OPINION | CEMETERIES | COMMUNITY COMMEMORATION | LITHUANIA | LITVAK AFFAIRS | HUMAN RIGHTS

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Rašella Galinienė, elected head of the Jewish Community of Shavl (Šiauliai) speaks out to protest insensitive desecration of a Holocaust mass grave site where Jews of Yánishok (Joniškis) were massacred. Photo: Shavl Jewish Community.

Rašella Galinienė, elected head of the Jewish Community of Shavl (Šiauliai, northern Lithuania) has led a public call for removal of a series of sculptures erected by a nearby local government authority directly atop the actual graves, in the forest, of hundreds of murdered Jews of the shtetl Yánishok (or Yáneshik, today’s Joniškis). The issue has been reported on prominently in Lithuanian media, including on LRT TV, and the LRT news portal (where mechanical translation to English captures nearly all the text accurately). The media reports dwell on issues of permits, permissions, consultations and the difference of opinion between the Shavl community and the local authorities in the district where the forest mass grave is situated. They report accurately, that the late and long standing beloved leader of the Shavl community, Sania Kerbl (Kerbelis, 1963–2024) expressed — in concord with Jewish tradition and law of thousands of years standing — his staunch opposition to anything being constructed or erected on cemeteries and burial sites.

What is often missing in local East European media reports: the issues of human rights (including the rights of the deceased), the equality of treatment of majority and minority communities in the European Union and more generally, the Western democracies. Most notable at present is the simmering dispute over the future of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Shnípishok, today’s Šnipiškės district of modern Vilnius), where remains of many thousands of Vilna Jews, hailing from a period of around half a millennium still lie buried (though the stones on top were long ago pilfered by Soviet authorities). Powers that be want to restore a hated Soviet ruin to the status of modern assembly hall, offering as “concession” a museum component commemorating the annihilated Jewish community.

But that misses three salient points specific to actual human burial grounds (as opposed to other types of historic sites):

First, that a cemetery is a cemetery is a cemetery; it is not a place for convention centers or museums (not even commemorating the people buried there — there are plenty of other places for that).

Second, that the common sense concept that a cemetery is a cemetery is indeed adhered to “in real life” when it comes to the majority population. Here in Lithuania, nobody would dare recommend resurrecting an offensive Soviet ruin in the middle of a Lithuanian Christian cemetery where hundreds of years of Lithuanian leaders and scholars lay interred. Why is it different when it comes to an annihilated population? Because of the Holocaust there is no critical mass of descendants to fight locally for the preservation of the dignity of cemeteries, and alas, corrupt international Jewish organizations and leaders, including “Orthodox members of prime ministerial international working groups” and the like can apparently quite readily be bought with junkets, honors, medals and photo-ops.

Third, that the religion, faith system and civilization of the people buried on the site in question — all the more so in the case of genocide — must be respected. Jewish law, lore, and tradition strictly forbid excavations and disturbances of cemeteries.

One might add the perspective of memorials, like this one no doubt conceived by the sculptor and supported by local authorities with the best of intentions. Their purpose is to educate the local population and its new generations about the Holocaust, about what happens when ethnic animus, racism and othering of neighbors runs its course. About what happened in the very corner of the planet that they themselves inhabit. But to fulfill such noble purposes, the memorial needs to stand proudly in the center of town, not out in the forest, and be accompanied by an information stand accurately outlining the history of the Jewish people of this shtetl, their accomplishments locally and internationally, and how precisely it came to be that they all disappeared. Not to plonk it in the forest, where a very few times a year some folks come from afar to say kaddish, or when locals have a commemorative ceremony at a dignified grave site marked by a traditional gravestone (matséyve). The last wish of so many of the Holocaust survivors interviewed for the LYVA project over three decades was that an honest memorial, comprising the truth about the history, the life and the death of the shtetl, be erected right in the center of town.

But to return to the less reported-on new story out in the forest, where some five hundred of the Jews of Yánishok (Joniškis) are buried, and where a local government authority authorized handsome expenditures (in challenging economic times) for a series of 25 (!) bronze-on-concrete sculptures right on top of the graves, without consulting the nearby small remnant Jewish communities valiantly still there, let alone the major Lithuanian tradition rabbinical authorities mostly today in the United States and Israel.

For the Western international community, there lurks the additional stench of stereotyping and a certain brand of subtle and sometimes unintended or indeed subconscious antisemitism. That emerges from the implicit narrative. Close to 100% of the Jews of Yánishok were massacred, women, men and children alike. There was massive voluntary participation in the murders by “local patriots” who are sometimes even today glorified as “freedom fighters” (see on the events planned for June 2025, here and here). There exists in the forest a dignified marked-off area designating the area of the mass grave site, with a bilingual memorial stone. Groups from near and far can visit, pay their respects, say their prayers. And then what?

Then, suddenly, out of the clear blue sky, consulting none of the bona fide stakeholders, a local council plonks 25 statuettes right on top of the hundreds of remains of the human beings shot on site and left on top of each other in the earth. And this is where stereotyping comes into it, all the more offensive on an unwanted, inappropriate disturbance of a sacred cemetery: the sculptures include pocketbooks and briefcases, tools and implements, and other paraphernalia of making a living. Oh yes, those Jews sure know how to make money. Even in their grave in the forest. That is what is remembered. The single sculpture of a dreidel does not remotely come to the rescue here, not to mention that a dreidel (traditional top for festive games on the festive holiday of Chanukah) does not belong in a cemetery.

In the current environment, the courageous stance taken by elected Shavl community head Rašella Galinienė is an inspirational event that will go down with honor in the valiant, glorious and tragic history of Litvak Jewry. Hopefully, the local (or national) authorities will rapidly intervene to ensure the rapid and gentle removal of the sculpture complex to another location where the sculptor’s talents can be judged on the merits of the art, where the project’s purpose can be tooled to educate the people of today’s Joniškis that once upon a time there was also a Yánishok there, with text explaining their history, accomplishments and massacre, honestly, and — right on the town square.

— Dovid Katz