Lithuania: In Search of the Hidden Holocaust Monument of Vilnius

 Vilnius, Lithuania. Flame of Hope. Photo from Foundation for the Arts

Cross posted from Defending History.com

The Hidden Monument of Vilnius
11 February 2012

 

In response to several requests from the United States, DefendingHistory.com this week asked three separate Westerners who found themselves in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, to try to see the “Flame of Hope” monument, by sculptor Leonardo Nierman, in memory of the victims of the Lithuanian Holocaust, located in the heart of the Old Town, in a yard that was in the Vilna Ghetto between September 1941 and the ghetto’s liquidation three years later.

The story of the monument got underway nearly thirty years ago when the idea first came to the person who made it happen, Shelly Rybak Pearson of Florida, USA, who contributed a DH.com comment piece on the subject last December.

The seemingly interminable saga has been the subject of a number of American media outlets, including a feature article in the Palm Beach Post and a television interview for the Miami Herald. For many years, the Lithuanian Embassy in Washington DC and the American Embassy in Vilnius have participated in the conversation concerning the monument. Discussions in different periods have dealt with agreeing a text for the inscription (see box at the end of this article), the venue for the monument, and above all — accessibility of the monument to the general public, Lithuanians and foreign visitors alike.

What is agreed by all sides is that the monument is located in the courtyard of the building that housed one of interwar Vilna’s prime Jewish educational institutions, the Yídishe reál-gimnàzye. During the Holocaust, the building tragically became the headquarters of the Nazi-established Judenrat, or “Jewish authority” within the ghetto. Like the other ghettos in major Lithuanian cities, the Vilna Ghetto continued to incarcerate the shrinking remnant of Lithuanian Jewry for several years after the majority were shot in the summer and fall of 1941, mostly by local perpetrators volunteering to kill the civilian Jewish population for the Nazis, at hundreds of mass grave sites across Lithuania.

Read the entire post here

Lithuania: Vilnius Middle School has Walls Made of Broken Matzevot

Vilnius, Lithuania. Uzupis cemetery in 2000. Photos: Samuel D. Gruber (2000)

Vilnius, Lithuania. Uzupis cemetery in 2000. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber (2000)

Lithuania: Vilnius Middle School has Walls Made of Broken Matzevot

Eleven years ago I visited the Uzupis Jewish Cemetery in Vilnius (Vilna), Lithuania, or rather what remained of it. In the dark light of winter I climbed the hill of the cemetery to look for traces of gravestones and walls. Where there were approximately 70,000 burials from 1830 through 1948, only a few hundred stones were visible. These were the ones embedded in the hillside. The cemetery had been "liquidated" in the 1960s, when Vilnius was under Society rule. No marker told the story of the site, or the history of the dead.

Over the next few years I worked with the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad, of which I was Research Director, to tell that story. Commission Members Harriet Rotter and Steven Some, led the Commission’s contributions to the project. The result was a wall and a monument dedicated in November 2004.

Vilnius, Lithuania. Uzupis Cemetery. Monument under construction and complete. Photo: Ruth Ellen Gruber

Vilnius, Lithuania. Uzupis Cemetery. Monument under construction and complete. Photo: Ruth Ellen Gruber

Vilnius, Lithuania. Uzupis Cemetery. Monument under construction and complete. Photo: Ruth Ellen Gruber

Over the years I wondered where all the stones had gone. The site was only cleared by the Soviets in the 1960s, but all anyone would say was that the matzevot have been removed for building material.

Now we know where some of the stones ended up.

Dovid Katz's writes on the website defendinghistory.com that thousands of fragments of Uzupis Cemetery gravestones are were used to construct walls on the grounds of the Lazdynai Middle School in Vilnius, built in the early 1970s. He and visited the school last week, and photographer Richard Schofield took pictures, and posted a report.

Sounds of Stone Speak: Jewish Gravestones in the Walls of a Middle School in Vilnius

Vilnius, Lithuania. Gravestone fragment in wall at Lazdynai Middle School. Photo: Robert Schofield

Katz writes in part "The school grounds’ outside walls comprised of the pilfered Jewish gravestones have nothing to do with the structure of the school’s building and removing the stones and finding a culturally respectful home for them would not touch the school building with so much as a hair. Moreover, the walls made from the stones extend well beyond the school’s grounds to surrounding parts of Lazdynai, where a large supply of Jewish gravestones were brought from the cemetery site after the city’s Soviet-era administration destroyed the cemetery."

You can see more of Richard Schofield's photography here.

