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Artistic works which were kept in hideouts and thus preserved during the war. These works belonged to the Jewish museum in Vilnius in 1944–1949.
From 1949 to 1989 they were in the possession of the LSSR Museum of Revolution and Art and were returned to the restored Jewish Museum in 1989.
The history of the Jewish museum in Lithuania is fragile and complicated, just like the history of twentieth century Lithuania itself. A small number of enthusiasts who wanted to bring the idea of the museum to fruition faced constant bureaucratic and ideological obstacles.
The first attempt to found a Jewish museum was made in the 1900s when Lithuania still belonged to the Russian Empire. At that time the Jewish communities in Eastern Europe became much more interested in their national art and the Yiddish culture.
Doctors Emanuel G. Kahn (Emanuelis G. Kanas) and Zemach Shabad wanted to establish a unique museum of teaching facilities in Vilnius and to exhibit various scientific tools and reproductions of paintings there. Tsarist Russia saw the museum as a threat promoting ideas hostile to Russia and refused permission for the museum. Eventually, it was Yakov Vygodski, the head of the Society of Lovers of Jewish Past, who succeeded with getting the museum opened.
The Jewish museum was opened in a solemn ceremony at E. Ožeškienės g. 7 (present day Kudirkos Square, the building no longer exists) in January 1914. The premises were specifically designed for the Jewish museum. It had four sections: Literature and History; Folk Music; Architecture, Applied Arts and Crafts; Painting and Sculpture. The museum did not last long. During WWI the entire Jewish cultural heritage it had in its possession was destroyed.
In the interwar period the Society of Jewish History and Ethnography cultivated the idea of having such a museum. Two separate institutions worked on this question – one founded in Vilnius occupied by Poland, the other in Kaunas, the provisional capital of Lithuania, both of them founded in 1919.
The Society of Jewish History and Ethnography, presided over by Solomon An-sky (Shloyme Zanvel Rappoport, 1863–1920) opened a new museum in E. Ožeškienės street in the same year. This society organised ethnographic expeditions to shtetls and collected Jewish heritage for many years.
After An-sky’s death the museum was named after him. Later the folklore archive was transferred to the Institute for Jewish Research (JIVO) founded in Vilnius in 1925.
In 1931, the Society of Jewish History and Ethnography established the Jewish ethnographic museum and archive in Kaunas. The goal of the museum was not only to collect Jewish heritage but also record the appearance of Jewish shtetls of the day. The museum was forced to cease its activity during WWII.
In 1944, a group of former ghetto prisoners and partisans, headed by writers Shmerel Kacherginsky and Avram Sutzkever, founded a museum, which became a meeting place for Jewish survivors. The museum was soon transferred to better premises at M. Strašūno Street, 6 (present day Žemaitijos Street.) where there had been a library before the war, and during the war it was both a library and a special prison of the ghetto. It was the only Jewish museum in the Soviet Union at this period.
The exhibits and valuables of former museums and JIVO, as well as works created in the ghetto were brought to the new museum from various hideouts in sacks and wheelbarrows. The museum succeeded in organising only one exhibition during its short existence. It was dedicated to writer Sholem Aleichem. The authorities did not give permission for the exhibition dedicated to the Holocaust to be opened. In 1949, during the anti-Semitic campaign, the museum was ‘reorganised’ which de facto meant it was closed. The exhibits were dispersed among other Lithuanian museums.
Half a century later, the Lithuanian Jewish State Museum was restored on 6 September 1989 in Vilnius thanks to the initiative of several enthusiasts. Many exhibits, which had been scattered among other institutions, were returned to the museum. M. K. Čiurlionis Museum of Art gave back the exhibits of the Kaunas Jewish Ethnographic Museum, which it had preserved during the period it had them in its possession. At first these exhibits made up the bulk of the new exhibition. When Lithuania commemorated the two hundred year anniversary of the Vilna Gaon’s passing in 1997, the museum was named the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum.
This exhibition, which might also be called “the travels of the exhibits”, contains items marked with stamp prints of various museums and communities made during different periods. A post-war museum stamp print is visible on the childhood drawings by Samuel Bak, which he created at the Vilna Ghetto. According to the present interpretation of the theory of heritage preservation, a stamp on the representative part of an exhibit is a harsh intervention. During the first post-war years, however, when there was grand scale looting of cultural heritage, this clearly visible sign helped preserve many valuables and perhaps saved them in order for them to find their way back to the restored Jewish museum.
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