DOCUMENTS | 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” | THE USCPAHA | THE CPJCE | THE AJC | THE CER | THE GWF | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | HUMAN RIGHTS
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VILNIUS—The following document was recently discovered by Lithuanian scholars who have rapidly passed it into the public domain. It is the Soviet act of 22 October 1940 ordering the nationalization (i.e. confiscation, theft) of the Jewish cemeteries under the aegis of the Vilnius Jewish Community. It came very soon after the summer 1940 forcible annexation of Lithuania and its two Baltic state neighbors, into Stalin’s Soviet Union.
The document assumes special significance in the midst of current debates over the past and future of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Shnipishok, today’s Šnipiškės), referred to (accurately) as the “Old Jewish Cemetery” in item no. 2 in the document of “transfer” of ownership. Much of the mainstream media here today continues to circulate claims that “the Jews sold the old cemetery in Šnipiškės to the czars in 1830 and moved away all the bones back then”. The document orders that cemeteries belonging to the Vilnius Jewish Community (administering the property of the thousands of Vilna citizens who purchased their plots freehold over the centuries) were being nationalized (i.e. pilfered) by Soviet occupation authorities. A translation is followed by an image of the document (also available as PDF).
