'Lost Shtetl': Lithuania opens museum commemorating pre-WWII Jewish life

The 3000 square meter museum complex is now the largest in all of the Baltic states. 

Until Nazi occupation in 1941, much of the country’s Jewish population lived in “shtetls”, small towns where they often resided side-by-side with other Lithuanians. One of these towns, Šeduva, was once home to 700 Jewish Lithuanians, all of whom were killed or had to escape during the Holocaust.

The Šeduva shtetl was destroyed in August of 1941, when its residents were driven into the nearby Pakuteniai and Liaudiškiai forests and murdered. Only a handful, those who had escaped earlier and those who had been sheltered by Lithuanians, survived. 

It was a descendant of a Jewish family, who wished to remain anonymous, who traced their family roots to this northern Lithuanian town, who in part funded the construction of the museum, which was inspired by Šeduva and the atrocities which took place outside of it. 

Together with writer Sergejus Kanovičius, the Switzerland-based FSU Education Association, and 36 companies from eight different countries, the museum came to life. What began as a project to preserve a Jewish cemetery in the area transformed into what is now a center with 10 thematic exhibitions, spanning from the “Golden Age” of Jewish life during the interwar period, all the way to the destruction of Jewish communities under Soviet and Nazi Occupation. 

The exhibitions include photographs, personal testimonies, artefacts from Lithuanian Jewish communities, including a Torah scroll and a young girl’s memoir. 

The last exhibit in the museum is a multi-sensory “path of death” meant to recreate the last moments of  Šeduva’s inhabitants, as they made their way to the forest. Visitors walk on glass floors, underneath which the forest floor is visible. Continuing down a dark corridor, they hear the sounds of the forest, smell the scents of the woods, and watch documentary footage shot in the Šiauliai ghetto. It reminds visitors that these atrocities are not only a tragic history, but also something that citizens should be reckoning with in the present day. 

The museum opened to the public on the 20th of September, and will be free to visitors for one year, although reservations are required.