OPINION | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT: SAGA OF 2015-2026 | EARLIER OPPOSITION | 2023-2024 “WORKING GROUP” ON VILNA CEMETERY | LIST OF MEMBERS | MOUNTING OPPOSITION TO NEW “MUSEUM PROJECT” | THE USCPAHA | THE CPJCE | THE AJC | THE CER | THE GWF | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | HUMAN RIGHTS
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by Andrius Kulikauskas
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Inset from photo below by E. Kulikauskas
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On March 18, 2026, twenty-three members of Lithuania’s parliament, Seimas, sponsored a bill to Promptly Renovate the Vilnius Concert and Sports Palace. On April 21, twenty-five members, representing all of Lithuania’s political parties, with the support of President Gitanas Nausėda, sponsored a revised bill On the Further Utilization of the Vilnius Concert and Sports Palace, cherishing it as a masterpiece of 20th century brutalist architecture which must be revived and exploited as a conference center and tourist site.
The tourist site would include a memorial and exhibit dedicated to the “former cemetery” — by which they mean Vilnius’s oldest Jewish cemetery. In 1965-1971, the Soviets desecrated the Cemetery with their brutalist masterpiece, destroying thousands of remains, mixing countless others into the foundations, and also leaving, past ground radar has suggested, possibly many thousands intact, as they were, all around the Vilnius Concert and Sports Palace. On May 12, Seimas gave preliminary approval, with 68 in favor, 4 against and 16 abstaining.
Photo: Edmundas Kulikauskas
Gerbkime kapines, an informal fellowship led by Ruta Bloshtein, Arkadij Kurliandchik, Edmundas Kulikauskas and Andrius Kulikauskas, joined by Regina Kopilevich, Chaimas Bargmanas, Valdas Valiūnas, Evaldas Balčiūnas and William Adan Pahl, is responding with an email writing campaign. The name of our group in English is Respect Cemeteries; in Yiddish: דרך⸗ארץ פאַר בית⸗עולמס — Derkhérets far Beséylems in Lithuanian Yiddish. The Yiddish word for cemetery comes from the ancient Hebrew term for “House of Eternity”.
Our campaign in 2020 was remarkably successful in convincing the Lithuanian government led by Ingrida Šimonytė to respect the Cemetery and abandon plans to renovate the Vilnius Concert and Sports Palace. We invite you to help us convince the new government led by Prime Minister Inga Ruginienė.
We’re asking us all to send emails to the Seimas Committee on Culture to respect the Cemetery and abandon all plans to renovate the Vilnius Concert and Sports Palace. The Committee on Culture is where further debate will take place.
You may write in English. Please address your letters to the Members of the Committee on Culture of the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania. Please email them to: priim@lrs.lt. Your email will be officially registered by Seimas. Each Committee member will get a copy.
We also invite you (only if you wish and feel comfortable doing so) to send us a copy of your letter to (via: ruta@kapines.com) so that we can share them publicly, notably through Defending History. We are interested to know the arguments you make and the reasons you care. We encourage you to mention in your letter the personal connections you may have to Lithuania and Vilnius and this Cemetery.
You may find helpful the sample letters below, in English and in Lithuanian. Please adapt them as ever suits you. You can also experiment with AI using your own best judgment! Thank you for spreading the word through social media!
You can attach relevant documents or images such as those below or simply add links to them.
Bnei Brak Rabbinical Court. Opinion and Holy Call
1940.10.22 Soviet Act of Expropriation of the Three Jewish Cemeteries in Vilnius
This is just the first step in our letter writing campaign this year. We’re warming up!
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Sample letter:
Respect Vilnius’s Historic Jewish Cemetery. Condemn the Soviet Palace.
Dear Members of the Committee on Culture of the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania,
The Grand Dukes of Lithuania protected the Vilnius Jewish Cemetery in Šnipiškės for centuries. There is evidence that thousands of bodies remain buried there. In 2025, the Chancellery of the Government of the Republic of Lithuania and the Vilnius City Municipality marked the boundaries of our historic cemetery with a stone wall. The signs instruct, “Please respect the solemnity of this place of eternal rest.”
I ask you to respect our cemetery and not allow any unrelated activities there. Abandon plans to renovate the Soviet Palace which desecrates our cemetery.
Jewish believers in Lithuania and abroad, and our many friends, are offended by any disrespect for this cemetery. Please respect our belief, and the belief of our ancestors, that a Jewish cemetery is not temporary, but eternal. All of Lithuania’s rabbis teach us this, and in the diaspora, the Lithuanian yeshivas rule likewise.
Let us unite in respecting the peace of this cemetery. Let us empathize with Jews who once defended it, and would defend it, but were murdered in the Holocaust.
On September 16, 1940, the Soviet authorities decided that the activities of the Vilnius Jewish community were “no longer compatible with the aspirations of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic”, liquidated it and transferred the cemetery under its control to the Vilnius City Municipality. (Documents LCVA f.401, a.2, b.518, l.6, 20) The Soviets committed further crimes by destroying the tombstones and then, in the middle of the cemetery, building a temple for themselves, the Vilnius Concert and Sports Palace.
Let us distance ourselves from these Soviet crimes. Let us educate future generations that a cemetery is eternal, and a building that violates it is only temporary.
Let the words of the Lithuanian anthem guide us, “May your children walk only in the paths of virtue.”
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In Lithuanian:
Ginkime Vilniaus žydų kapinių ramybę. Atsisakykime sovietų rūmų.
Gerbiamieji Lietuvos Respublikos Seimo Kultūros komiteto nariai,
Lietuvos Didieji Kunigaikščiai šimtmečius globojo Vilniaus žydų kapines Šnipiškėse. Tūkstančiai kūnų jose tebėra palaidoti. 2025 metais Lietuvos Respublikos Vyriausybės kanceliarija ir Vilniaus miesto savivaldybė šių kapinių ribas pažymėjo akmenine siena. Užrašai pamoko: “Amžinojo poilsio vietoje prašome laikytis rimties.”
Prašome šiose kapinėse atsisakyti visų su jomis nesusijusių veiklų. Atsisakykime sovietų rūmų.
“Tikinčius žydus Lietuvoje ir užsienyje žeidžia bet kokia nepagarba kapinėms. Gerbkime jų tikėjimą, kad kapinės nėra laikinos, o amžinos, kaip moko Lietuvos rabinai ir lietuviškų ješivų rabinai užsienyje.”
Įsipareigokime ginti šių kapinių ramybę. Atjauskime ją kadaise gynusius, kurie buvo išžudyti.
1940 m. rugsėjo mėn. 16 d. sovietų valdžia nusprendė, kad Vilniaus žydų bendruomenės veikimas “nebesuderinamas su Lietuvos Tarybinės Socialistinės Respublikos siekimais”, ją likvidavo ir jos žinioje esančias kapines perdavė Vilniaus miesto savivaldybei (dokumentai archyve: LCVA f.401, a.2, b.518, l.6, 20). Sovietai nusikalto toliau naikindami antkapius ir viduryje kapinių pastatydami sau šventyklą, Vilniaus koncertų ir sportų rūmus.
Atsiribokime nuo šių sovietų nusikaltimų. Auklėkime ateities kartas, kad kapinės amžinos, o jas pažeidę rūmai laikini.
Vadovaukimės Lietuvos himno žodžiais, “Tegul tavo vaikai eina vien takais dorybės.”