VILNIUS, June 21, BNS–A team of experts from the United Kingdom, Canada, Israel and Lithuania is starting to investigate the remains of the Great Synagogue of Vilnius and other buried buildings.

An international team of archaeologists using non-invasive geophysical techniques plans to investigate the remnants of a mikvah buried 2 meters below the surface under a school built by the Soviet regime after 1960.

“Our geophysical studies can map below the street without destroying any infrastructure and then to identify exactly where to dig, map and retrieve artifacts to understand the historical context,” one researcher said.

Archaeologists describe the Great Synagogue of Vilnius as a symbol which gave rise to the description of Vilnius as the Lithuanian Jerusalem.

Earlier a team of archaeologists used the same techniques to survey another sensitive site in the history of the Lithuanian Jews, the Holocaust mass murder site Ponar.

The team of archaeologists is led by Richard Freund, professor from the University of Hartford, and Dr. Jon Seligman, head of the Excavation, Surveys and Research Department at the Israeli Antiquities Authority (IAA). Partners of the study include the Lithuanian Jewish Community, Vilnius University, Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum.