Dieser Artikel ist ziemlich schwer zu lesen. Haben Sie irgendwelche Gedanken dazu? Angesichts der Geschichte ihrer Familie hat die Autorin eine verständliche Reaktion auf einen Besuch in Litauen, dennoch scheint sie eine etwas oberflächliche Sicht auf das Land zu haben (z. B. erwähnt sie nicht die Ausgrabung der Synagoge, Litauens starke Unterstützung Israels oder die zweithöchste Zahl von „Gerechten unter den Völkern“ pro Kopf).
Ich wusste jedoch nicht, dass die Toiletten, die derzeit von Besuchern in Lukiškių genutzt werden, jemals von Häftlingen in der Todeszelle benutzt wurden, noch dass die jüdische Bevölkerung in dieses Gefängnis eingeliefert wurde, aber es ist ziemlich düster.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/news/vilnius-lithuania-jewish-roots/
Von paperw0rk
7 Kommentare
Inside the barbed-wire perimeter – where armed soldiers once patrolled, poised to shoot escaping prisoners – on the spot where a gallows once stood, is a stage set for tonight’s Lithuanian pop performance.
The prison’s panopticon is now an entertainment space; former cells house artists’ studios; and current “inmates” include Ba, a judge on Lithuania’s version of The Voice, and Katarsis, who represented the country in 2025’s Eurovision Song Contest. Gig-goers use the former death row toilets.
Lukiškės Prison, once a terrifying institution, has been reinvented as the coolest music venue in Vilnius. It is a strange juxtaposition of horror and joy that perfectly encapsulates my paradoxical feelings for a city where young people are reinventing a complex past.
In a way, my journey here started with Brexit. I recently learnt that, courtesy of my great-great-grandparents, I could claim Lithuanian citizenship – and with it an EU passport. After some digging, I found their naturalisation certificates, which showed that they had arrived in England at the end of the 19th century from “Shalant, in Kovno, Lithuania”. I wanted to see the place to which my ancestors (and, perhaps, I) belonged.
“I am returning to my homeland!” I told my friends.
I travelled by train, via Amsterdam, Berlin and Warsaw, and as we pulled into Vilnius, I heard a Lithuanian student joking to his American friend: “Lithuania is the perfect place if you hate people – you can buy a house in the middle of nowhere for $20,000.”
Sick of being overlooked as a holiday destination, Vilnius once ran a tourism campaign joking that it was “Europe’s G-spot”, with the explanatory slogan: “Nobody knows where it is but when you find it – it’s amazing.” And Vilnius didn’t disappoint. This is a creative city, packed with charm, and I quickly fell in love with it, like a holiday romance. But the feeling came crashing down just as swiftly.
The arts are popular in the bohemian city, whose buildings are more colourful than those in many other former Soviet areas
The arts are popular in the bohemian city, whose buildings are more colourful than those in many other former Soviet areas Credit: Richard Bradley/Alamy Stock Photo
Vilnius felt softer than other former Soviet cities I’ve visited – not quite as eager to embrace capitalism, a bohemian city enthralled by the arts. Even the Cold War-era housing blocks were painted in bright pastel colours.
I walked down Literatų gatvė (Literature Street), where the walls are decked with plaques of notable Lithuanian writers, regularly updated like the Hollywood Walk of Fame. I explored MO, the city’s impressive modern art gallery, with its fascinating and ever-changing exhibitions. Tickets for the Operos vaidykla (National Opera and Ballet Theatre) – staging both classics and modern performances – started at a bargain €40 (£35).
The cobbled, Unesco-listed Old Town is especially lovely, packed with Baroque churches which miraculously survived communism. I explored their gold-and-white marble interiors and marvelled at the variety of architecture on show, spanning Art Nouveau, Art Deco and Soviet brutalism. I visited jewellery workshops and hipster interior shops, and stopped for coffee at a pretty café where the patios bloomed with flowers. It was easy to imagine it in the era when my great-grandparents were here. This is the former Jewish quarter, after all.
I passed the noted Lithuanian fashion designer Ramunė Piekautaitė’s boutique, and then The Portal, where tourists waved at other tourists in Dublin and Philadelphia via a livestream. It reminded me that this is a hi-tech city, the home of Vinted; I spotted groups of geeky young men walking around looking like the cast of Silicon Valley.
At Michelin-recommended Ertlio Namas, I gorged on a nine-course tasting menu of classic Lithuanian dishes reimagined – including exquisite morsels of beer-braised beef and salted ide. At the Senatorių Pasažas market hall, I spotted bottles of on-trend pét nat sparkling wine, illustrated with a picture of a dog, and luxury linseed cookies.
So far, so wonderful. I could imagine my ancestors (and myself) living here.
To learn more, I went to the Museum of Culture and Identity of Lithuanian Jews, where I read that in 1920, there were some 150,000 Jewish people living in Lithuania. They made up 36 per cent of the population of Vilnius. The city’s Jewish influence – in the shape of artists, writers and intellectuals – saw it called the “Jerusalem of the North”. The Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) and Yung Vilne movements emerged as painters, musicians and poets strove for a new way to interpret modern life.
