OPINION | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT: 2015-2025 | EARLIER OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER | 2023-2024 “WORKING GROUP” ON VILNA CEMETERY | LIST OF MEMBERS | MOUNTING OPPOSITION TO THE NEW “MUSEUM PROJECT” | THE USCPAHA | THE CPJCE | THE AJC | THE CER | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES | HUMAN RIGHTS | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS
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VILNIUS—A report today on the “Made in Vilnius” news portal provides text of the latest statement from the mayor, Valdas Benskunskas, on the pained subject of the fate of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt in the historic Shnípishok area, today’s Šnipiškės district of modern Vilnius. These are excerpts from the quotes provided, in English translation:
“Ideally, after preparing the technical project (of the conference center near the Seimas — BNS), we would like to transfer it to the Ministry of Economy and Innovation for implementation, because it is not the city’s function. (…) But if the Government is distracted and does not make the necessary decisions, there is a possibility that the city can take this project further forward, because the significance and meaning in it are very great.
“If we made all the plans, the competitive advantage would be enormous and all the enterprising, wealthy people would travel to Vilnius to hold their conferences.”
For icing on the cake, BNS summarizes another part of the mayor’s speech: “According to him, investments in the development of the center, which could reach about 100 million euros, will pay off in about eight to nine years through taxes paid to the state.”
A response circulated by DefendingHistory.com to readers today counters that:
“True friends of Lithuania, people who love the country and its delightful capital, Vilnius, will hasten to warn the mayor that it would bring untold shame upon his city and country to erect a convention center where people will attend concerts and conventions, drink at bars and flush toilets, surrounded by thousands of extant graves. Many of the international luminaries the mayor dreams of entertaining there will not set foot in a structure erected to humiliate and desecrate the thousands of Jewish citizens of Vilnius who lie buried there. It is precisely because of the Holocaust that those thousands do not have on-site descendants to defend their ancestors’ graves, paid for in freehold in perpetuity by the families of the deceased.
“The rights of the dead to lie in peace are human rights, and the rights of minority cemeteries have been reconfirmed both by the European Union and the United States Congress.
“The simple question for Mayor Benskunas, and all of Lithuania’s political leaders is this: Would any of this be happening if this were a cemetery of the Christian ethnic Lithuanian majority? If Lithuania’s great scholars and heroes were buried there over five centuries? Beyond human rights, this is about equal rights.”
Plans are under way to renew the international petition initiated by Vilnius native and resident Ruta Bloshtein, a leading figure in the city’s small Orthodox Litvak community, which garnered over 53,000 signatures internationally. That effort was suspended in 2021 when the then prime minister, Ingrida Šimonytė, cancelled the project explaining that it is a Jewish cemetery. This journal was the first to express congratulations and to encourage many others to do so. According to sources, the petition will now be revived.
A year ago, the Vilnius Jewish Community mounted its own spirited peaceful demonstration with the simple message that “A Cemetery is a Cemetery is a Cemetery.” This was followed by an ultranationalist far-right demonstration featuring nationalist chants on top of the extant Jewish graves. There was a solitary protester at the event, the Vilnius Jewish Community’s Arkady Kurliandchik.
Of the many twists and turns the saga has taken, including Wikileaks revelations of secret payments to a London-based Jewish cemetery “preservation” project to greenlight the convention center, are involvements of the USCPAHA (an Amercan taxpayer-supported outfit set up to preserve Jewish cemeteries), the CPJCE, CER, AJC, LJC, WJRO, AZM and other major Jewish organizations who have failed to stand up for one of the most universal human rights of all: the right of minorities to have their own cemeteries with the same moral certitude applicable to the majority population. To rest in peace.