Destruction on Vilna Sipinsak cemetery, Friday, weeks after a so-called agreement to halt it…..Construction is still going on, and is intensifying…..Not the first time Vilnius is promising…. and meanwhile a cemetery of approximately a hundred thousand is being uprooted…..Who ever can act, must do so immediately, because as I write the construction crew is working intensively……Here are photos of the construction last Friday, 8 days after the agreement that the work will be halted immediately. Where is the public outcry?! Please read the complete article to hear all the details.

The Snipisek Jewish cemetery in Vilnius (Vilna), once the resting place of the Vilna Gaon and the Ger Tzedek, remains one of Judaism’s most sacred sites. Still buried there are the Chaye Odom, the Be’er Hagolah, the entire family of the G”ra, among countless other. R’ Michel Yehudah Lipkowitz Sh’lita, remembers that there was a section of the cemetery which nobody ever approached because of the holiness of those buried there. 

Until 1940, the cemetery was owned, controlled, and maintained by the Kehillah of Vilna. Jews everywhere responded to appeals for funds to support these efforts.

In 1940 the Nazis took control of the cemetery.  The Communists took over after the war, and the present Lithuanian government in 1992 or thereabouts. Since there was no legal transfer of ownership, the Lithuanian government became, at best, a trustee of this property. The cemetery never belonged to the Nazis, the Communists, or to the Lithuanians.  

This point was stressed in a recent contact between Asrah Kadisha and the Lithuanian Embassy in Washington.

“Putting aside all religious, historical, and cultural considerations,” the Asrash Kadiasha representative stressed, “property rights alone dictate that the Snipisek Jewish cemetery should have been returned to the Jewish people.”

That it was not, and the fact that construction is taking place, inadvertently ratifies the action of the Nazis,” added a spokesman for the Conference of Academicians for the Protection of Jewish Cemeteries Abroad, who also participated in the recent conversation.

World Jewry first learned of excavation and construction taking place in the cemetery in the summer of 2005.  Thus began an increasing effort by Jews worldwide to bring an end the desecration.  Meetings, letters, protests, prayer vigils, visits and finally high level intervention by American Congressmen and Senators characterized this effort.  To no avail. At each step, the Lithuanians countered with denials, temporary stoppage followed by blitzkrieg-like construction, misleading maps, promises, a ‘Cultural Heritage’ designation, and always, complete resistance at the site itself.  No body – including American Embassy officials could gain access to the construction, and no one was able to examine the truckloads of earth removed from the cemetery.

The latest example of bad faith came after a crescendo of protest, particularly from the United States, to the beating of Vilnius’ chief Rabbi Burstein for having protested the construction of a second apartment building in the cemetery on March 7.   On March 21, 2007, construction was halted, only to be resumed a few weeks later.   A Working Group set up by the Lithuanian government to determine the boundaries of the cemetery, heard from the Lithuanian History Institute that the construction site was indeed on cemetery ground: by the beginning of May there were accusations placed in the press, on television and at the Parliaments’ Foreign Affairs Committee that the History Institute had “falsified historical maps.”  The accusation was vigorously rejected, but the damage was done, and construction continued apace.

On May 16, a group of experts, hand picked by the Lithuanian government, met for two days and emerged with a report which called for a cessation of all construction work, but also spoke of “recommendations for the future development of the cemetery”, undoubtedly emboldening Lithuanians who are even now seeking investors to help build the Vilnius Arts Center in the middle of the cemetery, in anticipation of the “Vilnius – European City of Culture 2009” celebration.

In an action which may have a devastating impact on Jewish cemeteries everywhere, the Experts Group asked that a geophysical survey via ground radar equipment be carried out to ‘more exactly determine the borders of the cemetery.’  Since many bodies were buried without caskets, and in many parts of the cemetery the earth had hundreds of years to settle, observers have questioned whether any device can detect differences in ground density. This would be particularly unlikely in Snipisek which was closed to further burials because of the density of people buried there. 

The proposed use of “ground radar” also opens the door to any government to furnish its own experts using their own search device to ‘establish’ that there are no human remains in a cemetery of interest to developers!

All this time, of course, construction in the Snipisek cemetery has been ongoing, with no access to outsiders to the construction site! 

Current activities in the United States are focused on securing more effective help by Embassy officials, and outreach to the American ambassadors to the UN and to the EU, as well as to Lithuania.  In general, intervention by legislators and high level office seekers are viewed as most likely to bring about a policy change in Lithuania.

For the time being, the tactics of the Lithuanians have torn out two large sections of this cemetery, and left two gaping holes in hearts of the Jewish people.

This article was written by Bernard Fryshman, Ph.D. for the Yated Newspaper.