Probe: Jewish graves under Vilnius building?

The Great Synagogue Yard, Vilnius, 1920-1930

28 June 2008

By DPA

VILNIUS - Israeli experts launched a 10-day research project yesterday to determine if newly constructed offices and apartments sit on an old Jewish cemetery in Lithuania's capital.

Questions about the site's past have caused international controversy. Lithuanian Jews, who opposed the construction work, say the site was a 15th century cemetery. Developers dispute their claim.

Protests from abroad include a letter from then-U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. The U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee passed a resolution condemning the construction on the possible cemetery site.

Last year, Jews from across Europe rallied in protest outside the headquarters of European Union institutions in Brussels.

Ponary near Wilno (Vilna)/Vilnius, Lithuania, Jewish victims of execution before the mass burial.

The Jewish community in Vilnius - called the Jerusalem of Europe - was almost wiped in the Holocaust during the World War II.

Czarist Russian authorities shut down the cemetery in 1831 and partly built over it. In the 1950s, the Soviets built a stadium and concert hall on part of the site, allowing the remains of the Vilna Gaon to be removed.