London, UK – Protest Around The Globe To Protect Vilna Gaon Grave Site.

London, UK – Worldwide protests against building work at the site of a 600-year-old Vilnius cemetery moved to London as hundreds of Orthodox Jews gathered outside the capital’s Lithuanian embassy.

The Committee for the Preservation of Jewish Cemeteries in Europe and the Conference of European Rabbis is arranging prayer vigils and demonstrations in New York, Washington and Melbourne in the coming months to call for construction at the Snipiskes Jewish cemetery in Vilnius to be halted.

Orthodox Jews raised concerns about the construction of a new office block at the location earlier this year. But despite assurances from the Lithuanian government that building would not take place on the cemetery, campaigners are concerned that the entire site where building work is taking place has not been sufficiently inspected to confirm that burials did not take place there.

The cemetery, the final resting place in 1797 of the celebrated Vilna Gaon, was closed by the Tsarist Russian authorities in 1831 and partly built over.

During the Holocaust and World War II more than 200,000 Lithuanian Jews were killed.
Then, in the 1950s, Soviet authorities built a stadium and concert hall on the site, but allowed the remains of the Vilna Gaon to be removed.[tottalyjewish]