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Team finds sacred part of Vilnius synagogue razed by the Nazis
VILNIUS, July 26, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – For decades, little did the principal
of a kindergarten in Lithuania’s capital realise that his office stood on top
of a sacred part of Vilnius’ 17th century Jewish temple, once famous across
Europe.
An international team of archaeologists on Thursday announced the discovery
of the most revered part of the Great Synagogue of Vilnius, Lithuania’s major
Jewish shrine before it was destroyed by Nazi and Soviet regimes.
“We’ve found the bimah, the central prayer platform which was in Tuscan
Baroque style. It was one of the central features of the synagogue,” Jon
Seligman from Israel’s Antiquities Authority told AFP.
“It is really a very exciting development. When we talk about the
presentation of the site to the public in the future, this will be one of the
central features of the display,” he added.
The green and brown, brick and mortar bimah — a raised platform from which
the Jewish holy book, the Torah, is read — was unearthed just beneath the
principal’s office of a former school built in the 1950s by the Soviet
regime.
The synagogue, dating from the 1630s, was the most important shrine for
Lithuania’s once vibrant Jewish community.
The city attracted Yiddish-speaking writers and scholars, earning it the
title of “Jerusalem of the North”.
Before the war, Jews accounted for around one-third of the city’s then
60,000 residents, but most of them perished under Nazi Germany’s 1941-1944
occupation.
The Nazis burned down the shrine and the remains were later demolished by
the Soviet regime that built a kindergarten, later turned into the primary
school, on the property. – Tears and prayers –
“This isn’t just an archaeological discovery,” said Faina Kukliansky, the
leader of Lithuania’s tiny Jewish community of around 3,000 people out of a
total population of 2.9 million.
“It helps to better understand Jewish life here but also the destructive
ideologies of the Nazi and Soviet regimes,” she added.
Simonas Gurevicius, who leads a separate Jewish association in Vilnius,
said he cried when he prayed at the newly discovered site.
“Maybe I was the first one to pray here 77 years after the last prayers by
Vilnius ghetto martyrs,” he told AFP.
Work at the synagogue site by Lithuanian, Israeli and American
archaeologists is paid for mostly by Lithuania’s fund for Jewish communal
property seized by Nazi Germany and then kept by the Soviet regime.
Vilnius authorities closed the school last year and plan to replace the
building with a memorial that would display synagogue artefacts within the
next five years.
“The school will be demolished within two years and we’ll create a
respectful site, displaying rich Jewish heritage by 2023 when Vilnius
celebrates its 700th birthday,” Vilnius Mayor Remigijus Simasius told AFP.
BSS/AFP/MRI/1944 hrs