VILNIUS 55

State Jewish

Museum q
Valstybinis Vilniaus Gaono
Žydų Muziejus

Pylimo 4. Map C3. Tel (5) 212 7912.

9am–1pm Mon–Fri. & 8 excur-

sions of the museum & Vilnius Old
Town offered. http://www.jmuseum.lt

The hub of the city’s now tiny
Jewish community, this small
museum displays copies of
ghetto diaries and handwritten
notes on the backs of ciga rette
packets about life in the
ghetto, as well as items that
rem ained from the museum
that existed before World
War II. Several objects that
mir acu lously survived from the
Great Synagogue, demolished
by the Soviets, include a Ten
Commandments bas-relief.
The building plays host to a
news paper in Lithuanian,
English, Yiddish and Russian,
Jerusalem of Lithuania. It is
also the venue where groups,
such as the Union of Former
Ghetto and Concentration
Camp Prisoners and the Union
of Jewish War Veterans, meet.

The Museum of

Genocide Victims e

Genocido Aukų Muziejus

Aukų 2a. Map B2. Tel (5) 249 7427.

# 10am–5pm Tue–Sat, 10am–3pm

Sun. & 8 = http://www.genocid.lt

Also known as the KGB

Museum, the Museum of

Genocide Victims was opened

in 1992, on the first floor of

the former KGB build ing. In

the effectively designed

display area, personal stories

are used to reveal the regime

of terror under the Soviet

occu pations of 1940–41 and

1944–91. The exhibits here

chronicle Soviet repression in

Lithuania, the cattle-car

Exhibition of Lithuanian partisans at the Museum of Genocide Victims

deportations to Siberia and

the futile efforts of the Forest

Brothers, who fought a

guerrilla-style campaign

against the Soviet regime with

strong support from the locals.

Underground, the cells that

were in use right up until the

late 1980s are even more over-

whelming. They include the

smaller cells used in winter

with no glass in their win dows

and the floors covered with

water, as well as an exe cution

chamber display ing, under

glass, the recently exhumed

remains of victims of the era.

In 1997, the museum was

taken over by the Genocide

and Resistance Research

Centre of Lithuania, a state

institution dedicated to inves-

tigating atrocities that occurred

in the country during the Nazi

and Soviet occupations.

Holocaust

Museum w

Holokausto Ekspozicija

Pamėnkalnio 12. Map B2 and C2.

Tel (5) 262 0730. # 9am–5pm

Mon–Thu, 9am–4pm Fri, 10am–4pm

Sun. & 8 http://www.jmuseum.lt

Also known as the Green

House, this department of the

State Jewish Museum reveals

some of the horrors that

befell the Jews of Lithuania

during World War II. A display

on Jewish life before the terror

unfolded is followed by maps

and photographs of how and

where the Holocaust was

executed. There are also des-

criptions of the harsh life in

the ghettos and eyewitness

accounts of the mass killings of

100,000 people in the forests

of Paneriai, outside Vilnius.

rebuilt to replace an earlier
Baroque version. A site of
pilgri mage, it was one of the
first stops made by Pope John
Paul II when he visited
Lithuania in 1993.

Stained-glass window at the State
Jewish Museum

Holocaust Museum, annexe of the

State Jewish Museum