Tag Archives: Snipiskes cemetery

Please Email Lithuania’s Seimas Committee on Culture to Defend Vilnius’s Oldest Jewish Cemetery

Posted on 31 May 2026 by Defending History

OPINION | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT: THE SAGA OF 2015-2025 | EARLIER OPPOSITION |  2023-2024 “WORKING GROUP” ON VILNA CEMETERY | LIST OF MEMBERS | MOUNTING OPPOSITION TO NEW “MUSEUM PROJECT” | 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 | 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.

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Posted in Andrius Kulikauskas, Christian-Jewish Issues, Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Politics of Memory | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Please Email Lithuania’s Seimas Committee on Culture to Defend Vilnius’s Oldest Jewish Cemetery

President’s Office, Vilnius Municipality, and Ersatz Jewish Community Leader in Yet Another ‘Agreement’ to Effectively Destroy the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery

Posted on 14 April 2026 by Defending History

VILNIUS—Today’s mainstream media reports in Lrt.lt and in m.diena.lt, among others, reported on yet another “agreement” about the fate of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt in the historic Shnípishok district (today’s thriving Šnipiškės), this time between the president’s office and the municipality and the allegedly “rigged election” leader of the state-sponsored, restitution-fueled ersatz official Jewish community. Aside from a brief oblique mention at the end of the m.diena.lt report, there were no mentions of the vast international (and local bona fide Jewish and rabbinic) opposition to the half-millennium old cemetery being turned into anything other than a cemetery.

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Posted in Christian-Jewish Issues, Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Politics of Memory | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on President’s Office, Vilnius Municipality, and Ersatz Jewish Community Leader in Yet Another ‘Agreement’ to Effectively Destroy the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery

A ‘Shameful’ Public Letter by Five Vilnius Architects: Would They Be Saying This About a Christian Lithuanian Cemetery of 500 Years’ Vintage?

Posted on 22 December 2023 by Defending History

DOCUMENTS | OPINION | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT | OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER | THE “CPJCE” LONDON GRAVE TRADERS | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES | LITHUANIAN JEWISH COMMUNITY AFFAIRS | HUMAN RIGHTS

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VILNIUS—Five eminent Vilnius architects have released to the public domain a letter to the mayor of Vilnius expressing their passionate views on the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in the Shnípishok section, today’s Šnipiškės in beautiful, modern Vilnius). Many thousands of Vilna Jewish citizens still lie buried in the cemetery, though the Soviets pilfered all the gravestones and constructed the hated “Sports Palace” (long a derelict, dangerous ruin) in its center, followed by construction of “the two green buildings” under Lithuanian sovereignty early in the twenty-first century.

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Posted in 2023-2024 'Working Group' on the Future of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery, Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Documents, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Vilnius | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on A ‘Shameful’ Public Letter by Five Vilnius Architects: Would They Be Saying This About a Christian Lithuanian Cemetery of 500 Years’ Vintage?

Are Members of the ‘International Working Group’ Being Tragically Misinformed on Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery?

Posted on 16 October 2023 by Defending History

OPINION | VILNIUS | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY | CEMETERIES | LITVAK AFFAIRS

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by Julius Norwilla (Vilnius)

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Like my fellow campaigners, over the years, in opposition to the project to plonk a national convention center in the heart of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery (via refurbishment of a hated Soviet “Sports Palace” dump that should have long ago been demolished), I felt nothing but relief and the need to express congratulations back in the summer of 2021 when our prime minister wisely cancelled the project. Over two years later, there is again fear, among Jews, Lithuanians, and many around the world who respect the right of the dead to lie in peace (verily a part of Human Rights), even when they are members of a minority. When the buried belong to a nation’s ethnic majority, there are usual no serious efforts to situate conference centers surrounded by subterranean graves (even when the above-ground gravestones have long disappeared).

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Other Soviet structures in Vilnius: “landmark status” withdrawn & rapidly knocked down

Members of the latest (& current) international commission

Saga of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery

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Posted in 2023-2024 'Working Group' on the Future of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery, Antisemitism & Bias, Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Human Rights, Julius Norwilla, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Vilnius | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Are Members of the ‘International Working Group’ Being Tragically Misinformed on Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery?

Att. Mr. Mayor of Vilnius: Streets Named for Hitler’s Local Partners, and Plans for Congress Center on Top of Old Jewish Cemetery

Posted on 19 September 2016 by Defending History

Sept. 2016 Discourse over “Historic Soul” of Central Vilnius

Will Vilnius Mayor & Lithuania’s PM & President Issue Morally Clear Statements on Two Sites Visible from Grand Dukes’ Medieval Hill?

THERE ARE FIVE JEWISH FORMS OF THE FABLED CITY’S NAME: ווילנא, ווילנע, ווילנה, וילנה, ווילניוס

(1) Changing the name of a city center street that glorifies a Nazi collaborator who enthusiastically supported the removal of his country’s Jewish citizens?

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Posted in Celebrations of Fascism, Collaborators Glorified, Debates on the Postwar "Forest Brothers", Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Human Rights, Kazys Škirpa, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Vilnius Mayor Remigijus Šimašius | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Att. Mr. Mayor of Vilnius: Streets Named for Hitler’s Local Partners, and Plans for Congress Center on Top of Old Jewish Cemetery

It’s Not Just About Old Jewish Cemeteries

Posted on 14 December 2015 by Defending History

O P I N I O N   /   P I R A M Ó N T   /  P A P E R   T R A I L   /   O P P O S I T I O N   /   C E M E T E R I E S

by Milan Chersonski

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Milan ChersonskijTranslated from the Russian by Ludmila Makedonskaya (Grodno); English version approved by the author, Milan Chersonski (Chersonskij), longtime editor (1999-2011) of Jerusalem of Lithuania, quadrilingual (English-Lithuanian-Russian-Yiddish) newspaper of the Jewish Community of Lithuania. He was previously (1979-1999) director of the Yiddish Folk Theater of Lithuania. The views he expresses in Defending History are his own. See also Milan Chersonski section. Photo © Jurgita Kunigiškytė.

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There were many festive occasions celebrated once Lithuania declared its independence in 1990. So many hopes and expectations were inspired by the sweet word freedom. Free-ee-dom! Laisvė! Had it ever been possible to even imagine beforehand, taking one example, that Lithuania would hold a celebration to honor Israeli Independence Day, dear to Jews all over the world? The new state organized a large event at the Palace of Culture of the Trade Unions in Vilnius in honor of a faraway state, which in Soviet times was mentioned only as “the aggressive state of Israel.”

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Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Christian-Jewish Issues, Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Milan Chersonski (1937-2021), News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Politics of Memory | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on It’s Not Just About Old Jewish Cemeteries

U.S. Author of Lithuanian Heritage Comments on “Cemetery Convention Center”

Posted on 17 August 2015 by Defending History

O P I N I O N    /     C E M E T E R I E S    /    P I R A M Ó N T

by Donna Druchunas

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Seriously, who wants to go to a convention on top of an old graveyard, Jewish or otherwise, anyway?

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Donna Druchunas is a Vermont based author of Lithuanian heritage. Her new book is Lithuanian Knitting: Continuing Traditions.

 

Posted in Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok) | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on U.S. Author of Lithuanian Heritage Comments on “Cemetery Convention Center”