Cultural Heritage Department to the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania

 Work is being done to stop the collapse of the Vilnius Synagogue (Gėlių street No. 6, Vilnius).

 Until the work was started, the house of prayer was in a dangerous condition. The roof has holes and so the building is being affected strongly by the environment. Because of this some of the flooring and the internal cupola collapsed, the wooden roof construction was rotting and the mortar in the walls was decaying.

 In order to avoid an accident and solve the dangerous situation, supports were put in place to hold up the wooden flooring and wooden rafters supporting the roof to keep it from caving into the building. Also, a wall of silicate brick and metal constructions which were obscuring the facade of the synagogue as well eroding the mortar in the original brick walls and thus endangering the entire building are being removed.

 The Cultural Heritage Department has allocated over 50,000 litas [approximately 14,431 euros] from its Heritage Conservation Program for 2014 to carry out these tasks. The Vilnius Jewish Religious Community has allocated a further 5,000 litas. Architect Irena Staniūnienė drafted the plan to save the building.

Picture: Aleksandras Bosas, fifth from left, holding a sign saying “Juozas Krištaponis is the Shame of Ukmergė.” Photo: Gediminas Nemunaitis / ukzinios.lt.

O B I T U A R Y

by Evaldas Balčiūnas

Aleksandras Bosas, a respected Lithuanian poet, died unexpectedly on July 24, 2014. The widerDefending History  community extends deepest condolences to the family and friends of our suddenly departed colleague, who is survived by his wife, Natalija, three sons and a daughter.

We have lost a courageously active literary voice against fascism and against the contemporary attempts at high levels to glorify fascism via posthumous honors for collaborators and local perpetrators of the Lithuanian Holocaust.

At the beginning of 2014 his book of poems dedicated to commemorating the Holocaust in Lithuania appeared. It is called Iš ten sugrįžtantiems (“For Those Who Returned from There”).

He last read his poetry publicly ten days before his death, on July 14. It is symbolically fitting for Bosas’s stature that the reading was held at a protest calling for the removal of a statue glorifying Holocaust perpetrator J. Krištaponis from a square in Ukmergė (Vilkomir).

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