclusion of the 2015-2021 saga of the “convention center in the cemetery” proposal, people of good will felt certain the hated Soviet monstrosity would have its landmark status removed (like so many others have in recent years), and that it would be demolished in order to make way for loving restoration of what would become one of the great historic sites of modern — and eternal — Vilnius.
Instead, greedy business interests, corrupt politicians, suave antisemitically motivated forces, and “coopted Jews” have been micro-engineered into collectively providing a rubber stamp for what is rapidly turning into a de facto event center with memorial exhibits clumsily divided into “75% Jewish and 25% Lithuanian” as if this is a crass flea market grade negotiation of heritage of those whose right to lie in peace has been so grievously violated (“The 75-25 Museum”?). Of course the premises will be rented for mass income from major events.
Thought experiment: Imagine a 500 year old Lithuanian cemetery, containing the remains of the great heroes of the nation over that period. Would anyone be suggesting that a huge Soviet monstrosity be left in its very heart?
Yet of the members of the Working Group, only one, the eminent scholar of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery, Professor Sid Leiman, dared issue eloquent statements of protest that will live on in perpetuity for their courage and moral clarity (whether or not they are mentioned in today’s press reports here in Vilnius). At some point, the “thinking” which went into including him in the Working Group, and then failing to mention his public dissent when the group’s results are being misrepresented as unanimous, will no doubt be analyzed. Will his fellow Working Group members at least see to it that a dissenting opinion is not erased from the history of their Vilnius misadventure?
On 22 February this year, the government released the Proposals document of the Working Group, with neither date nor stamp, as if it were some sort of semi-clandestine prank, not an august matter for an impartial commission to investigate honorably. Meanwhile, the macher from the American Jewish Committee (AJC) who allegedly brought in the Conference of European Rabbis (CER) to “fix things for the government” has just been awarded yet another government medal for “services to Lithuania” (previous medals). At the hub of the scandal sits the state-sponsored “Good Will Foundation” that disburses tens of millions of state restitution funds, and is c0-chaired by the same two non-rotating individuals on a permanent basis (said AJC leader plus the chairperson of the official “Lithuanian Jewish Community; see last week’s opinion piece by Arkady Kurliandchik). Today’s Vilnius media coverage of the cemetery “victory” is careful to explicitly invoke the AJC and its macher to give the museum-in-the-cemetery project the needed “Jewish cover.”
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The “Elephant in the Room”
Turning to the proposals, they are strangely silent about seating capacity. How many people will be attending events, clapping and cheering, and making use of toilets and sinks serviced by suitable drainage pipes routed through the cemetery? Is there one other Jewish cemetery on the planet that has suffered such indignities at the hands of a Working Group allegedly seeking to “preserve and enhance” its status? (Orwell-grade discourse actually shines through the one set of Working Group minutes released.) The Working Group not only gave its blessing to the Soviet Sports Palace, it insisted on making its desecration of the Jewish cemetery a permanent one.
Given that the official state Jewish Museum, the (excellent) Vilna Gaon Museum of Jewish History is presently endowed with six locations in Lithuania, that a huge Jewish museum is near completion in Sheduva, does anyone think that new exhibits will really fill the huge Soviet eyesore? No. This is a budding events center with some nice exhibits around the walls. According to the Inventory of Historical and Cultural Monuments of the Lithuanian SSR, Part 1 (Central Editorial Office of Encyclopedias: Vilnius 1988):
“In the middle part of the [sports] palace, there is a universal, transformable square (61 x 30 meters). The hall can host an audience of 3,200—5,400 people.”
In the original Lithuanian:
A question for all members of the Working Group: What is their opinion on the appropriate number of participants in events in a building in the middle of a Jewish cemetery? And what would be their opinion if it were a Christian Lithuanian cemetery in Vilnius? An Old English cemetery in London? a Colonial-era cemetery in Washington? Or, indeed, an ancient Jewish cemetery in Israel?