Vilnius, July 25, BNS—Parties held at the Seventh Fort in Kaunas have received attention by the media in Israel following efforts last year to resolve conflicts between the fort’s owners and Jews concerned about the Jewish mass grave discovered there several years ago.

Cultural heritage protection specialists say there haven’t been any complaints recently about unethical activities at the Seventh Fort, and Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky said the Israeli press was just bringing up “old stories.”

Discussion of entertainment events at the Seventh Fort came up last year when the Cultural Heritage Department sent the fort’s owners a letter calling upon them not to hold celebrations, games or similar events there.

An article in the Jerusalem Post Monday told the story of the fort’s privatization, the fee charged visitors to the museum territory there and parties held there despite the discovery there in 2011 of a Jewish mass grave.

The article said the Seventh Fort is a popular venue for graduation parties and wedding receptions and the space is available to be used for parties, for cooking on campfires and to host summer camps for children.

“It just says a lot of bad things about my country,” Rūta Vanagaitė, whose book about the Lithuanian Holocaust spurred much discussion six months ago, told the newspaper.

“We have received no complaints of unethical events recently,” Svaigedas Stoškus, director of the Kaunas section of the Cultural Heritage Department, told BNS.

Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky said the Jerusalem Post article simply retold an old story based on a popular speaker. She said she was insulted the Israeli press ignored the Community’s efforts last year in cooperation with cultural heritage protection specialists to stop entertainment events at the fort.

“This story is as old as I am,” she told BNS. “To make of this a story for the World Jewish Congress… I don’t know, I feel insulted by this [because] they didn’t call us and ask us what the situation was,” Kukliansky added.

She said she couldn’t say whether entertainment events are currently being held at the Seventh Fort.

“I can’t be there physically all the time of course and watch, but no one has banned them from doing this up to the present time, no law has been passed,” Kukliansky noted.

Representatives of the Kaunas municipality also told BNS they had no information about events held at the Seventh Fort.

BNS was unable to reach Karo paveldo centras [Military Heritage Center] director Sergejus Orlovas Monday. Karo paveldo centras was the enterprise which bought the Seventh Fort when it was privatized.

Reacting last year to criticism of unethical events held there, Orlovas said they were all educational and in keeping with morality and the law.

Historians say about 5,000 people, mainly Jews from Kaunas, were murdered at the Seventh Fort in July of 1941. A mass grave was discovered there in 2011. Human remains found there were reburied in situ in 2014.