To commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day (27 Jan), visitors were invited to visit the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum’s Holocaust exhibition on 26 and 27 January 2011. On these days, they were admitted to the museum free of charge to see the exhibition and listen to the guide’s story. The event was popular: over the two days, about a hundred people visited the exhibition, most of them schoolchildren of 10 to 12 forms and their teachers as well as workers of the foreign embassies in Vilnius.

The Holocaust exhibition tells about the culture and history of the once-numerous ethnic minority of Lithuania: from Jews’ settlement in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania until their tragic fate in the mid-twentieth century. In 2010, the exhibition was renewed: new documents, photographs, audio and video material from the last century were added. The events that happened during the Nazi occupation account for the largest part of the exhibition. It tells about the lack of rights for the Jews, the killings and the establishment of ghettos; their full annihilation in the provinces and, at the same time, the fight of the people who had lost everything, the determination not to give in, to have a goal and hope, to think of a better future. The exhibition items from the museum’s collections are especially valuable: they are original things, which testify to the horrible reality. The items have miraculously survived and speak to us about the volume of the Holocaust, human suffering, fear and despair.

“I visited this exhibition for the first time and I am not disappointed. After the exhibition, I can better understand the essence of the events and I am truly grateful to you for it. I want to come here once more.”

(A school-leaver of Vilnius Gerosios Vilties secondary school)