Jewish culture in Vilna, Lithuania, can be traced back for about seven centuries. When Jews began living in the capital of Lithuania it was known as Vilna, or Vilne in Yiddish.

Throughout the years the city has come to be known by a variety of different names, including Wilno when it was under Polish rule between the two world wars and the current name Vilnius.

By the 18th century Vilna had become the world capital of traditional Talmudic learning, eventually becoming known as the Jerusalem of Lithuania, or Jerusalem of the North. Still today Vilna is known for its Jewish culture and heritage.

During the Holocaust approximately 95% of Lithuanian Jews — including the vast majority of the 80,000 Jewish residents who were living in Vilna prior to the Nazi invasion in 1941 — lost their lives to the Nazi regime. This is the highest percentage of a Jewish community in all of Europe.

Today’s small Jewish community of approximately 3,000 to 4,000 people makes bold efforts to maintain its heritage. Modern Jewish life centers around Chabad Lubavitch, which is a combined community center and synagogue, and the Jewish Community of Lithuania, which offers a wide range of cultural and communal services.

While visiting Vilna, there are several historical Jewish sites and memorials to visit. One that is particularly significant is the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum. This museum is a national government-funded establishment that is dedicated to conserving the historical, material, and spiritual heritage of Lithuanian Jews.

The museum states that its main goals are to balance the collection, conservation and investigation of museum assets with provision of information to and education of the public as well as to link the protection of Lithuanian Jewish historical and cultural heritage with both the cultural and education needs of the public and provision of cultural services.

The Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum is comprised of five branches and therefore offers quite a lot to see and experience. The first branch is the Tolerance Center, which is housed in a building that previously operated a Jewish theatre post-WWI. The Tolerance Center seeks to spread the values of tolerance in society and to educate society about the atrocities of religious and racial discrimination in order to ensure that history doesn’t repeat itself.

The Tolerance Center stresses that education is an effective way to foster tolerance in society by teaching historical truth, freedom of thought, human rights, and imparting understanding for other cultures and traditions to all people.

The remaining four branches of the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum include:

• The Green House, which is a Holocaust memorial

• The Gallery of the Righteous, which includes exhibits demonstrating the history of Lithuanian Jews

• The Paneriai Memorial Museum, which is a memorial on a site where people of many ethnicities were murdered during WWII

• The Jacques Lipchitz Memorial Museum, a museum dedicated to the world-famous sculptor.

Each branch offers a fascinating, educational and sometimes somber glimpse into the history of Jewish life in Vilna, Lithuania.

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