Jewish studies in Lithuania since 1990

Abstract

The 1990s were a golden age for revival of the many social sciences and humanities disciplines in Lithuanian academia. As in many other fields, the history and study of the Lithuanian Jewish world has evoked interest but has also presented Lithuanian society with challenges. The Holocaust and the Soviet period in modern Lithuanian history completely destroyed earlier Jewish creativity. During the whole Soviet period between 1940–1990, Jewish studies did not exist as an academic subject in Lithuania, as elswhere in the territory of the Soviet Union. Commemoration of the Holocaust began in 1944 when the Lithuanian Jewish museum, the only such institution in the USSR, was founded by returning survivors who organized the first post-war exhibition: “The Brutal Destruction of the Jews during the German Occupation.” This short-lived museum in Vilnius (1945–1948) attempted to collect and restore the treasures lost in the flames of the Second World War. However, in June 1949, the Soviet Lithuanian government’s reorganization of cultural institutions effectively liquidated the museum. In 1949, word reached the West that the Jewish museum had been liquidated and ransacked by the NKVD.[...]