Perhaps I should never have ventured to the modest green building that houses the Holocaust Museum. There, the darker history of the city emerged. A far cry from Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, it consists of six small rooms with display cabinets of illuminated text. It was strangely plain, with no artefacts or exhibits because – I started to realise – there is nothing to see. Jewish life here was erased. After the Nazi invasion in 1941, Lithuania experienced the highest proportion of its Jewish population murdered during the Holocaust – almost 95 per cent of its population at the time of 210,000, totalling an estimated 195,000 people – and locals often collaborated.
I read at the museum about the Lietūkis garage pogrom in nearby Kaunas, which saw Jewish men beaten with crowbars and shovels in a massacre initiated and watched by Lithuanians. I saw pictures of Jews hanging from gallows, and a photograph of a man standing beside the decomposed bodies of his brother and wife.
In 1939, there were 160,000 Jewish people in Lithuania. Now, there are barely 3,000.
That evening, I had booked a table for dinner at Gaspar’s – said to be the best restaurant in Vilnius – but as the delicious dishes arrived, I felt sick. I hid my face from other diners as tears came to my eyes.
From that point onwards, I was haunted by the Jewish absence in the city, seeing reminders everywhere I looked. At the Contemporary Art Centre, I realised that I was at the site of the Vilna Ghetto, where 30,000 Jews were forced to live, packed like cattle. I took myself out to swim in Green Lakes, a pristine pool surrounded by pine trees on the edge of the city, but it made me think of the massacre at Ponary, a forest on the outskirts of Vilnius where 75,000 Jewish people were shot, 300 at a time, over the course of three years. Many were taken there from Lukiškės Prison, now that trendy music venue.
I had planned to hire a car and drive to Salantai, my great-grandparents’ shtetl (their hometown). But who was I kidding? There would be nothing left there to see there.
Modern Vilnius is working to highlight its rich Jewish past. On the walls in the old Jewish quarter, paintings recreate old photographs of Jews who lived here. Street signs are written in Lithuanian and Hebrew and “talking statues” of real Jewish people share their stories with the many Jewish tourists I saw here desperately searching for their history.
In Šeduva, 180km north of Vilnius, The Lost Shtetl Museum, on the overlooked history of the Lithuanian shtetls, has also recently opened. Around 800 Jews lived in Šeduva before the war – 700 were murdered.
But in Vilnius itself, what is there to find of this Jewish past? At the newly created Baleboste Jewish restaurant I eat gefilte fish and wonder whether it’s wrong to accept citizenship of a country from which my relatives fled. Is coming back here to stay in a five-star hotel a victory for my ancestors, who were in the ghetto? Is it an endorsement of a country I feel – to my surprise – angry with?
Eventually, I managed to find some of my distant Lithuanian relatives. They were living in Highgate.
And perhaps this is always the fate of the Jewish people: to long for a place where they cannot be. Like the artist Raphaël Chwoles, who was born and grew up in Vilnius and continued to paint the devastated city into his 80s, long after he’d left for the safety of Paris. I left, yearning for Vilnius but heartbroken by it. As the song of the Vilna Ghetto goes: “How often your name calls, my hometown… Something tightens my heart, something yearns for the days that once were.”
Nothingburger article. Sure we need to highlight our Jewish past more, it was a massively important community in our history. However, trying to poinpoint Lukiškes or Žalieji ežerai is not only forced, but completely misses the actually important places that had main roles in holocaust. So the whole article feels lazy, superficial and insincere.
Also, was this supposed to be an ad for the city? *Katie Glass was a guest of* [*Go Vilnius*](https://www.govilnius.lt/)
Kind of weird vibing getting from it, something of a mix „why Lithuania is not that Jewish, feelings and nostalgia for times when authors parents were just kids so no way she experienced that, and then kind of trying to claim how jewish is Lithuania“. I am not sure why, but this whole thing rubs me wrong way. Of course it is important to remember atrocities of the history, but claiming things like that are a bit weird. Especially weird when you consider current Israel and Palestine situation and what the most likely outcome will be in many years.
Also weird points for, „oh I was eating this amazing michelin meal and then the jewish past just hit me“, like is this an ad or documented experience, travel article? Why mash all these things together.
Well, she’s absolutely right about Lukiškių kalėjimas, but other than that I don’t know if it needs to be commented on. Her feelings are valid and she can learn more if she is willing to when she’s ready.
Disclaimer: I haven’t lived in Lithuania for a few decades and missed quite a bit of history lessons so I may be missing something
My understanding is that it’s only recently that Lithuania has focused more on its role in history when it comes to the Holocaust so it’s hardly a surprise that we are a bit behind other countries on this. I remember doing some googling around the city I grew up in and I was surprised to learn that many of the places I would visit had been used as mass killing or burial sites. I don’t remember seeing anything to commemorate that though I found a few references of small plaques/murals in less than obvious places.
There’s of course more that could be done but her comments on how little there is to see are also probably quite important reminders of how easy it is to forget this stuff and just move on which is equally as important I think.
I will agree though that in light of the geo-political situation with Israel the article in general gets a bit of a side-eye