Before the Second World War the house on Strašūno Str. 6 (currently – Žemaitijos Str. 4) hosted the public Jewish library “Meficei Haskala“. In 1940, during the first Soviet occupation, the library was nationalized. In spring of 1941 it was reorganized to library No. 5. Until the establishment of the Vilna Ghetto the first Judenrat was working there. Later on, the library was included into the territory of the Large Vilna Ghetto, and the library was active almost until the liquidation of the ghetto in September, 1943. The library was headed by a refuge from Warsaw, bibliographer Herman Kruk, who established and managed Statistical Bureau, Ghetto Archive and a museum. H. Kruk was also writing a ghetto diary, known today as “The last days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania“.

The building of the library also hosted the so called Ghetto University. Events of the Writers and Artists Union, History Union and other cultural organizations were often held in the Vilna Ghetto library hall. Due to its cultural activities, the library was often called the Cultural Center. The building also hosted sauna, headed by the leader of the Vilna Ghetto resistance organization, Icik Vitenberg. In the sauna, the members of the resistance movement were hiding weapons and learning how to use them, while in the library’s reading room they were discussing what to do next – to rebel at the ghetto or to join the partisans. There was a sports field in the courtyard of the library and a jail in front of it. In 1945, a group of Holocaust survivors, leaded by Shmerke Kaczerginski and Abraham Sutzkever, established Jewish museum in this building. The museum was closed by the Soviet authorities in 1949. During the years of Soviet occupation the ghetto library building hosted the Librarians‘ Technikum, later on – the Vilnius J. Tallat-Kelpša music college, renamed as conservatory in 2004.