Preliminary design concept for the Lost Shtetl Museum

Plans have been announced for a state-of-the-art Jewish museum scheduled to open in 2019 as part of the Lost Shtetl memorial complex in Šeduva, Lithuania.

The museum complex is to be designed by the Finnish company Lahdelma & Mahlamäki Architects who also designed the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. POLIN won the 2016 European Museum of the Year Award. They are towork together with local partner Studia2A established in 1994 and headed by Vilnius Art Academy dean of architecture Jonas Audejaitis.

The museum is to be located next to the sprawling Šeduva Jewish cemetery, completely restored and opened in 2015 as part of the memorial complex. The complex includes memorials at three sites of Holocaust mass murders and mass grave sites and a symbolic sculpture in the middle of the town. A study of the Jews of Šeduva was conducted as part of the project and is to result in a documentary film called Petrified Time by film director Saulius Beržinis.

Memorial statue in Šeduva. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

Sergey Kanovich, founder of the Šeduva Jewish Memorial Fund, said the Lost Shtetl Museum will employ advanced technologies to teach visitors the history and culture of Šeduva and similar Litvak shtetls. It is expected to serve as an educational and cultural center.

“Visiting the Lost Shtetl will be a history lesson which will allow national and international visitors to learn about the lost Litvak shtetl history and culture,” he said.

“Lifestyle, customs, religion, social, professional, and family life of Šeduva Jews will serve a center point of the Museum exhibition,” he said. Visitors to museum will learn “the tragedy of Šeduva Jewish history which in the early days of World War II ended in three pits near the shtetl.”

Preliminary images show the museum occupying an irregular, 2,700 square-meter space across the road from the cemetery, and that it will consist of several connected structures.

Layout of Lost Shtetl Museum

Lead architect Rainer Mahlamäki said his work was inspired by ancient Lithuanian architecture, the neighboring old Jewish cemetery and the rural landscape surrounding the site.

An international team is to do interior design and the core exhibition, Kanovich said. The curator of the core exhibition is Millda Jakulytė-Vasil, working with 12 international consultants from Israel, Germany, the US and Poland. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, chief curator of the core exhibition at the POLIN museum, is an advisor.

Interior design and consulting are to be provided by New York-based Ralph Appelbaum Associates, which has worked on numerous museums and memorials including the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC. Management of museum construction is to be supervised by the Swiss company ECAS AG.

Sergey Kanovich walks along the wall of the restored Jewish cemetery in Šeduva, Lithuania. The new museum is to be located to his right.

For more information, contact:
Jonas Dovydaitis, Director of Šeduva Jewish Memorial Fund: Tel. +370698 44 091
Jonas.dovydaitis@lostshtetl.com
www.lostshtetl.com

Information provided by Jewish Heritage Europe.