After Lithuania regained independence in 1990, Jewish organisations called for the protection of the site. The Lithuanian government pronounced it sacred in 2001, according to Jack Simony, director of the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation.The sports palace was closed in 2004.
However plans to redevelop the abandoned sports palace were mooted in 2015. Five years later the Lithuanian government assured Jewish organisations that no construction on the site would occur. “In fact in 2021 they committed to turning it into a remembrance and cultural space in conjunction with Jewish heritage partners,” said Simony. A first attempt to reverse this commitment was made in 2023, but, following international protests, developers backed down.
“To renege on that promise now is a profound breach of trust—not only with the Jewish community but with all who believe in the integrity of Holocaust memory,” he says.
“This is not about stones and soil; it is about the eternal dignity of human beings whose remains lie there.”
The Foundation is petitioning UNESCO to designate the cemetery a protected heritage site under international law as well as calling on its own government to intervene. The body has also urged the EU to hold Lithuania accountable for its previous pledges to preserve Jewish cultural and historical sites and memory.
“Cemeteries are eternal places of rest, and this betrayal reverberates far beyond Lithuania,” says Simon Bergson, chairman of the AJCF. “The government’s reversal of its prior commitment to protect the cemetery is a violation of international trust, an affront to Jewish memory, and a desecration of one of the most significant Jewish cemeteries in Europe."
“We met with the Lithuanian Prime Minister, Ingrida Simonyte, to discuss the agreed plans to make the site a place of remembrance,” says Jonathan Brent, CEO of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, who blames a change of government for the reversal of pledges reaffirmed only two years ago.
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“We are a secular organisation and we don’t intervene in the internal politics of any country, but our position is that Jewish law must be respected and observed – this is not just a matter for the Lithuanian Jewish population but one of respect for all Jewish people.”
Rabbi Andrew Baker, director of international Jewish affairs for the American Jewish Committee, believes the new government was influenced by the fact the site has become valuable since the erection of an international hotel opposite the cemetery built in anticipation of a conference centre following.
“The decision was unexpected and abrupt - it even took the Mayor of Vilnius, who had identified an alternative site for a conference centre, by surprise - and Prime Minister Gintautas Paluckas, who made the announcement, has now resigned due to corruption allegations,” he says.
He thinks the new regime was ignorant of or indifferent to the outcry caused by the announcement. “I think those who planned to turn what had been agreed should be a place of Jewish memory into a commercial venture were not aware of the international repercussions this decision will cause.
“The only course of action which would not be in contravention of Jewish law would be to landscape the site without digging into it in and provide Halachic oversight to make sure any development would not be invasive to the ground below. But most of all to keep its use appropriate for a cemetery, as had already been agreed.”
Simony says Lithuania’s commitment post-independence to owning its past sins against its Jewish population, 95 per cent of whom were murdered during World War II, and making amends to the current community of 3-5000 is now under threat. “Vilnius must decide whether it will be remembered as a guardian of memory or as a force of its destruction.
“This is not only a Jewish issue. It is a human issue and history is watching.”
