UKC

I went to this today, rather against my instincts.

Dear Lord. If there's a more affecting museum anywhere, I've certainly never been to it. Anyone else been?

jcm

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:

I've been to the equivalent museums of occupation in Riga and Tallinn and they rather deal briefly with the holocaust and Baltic involvement in it, with most focus being on the suffering of the Estonians and Latvians under the Soviets (and to a lesser extent Nazis). Is this museum more about the end of the Lithuanian Jewry?

In reply to TobyA:

No, there's another museum about the Holocaust aspect, which I failed to find. There's a recently added section on the Jewish ghetto in Vilnius and a vague reference to local collaboration, but no more than that (though I know there's a huge literature about it in Lithuania particularly).

It's difficult to say why it's so affecting; something about the fact that it's in the former KGB headquarters and you can go down and see the interrogation cells, various torture sites and execution chamber (slightly pornographic, but still, gives the place a certain realism). Also there is an incredible amount of photos of the partisans of the late 1940's, one of whom had the same name as one of the opponents I played (I'm here playing chess), and it was like my opponent's face looking out of the photograph. He must have been a relative. There must be plenty of people still walking around Vilnius whose relatives died in that building. You'd think they'd have bulldozed it, but they've really gone the other way and documented it - they have lots of original Soviet death sentences, just typed out like office memos. Evidently the partisans were very keen to record what they did, which are why there are so many photographs of them - incredibly dangerous things to have, I would have thought.

The item I remember most is a photograph of a priest, barefooted, carrying an evidently very heavy cross up to the famous Hill of Crosses, to start the process of replacing the hundreds of crosses on it the fourth time the Soviets had bulldozed then, presumably knowing he'd be shot as a result (the museum doesn't record what happened to him, but there seem to have been plenty of other priests executed there - they have a special room for them). One might not like the Catholic church but you have to take your hat off to that.

The Lithuanians seem incredibly unaffected by it. I can't imagine what it must be like to have a building in the main street of your town where people were being shot by the authorities only 25 years ago, but I met a Lithuanian woman there and had dinner with her, and she obviously thought I was making a silly fuss - of course you wouldn't knock the building down; what would be the point of that? - seemed to be her attitude.

jcm

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:

My sister and her husband went to a museum about the Vietnam war somewhere in Laos. There was a room there that was full of jars that fetus' in that had been killed in the womb because of agent orange poisoning. She also reeled off a lot of things about how heavily Laos had been bombed. Sounded like there was a lot of disturbing stuff there though.

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:
Yes, it sounds rather like the ones in Tallinn and Riga then. There's an old Estonian joke; which building in Tallinn has the best view? The KGB gaol, because from the cells there you can see all the way to Siberia.

My better half wrote her master's thesis on Lithuanians of our age (40ish now, but then late 20s), so who were about 18 when independence came and they had a very interesting relationship to Russia/USSR. They had all learnt good English since independence but they thought it was a shame those younger than them were only learning western languages and hadn't learnt Russian as they seemed to respect a lot of Russian culture they had been educated in, but at the same time they all knew the family stories of those who went to Siberia and never came back and the like.

If you're interested in the rather tragic and dark history of the Baltics you might find the novel Purge by Sofi Oksanen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purge_%28Novel%29 interesting. It doesn't pull any punches about the complicity and brutality that went with the double occupation.

In reply to TobyA:

I've visited the museum in Riga but not in Vilnius. But during my first visit to Vilnius a Lithuanian colleague took me and a couple of others for a tour of the city centre and I remember him pointing out the KGB building & the bullet holes. It was dark, about -15° and snowy and stuck in my mind. But I don't remember it being a museum (but that was almost 15 years ago).

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:

I have been to several places like this. they are always very powerful and really affect me. But its important to never forget what people have gone through, and are still going through