'Lost Shtetl': Lithuania opens museum commemorating pre-WWII Jewish life

Published on 21/09/2025 - 15:10 GMT+2

The 3000 quadrate metre depository analyzable is now nan largest successful each of nan Baltic states. 

Until Nazi business successful 1941, overmuch of nan country’s Jewish organization lived successful “shtetls”, mini towns wherever they often resided side-by-side pinch different Lithuanians. One of these towns, Šeduva, was erstwhile location to 700 Jewish Lithuanians, each of whom were killed aliases had to flight during nan Holocaust.

The Šeduva shtetl was destroyed successful August of 1941, erstwhile its residents were driven into nan adjacent Pakuteniai and Liaudiškiai forests and murdered. Only a handful, those who had escaped earlier and those who had been sheltered by Lithuanians, survived. 

It was a descendant of a Jewish family, who wished to stay anonymous, who traced their family roots to this bluish Lithuanian town, who successful portion funded nan building of nan museum, which was inspired by Šeduva and nan atrocities which took spot extracurricular of it. 

Together pinch writer Sergejus Kanovičius, nan Switzerland-based FSU Education Association, and 36 companies from 8 different countries, nan depository came to life. What began arsenic a task to sphere a Jewish cemetery successful nan area transformed into what is now a halfway pinch 10 thematic exhibitions, spanning from nan “Golden Age” of Jewish life during nan interwar period, each nan measurement to nan demolition of Jewish communities nether Soviet and Nazi Occupation. 

The exhibitions see photographs, individual testimonies, artefacts from Lithuanian Jewish communities, including a Torah scroll and a young girl’s memoir. 

The past grounds successful nan depository is simply a multi-sensory “path of death” meant to recreate nan past moments of  Šeduva’s inhabitants, arsenic they made their measurement to nan forest. Visitors locomotion connected solid floors, underneath which nan wood level is visible. Continuing down a acheronian corridor, they perceive nan sounds of nan forest, smell nan scents of nan woods, and watch documentary footage changeable successful nan Šiauliai ghetto. It reminds visitors that these atrocities are not only a tragic history, but besides thing that citizens should beryllium reckoning pinch successful nan coming day. 

The depository opened to nan nationalist connected nan 20th of September, and will beryllium free to visitors for 1 year, though reservations are required.