Center for Tolerance

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Center for Tolerance in Vilnius 2 (Vilnius) .jpg

The Center for Tolerance ( Lithuanian Tolerancijos centras ) in Vilnius is part of the State Jewish Museum Gaon of Vilnius (VVGŽM), which comprises a total of five museums and memorials in Vilnius and the surrounding area. It is housed in the former Vilnius Jewish Theater at Naugarduko gatvę 10/2 in the center of Vilnius. Before 1940, the city was considered the Jerusalem of the North , had more than a hundred synagogues and ten yeshivot . The Samuel Bak Museum is also housed in the Center for Tolerance .

The Jewish community in Lithuania can look back on at least six centuries. The Jewish Museum was named after the Gaon of Vilna (1720–1787), a well-known researcher and exegete of Jewish writings, who was, however, also open to influences from non-religious sciences. Two buildings were built by the city's Jewish community at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries at Naugarduko gatvę 10/2: a soup kitchen for needy Jews in 1893 and a theater and concert hall called the Philharmonic in 1910 . This hall was designed and used for festivities of all kinds, for concerts and theater performances. In the 1920s, the Maccabi sports club used the premises, and in the 1930s the Unzer Teater troupe played there . In the Soviet era the hall was used as a cinema.

A first Jewish museum in Vilnius was founded in 1913, another in 1944. It was initially housed in the museum director's apartment. It became the spiritual center of the small community of Holocaust survivors, but had to close in 1949. As part of perestroika , it was possible to re-establish the Jewish Museum at the end of the 1980s. In the open house which was Holocaust exposure furnishings and construction in Naugarduko gatve 10/2 was subsequently led by the architect Leonidas Merkinas completely renovated and adapted for exhibition purposes. On December 12, 1997, on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the death of Gaon of Vilnius, a concert was held in the restored theater and concert hall.

In the newly adapted building, various exhibitions of the Jewish community, of works by world-famous artists from Lithuania, or on related topics, take place. The Samuel Bak Museum is located in a wing on the first floor, while a small permanent exhibition on the second floor provides an overview of the history of the Jews in Lithuania (in Lithuanian and in English) and the Holocaust . Markas Zingeris, the museum's director, explains the concept: “The Holocaust cannot be explained in terms of innocent victims alone. That is why we show Jewish life before the war - this is how you feel the loss and ask yourself the question: How did this sudden end come about? "

  • Center for Tolerance

  • Samuel Bak Museum

  • inner space

  • Part of the exhibition

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Irina Guzenberg: Vilnius, sites of la Mémoire Juive , Vilnius undated, page 75 (French).
  2. ↑ Goethe-Institut Lithuania: KEEPING THE MEMORY OF THE LOST , October 2013

Web links

Coordinates: 54 ° 40 ′ 37.7 ″  N , 25 ° 16 ′ 37.3 ″  E