A Holocaust memorial has been dedicated in Šeduva, Lithuania, as the first stage of a much broader complex there aimed at memorializing Šeduva Jews, which will be officially opened later this year.
A private ceremony dedicated the memorial at the end of May. As part of the complex, newly-commissioned monuments by Lithuanian sculptor Romas Kvintas will mark three sites in the area where, in the summer of 1941, local Jews were taken to be killed by Nazis and their Lithuanian accomplices and were buried in mass graves. These monuments replace memorials erected during Soviet times, whose incomplete inscriptions (as in many other sites of the World War II mass execution of Jews) did not provide proper details of the persecution or the perpetrators.
The memorial has also encompassed the full restoration of the Jewish cemetery in Šeduva, which entailed the identification and preservation of hundreds of gravestones, said Vilnius-born author Sergey Kanovich, who heads the project, funded by the Šeduva Jewish Memorial Fund. He said work began on the memorial two years ago.
He told JHE that the “code name” of the project was “Lost Shtetl.” A museum of local Jewish history is also being built adjacent to the cemetery, he said.
“Murderers could not kill our memory. We are back because our memory is stronger than their bullets. And memory will always prevail,” Kanovich said at the dedication.
Read article and see photo documentation about the dedication on delfi.lt