Conference: First Report from Vilnius Jewish Heritage Workshop

Vilnius, Lithuania. Sign on the Baron de Hirsch Houses, site of subsidized Jewish housing, and then a Nazi-established concentration/work camp, and then a murder and mass grave site for hundreds of Jews. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber

Conference: First Report from Vilnius Jewish Heritage Workshop

Ruth Ellen Gruber has posted a brief report from the 2-day workshop on Jewish heritage in Lithuania that was held earlier this week in Vilnius. I was invited, but could not attend. We will see in time how much was accomplished, and how much was just. Despite a quick start in recognizing Jewish heritage sites - especially cemeteries and mas murder and grave sites - early in the 1990s, Lithuania has since lagged behind other countries in developing a coherent and effective policy to maintain and protect most of its historic Jewish sites.

According to Ruth, the workshop presented

"a number of depressing factors, including vandalism, apathy, lack of coordination and cooperation between stakeholders, and the usual "one Jew building three synagogues on a desert island" syndrome. But the fact that the seminar took place was positive and I [Ruth] did learn some positive developments.

These included the news that:

-- a grant from Norway through the EU has been obtained to start rebuilding the "red synagogue" in Joniskis whose eastern wall collapsed in a hurricane two years ago.

-- both the Culture Ministry and the municipality of Pakruojis are committed to restoring the wooden synagogue there, which was seriously damaged by arson earlier this year.

Joniskis, Lithuania. The "Red Synagogue," one of two synagogues in this historic complex (before storm damage). Photos: ISJM archive

Lithuania: Sale of Vilna Ghetto Library Building Halted

Lithuania: Sale of Vilna Ghetto Library Building Halted

The Jewish Telegraphic agency has reported that the contested sale of a former Jewish property that once was the site of library in the Vilna Ghetto has been halted. Getting claims settled on properties like this one - one of hundreds stalled in the lengthy and complex restitution legal (and political) process is sometimes like getting blood from a stone. And these stones - and those nearby - certainly witnessed their share of blood.

Sale of Jewish property in Lithuania thwarted

March 30, 2009

PRAGUE (JTA) -- A Lithuanian plan to sell a building that once housed the Vilna Ghetto Jewish library was halted by the U.S. Embassy, JTA has learned.

The library building, which the World Jewish Restitution Organization and Lithuanian Jewish community identify as Jewish community property, housed 450,000 books of Jewish literature in Vilnius under the Nazi occupation between 1941 and 1943.

Herbert Block, an executive vice president with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and a top official with the restitution group, said the embassy in the Lithuanian capital had informed him by e-mail that the Foreign Ministry had acceded to the embassy's request to cancel the sale, which was to have taken place April 8.

Lithuania is among the few countries in Europe that has yet to come up with a restitution or compensation plan for Jewish communal property.

''For eight years the Lithuanian government has been promising to come up with a plan, but so far nothing has come of it,'' Block told JTA Monday.

The library is on a list of 438 buildings claimed as Jewish property that were taken over by the Communist government of Lithuania after World War II. The U.S. Embassy in Vilnius argued that the Lithuanian government should not be selling disputed properties.

In fact, the sale was not announced to any Jewish authorities but was uncovered by a local non-Jewish American activist in Vilnius, Wyan Brent, who alerted Jewish groups in the United States.

The restitution organization and the Lithuanian Jewish community recently rejected a $41 million compensation package for property, saying the sum, and how it was to be paid out over 10 years only if it was feasible for the government, was insufficient.

With numerous delays by previous governments and now the current government, the restitution process remains stalled, said Andrew Baker, director of international Jewish affairs for the American Jewish Committee.

Baker also was informed by the embassy of the library sale cancellation. ''It seems it was only blocked by a last-minute intercession,'' he said.

Europe: World Monuments Fund Announces Jewish Heritage Grants

Europe: World Monuments Fund Announces Jewish Heritage Grants

The New York-based World Monuments Fund has announced four grants totaling $235,000 to European Jewish preservation projects as part of its Jewish Heritage Grant Program. Funds will be allocated to on-going projects at three historic synagogues and for conservation planning for the former Volozhin Yeshiva Building in Belarus.

The projects include the important 17th-century synagogue in Zamosc, Poland that in recent decades served as a municipal library, but is now restituted to the Jewish Community of Warsaw which is overseeing a needed conservation and repair program; the Jugenstil synagogue of Subotica, Serbia, which has been a focus of WMF concern for more than a decade; and the 1903 Choral Synagogue of Vilnius, Lithuania, the only surviving intact synagogue in the city, and now the focal point of it religious life.

I'll be posting more about all of these projects in the future.