February 26, BNS–An old Jewish cemetery in Vilnius is being put forward to become a state-protected cultural heritage site. Cultural Heritage Department director Diana Varnaitė initiated the process.

“There are surviving headstones there and there should be a certain amount of state protection. The cemetery is already on the registry, it is already a cultural heritage treasure. The registry is so construed that significance determines whether the state or a local government is the party to make a decision and declare sites protected,” Cultural Heritage Department deputy director Algimantas Degutis told BNS. He said state-protected cultural treasures have stricter protection, financing and maintenance requirements.

The move to change the status of the Užupis Jewish cemetery is unconnected with plans by the adjacent funeral home to build a crematorium, Degutis said. The Vilnius municipality is against the crematorium plan.

“It’s not connected with the crematorium. The funeral home is outside the boundaries of the cemetery on a different plot of land,” he explained.

In 2014 a 7.7 hectare plot on Vilnius’s Olandų street was registered as the Užupis Jewish Cemetery.

According to the Lithuanian Jewish Community, the old Jewish cemetery on Olandų street in the Užupis neighborhood of Vilnius operated from 1828 to 1940 and about 70,000 Jews were buried there. The cemetery was destroyed during the Soviet period from 1961 to 1963 with the human remains of a very few relocated to the Sudervė cemetery. Headstones were removed as used as material to build stairs up Taurus Hill, at Vingis Park and other locations in Vilnius. In many locations the Hebrew letters of inscriptions on the gravestones remained visible. In 1990 headstones were removed from the stairs up Taurus Hill and at other locations, and in 1992 the architect Jaunutis Makariūnas constructed a statue from the memorial stones in Užupis.