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 (UNITED STATES COMMISSION FOR THE PRESERVATION OF AMERICA’S HERITAGE ABROAD) | THE CPJCE (COMMITTEE FOR THE PRESERVATION OF JEWISH CEMETERIES IN EUROPE) | THE AJC (AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE) | THE CER (CONFERENCE OF EUROPEAN RABBIS) | THE GWF (GOOD WILL FOUNDATION) | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES | HUMAN RIGHTS | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS
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by Meir Bulka (Ramat Gan, Israel & Lublin, Poland)
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For many years, I have followed with deep concern the situation of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramont (Shnípishok, today’s Šnipiškės), located beneath all around the ruin of the Soviet-era Sports Palace. The site, historically known as the major Jewish cemetery in the lands of the Grad Duchy of Lithuania, remains a place of great religious and cultural significance for the Jewish people and for the history of Vilnius itself. Last summer’s announcement confirming intentions to turn it into a national conference center is alarming to good-willed Jews and non-Jews alike. The feelings were reinforced by last week’s event promoting the desecration, an event for some reason held at Lithuania’s National Academy of Sciences.
It is difficult to reconcile the cemetery’s importance, being the resting place of great Lithuanian Jewish scholars going back half a millennium, with the never-ending plans to renovate the former sports hall and transform it into a convention center on the grounds of this cemetery. Such a development risks being perceived as a desecration of a historic burial site and as a profound affront to the memory of the Jews of Vilnius.
In September, I wrote to the Minister of Culture, in an official letter from the Institute of Holocaust Research at Bar Ilan University, and our NGO J-nerations, based in Lublin, Poland, proposing a simple science-based solution. The proposal? That a professional, non-invasive scientific survey be conducted by an independent specialist firm, one with no prior contacts with any of the parties, in order to clarify the exact extent of the current burials beneath and around the building, and throughout the cemetery site. As a researcher of Jewish cemeteries in Europe, I am prepared to facilitate this Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) investigation.
UPDATE OF 21 JAN. 2026:
Having received no reply from the previous Minister of Culture in September, Meir Bulka re-sends the letter to the incumbent, Minister Vaida Aleknavičienė, hoping for a timely response.
It is a widely accepted archaeological and geophysical method used to identify and map marked and unmarked graves without disturbing the ground. Such a survey would provide clear, objective data regarding the presence and location of human remains and would assist the authorities in taking well-informed decisions that fully respect both Lithuanian heritage and Jewish (and non-Jewish) religious sensitivities. (There is of course one factor not covered by the science: In Jewish law, the cemetery is eternal and inviolable even when vandals of various kinds and periods have removed or crushed remains during construction or pillage.)
To date, we have not received a response to our constructive, science-based proposal. I respectfully urge the Ministry, and the other concerned branches of the Lithuanian government, to consider this initiative as an opportunity:
♦ to demonstrate Lithuania’s commitment to the preservation of cultural and religious heritage, including the heritage of its historic Jewish minority, of whom around 96% were annihilated in the Holocaust.
♦ to avoid irreversible harm to a historic cemetery that remains sacred to many throughout the world.
♦ to set a responsible precedent for how historic burial grounds are treated in the context of urban development in a way that will bring honor and dignity to Lithuania’s commitment to the equal rights of all its peoples, including the rights of the dead to be left in peace, including in circumstances where genocide has occurred.
Meir Bulka is founder of the NGO J-nerations, a Jewish forum for the preservation of the Jewish heritage of Poland and neighboring East European countries, and has been its director since its inception. The project is dedicated to preserving Jewish cemeteries and heritage sites, synagogues, graves of Tzadikim and stressing the use of scientific means to locate graves and mass graves. Bulka produces digital maps of Jewish cemeteries and heritage sites. He works to include discoveries related to the recognition of the Righteous Among the Nations (local Holocaust rescuers) with a view to the importance of the Righteous for the education of future generations, both Jewish and non-Jewish. In recent years, he increasingly appears as a partner in many studies regarding the Jewish heritage of Poland as well as in hundreds of articles and revelations related to the history of European Jewry that follow discoveries and scientific confirmations of major sites.
In 2008, a geophysical company from Haifa, Israel, was commissioned to do a ground radar survey. However, they were not permitted to temporarily remove any of the concrete slabs surrounding the Sports Palace building, preventing them from investigating. The full text of the relevant 3 Sept. 2008 press release has been published. The same company later allegedly “joined” the London CPJCE rabbis in blessing the convention center project in the middle of the cemetery (under unpublished terms), and the company’s director was flown in to Vilnius for the group photo on the “Day of Shame” (Dec. 2019). While a new survey must obviously be undertaken by an impartial company that has not been part of the Turto Bankas building project plans, it is illustrative to read what the 2008 press release, co-signed by a major Lithuanian scientist, had to say about all areas that they were permitted to do ground radar on. At the time, a subsequent “actual digging on top of graves” was also included (in those years ground radar per se was not accepted by all parties as reliable), and that had to be stopped because there were human bones everywhere in the fill, even just below ground level. The text of the 2008 press release:
3 September 2008
Press release
Conclusion of Geophysical Survey
Snipiskes Jewish Cemetery, Vilnius
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The Experts Group which met in May 2007 appointed Arieh Klein, a geotechnical consultant from Israel, and Gintautas Zabiela, a leading Lithuanian archaeologist, to oversee a geophysical and archaeological research program to try to find the boundaries of the Jewish cemetery in Snipiskes, Vilnius.
In June 2008 the Lithuanian Geological Survey signed contracts with Geotec, a geophysical survey company, to conduct the geophysical survey of the cemetery, and with Arieh Klein to supervise the survey. The actual survey was carried out from June 25 – July 6, 2008.
On Sept. 3, 2008, the results of the geophysical survey were presented by Mr. Amit Ronen of Geotec to Mr. Mockevicius and his team at the Lithuanian Geological Survey. Arieh Klein also presented his summary report and conclusions at the same meeting.
The main results of the geophysical survey show graves at the correct alignment (north-west to south-east) and at the relevant depths, further south than any of the previous maps, including those of the Historical Institute. There are graves in the south-west corner, under the grass and the paved area directly to the east of the new King Mindaugas buildings. The geophysical survey also showed that there are graves in the south-eastern corner, east of the memorial, again in lines along the correct alignment and at the relevant depths.
One conclusion that arose from the geophysical survey is that the southern boundary of the cemetery runs along Olimpieciu St. This finding, when combined with the results of previous archaeological surveys (laying of pipes, etc.) strengthens the conclusion of the Experts Group from May 2007 that the King Mindaugas buildings were erected within the boundaries of the Snipiskes Jewish cemetery.
It was impossible to determine the northern and eastern boundaries of the cemetery, since that part of the cemetery is covered with reinforced concrete plates, which prevented the geophysical equipment from penetrating into the ground underneath.
The owners of the cemetery did not agree to remove some of the concrete plates, in order to find the northern and eastern boundaries. Also, the geophysical survey team was not allowed to work in the southern part of the Zalgiris Stadium, just north of the northern fence of the parking area, in order to possibly confirm that no graves exist in this area. We hope that the government of Lithuania will come to an agreement with the owners of these areas, in order to allow the completion of the geophysical survey.
Unfortunately, the archaeological survey, which was meant to support the geophysical survey by uncovering the tops of some of the graves discovered in the geophysical survey, did not succeed. This was because in the first excavation, on the grassy area to the east of the Mindaugas buildings, many human bones were uncovered in the fill above the graves. The rabbinical authorities who supervised the archaeological excavation, demanded that the excavations cease, and they have not agreed to allow the renewal of the archaeological survey.