In the latest twist in the ongoing debate over the Old Jewish Cemetery in Vilnius, the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum said it was “perplexed” by an apparent proposal by Lithuanian officials to set up a new Jewish museum as part of the controversial planned conversion into a conference center of the abandoned Palace of Sports that stands on the site of the centuries-old graveyard.
“Let’s develop a strategic strategy to make Jewish heritage relevant, instead of putting up another Disneyland,” it said in a statement, adding that neither the museum nor the Jewish community had been consulted on the proposal.
Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum was perplexed to hear last week’s reports in mass media about the intentions of various government institutions to establish yet another Jewish museum instead of supporting the already ongoing projects […] The Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum, which hosts expositions on the art, culture and history of Lithuanian Jews, including Judaica and the Holocaust expositions, local and international events, seminars, film reviews and educational events, hopes for support to the ongoing projects with the aim to ensure quality and efficient protection of the historic and cultural heritage of Lithuanian Jews instead of the impromptu creation of any new ones.
At the end of March, the BNS news agency reported that Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis had said “there are deliberations on changing the project for the reconstruction of the Palace of Sports to include a equip a building to host a Jewish history museum and for conferences.” It said Vilnius mayor Remigijus Šimašius had agreed, and that he proposed setting up a Litvak History Museum there.
Šimašius told BNS, after a meeting with Skvernelis, that:
there should be a conference center there without any doubt. We just discussed that it would be more sensible if next to the conference center or partially integrated with the conference center there were a museum of Litvak history. It is probably this could be accomplished wonderfully and would become an attraction. We agreed to develop the idea further. I’m glad my opinion and the prime minister’s coincide on this.
The Museum’s statement noted that the museum, which is “located in authentic buildings that are inseparable from the history of Vilnius Jewry, has recently been going through a very intensive and productive period.” It stated that there are plans “in the foreseeable future” to open both a Culture Museum of the Lithuanian Jews (Litvak Center) and a Memorial Museum of Holocaust in Lithuania and Vilna Ghetto.
The latter museum will be located in a historic building on Žemaitijos St., which was included in the Register of Cultural Properties already last month. It was there that the public library of Meficei Haskala operated in the pre-war period. Later the building hosted the library of the Vilna Ghetto which was also a place for cultural events and meetings of the ghetto resistance movement. In 1945, the survivors of the Holocaust established the Jewish Museum in that particular building, but later the Soviet government closed it. The Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum plans to put the historic library building in use again and to devote it to the Holocaust education. Once the Museum sets up additional divisions, a unique visitor path will be formed allowing visitors to get to know the Jewish side of Vilnius.
The Museum’s director, Markas Zingeris, said Lithuania today “lacks a strategy and vision how to make the Jewish heritage relevant.”
The strategy to make the Jewish heritage relevant is still being developed and decisions are being made without even consulting the professional community (the staff of the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum learned about the plans to establish a new museum only from mass media) or the ethnic religious community…. Ideas are being imposed from top down without first discussing them in a competent manner as if the grandeur projects that are already underway were not enough knowing the available budget. Vilnius does not need an unprofessional Jewish disneyland, even though we cannot expect to have anything more than that as a result of the current improvised decision making process.
Read full statement from the Museum
1 comment on “Lithuania: a new Jewish Museum as part of controversial Sports Palace conversion?”
The Lithuanians have a long standing history of vicious Ant- Semitism.
How DARE they construct a convention center of the hallowed graves of Jews who died.
Where they do the same to a Christian cemetery or Muslim cemetery — we know they wouldn’t !!
The audacity to think that this will become an attraction underscores that all they care about is tourist dollars!!!
Seems like their message to the Jewish community at large is that Lithuania only wants to have mass graves of Jews— as they gladly gunned down thousands of Jews during the Holocaust and buried them in large pIts.