Lithuanian construction company Infes reported they concluded a contract with the Vilna Gaon Jewish History Museum for help creating a museum inside the Vilnius ghetto library space located on Žemaitijos street, formerly Strashun street, where library director Herman Kruk wrote most of his Vilnius ghetto diary and where the FPO, the Vilnius ghetto partisan fighters force, had a shooting range in the basement.

Infes said they would undertake capital renovation of the building and do other construction there. According to their press release, the museum will teach visitors about the Vilnius ghetto and the Holocaust in Lithuania and will feature unique items from the Vilna Gaon Museum’s collections.

The library was officially known as the Mefitzei Haskalah or Disseminators of the Jewish Enlightenment library and was located at what was then Strashun street no. 6. There was another library officially known as the Strashun Library located in the Shulhoyf next to the Great Synagogue formed from the personal book collection of 5,753 volumes accrued by Lithuanian Talmudist and Midrashic scholar Mattityahu Strashun and bequeathed in his last will and testament for the purpose of forming the library following his death in 1885. That library which opened in Strashun’s home in 1892 and later moved to the Strashun Library building in 1901. The Mefitzei Haskalah library formerly located on Strashun street is sometimes called the Strashun Library, leading to mix-ups. Mefitzei Haskalah operated before the ghetto was created in 1941 and continued to operate inside the ghetto. Bundist and Jewish Polish journalist Herman Kruk fled Poland after the Nazi invasion and ended up in Vilnius, where he was offered the position of library director and accepted. He was later murdered by Estonian Nazis in Klooga, Estonia.