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Lithuania’s prime minister announces:

National conference center will rise in center of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery

First responses on 23 July 2025: Defending History’s statement, and Rabbi Elchonon Baron’s public letter to the prime minister. Reversing years of alleged collusion with the political and commercial forces opposing restoration of the cemetery, both the AJC’s Andrew Baker and the LJC’S Faina Kukliansky issue clear statements of protest.

Other protests from recent years, including: Rabbi S.J. Feffer; proclamation by Litvak heads of yeshiva rabbis Moshe Hillel Hirsch of Slobodka, Reuven Feinstein of  New York, Osher Eliyahu Kalmanowitz of Mirrer Yeshiva, New York; Elya Baer Wachtfogel, Zichron Moshe, South Fallsburg, New York.

From earlier, including: Christian Bonneville, Alan Dershowitz, Rabbi Pini Dunner, Bernard Fryshman, Rabbi David Lau, Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, Serge Klarsfeld, Sid Leiman, Pastor Michael Maass, Rabbi Yekusiel Teitelbaum, Rabbi Warren Goldstein.

RUTA BLOSHTEIN’S PETITION REVIVED

APPROACHING 54,000 SIGNATURES

Voices of current and recent Vilnius residents, including: Ruta Bloshtein, Milan Chersonski (1937-2021), Rabbi S.J. Feffer, Pinchos Fridberg, Dovid Katz, Andrius Kulikauskas, Arkady Kurliandchik, Julius Norvila (Norwilla), Josif Parasonis.

Vilnius mayor complains he wasn’t informed, notes he is studying alternative site near the Seimas.

Having previously supported building projects on site, the state-sponsored “official” Jewish community head now threatens harm to Lithuania’s reputation for not having consulted her first. By contrast, the democratically run Vilnius Jewish Community, representing the capital’s living Jewish people, has consistently protested any & all plans other than loving restoration of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery as the cemetery that it is (with thousands still buried there). LRT’s 25 July report. Even the AJC, piqued at not being informed, speaks out forcefully for the first time. Similar first from MP E. Zingeris, who now says “former cemetery” is wrong place for conference center (but ignoring that there is nothing “former” about territory where thousands now lie buried). MP Vytautas Sinica applauds rise of conference center (27 July), citing his own participation in last summer’s anti-Jewish-cemetery demonstration (at which Arkady Kurliandchik was the sole counter-demonstrator).

All other Soviet monstrosities rightly targeted for demolition. But the Sports Palace — in the middle of the old Jewish cemetery — ruin is wrongly called architecturally unique. They are all over the former USSR. Sounds more like East European antisemitism. Far-right ultranationalists do not want a Big Jewish Thing in the capital of the city once known for centuries as Jerusalem of Lithuania.

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