Commemorating the 70th anniversary of the liquidation of the Vilnius Ghetto, on September 25, 2013 a ghetto hideout called malina was opened at the Holocaust exhibition premises of the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum (on Pamėnkalnio St. 12). Hideouts like this used to be made in the Vilnius Ghetto in underground piping, chimneys, attics until September 1943 (when the ghetto was annihilated), and was the only way for some Jews to survive.

In the recreated malina surroundings, visitors can listen to theextracts from the diary of Ichok Rudaševskis (1927–1943), telling about what he, in his early teens, experienced while hiding in the malina in one of the warehouses on Šiaulių Street in Vilnius. Ichok was the only child in the family, which settled in Vilnius in 1921. His father Elijahu worked in the printing house, and his mother was a seamstress. Ichok was 14, when the war between the Soviet Union and the Nazi Germany started in June 1941. In September he and his whole family were closed in the Vilnius ghetto. From his first days in the ghetto, Ichok started to write a diary, where he fixed not only daily events, but also his emotions, dreams, his attitude towards the horrible events happening in the ghetto, and attempts of his family to hide in the hideouts. Unfortunately, the last attempt to survive was not successful – the malina was found in October 1943 after two weeks of the liquidation of the Vilnius ghetto, and all people who were hiding were shot in Paneriai. The diary was found after the war in the ruins of the ghetto by the relative of Rudaševskis’ family Sara Vološin.

The Holocaust Exhibition "Malina"

Among the exhibits in the recreated malina surroundings there are original photographs that were discovered at the Vilnius Ghetto right after the war and now are kept in the museum. The people in the photographs were killed in Paneriai. The aim of the malina exhibition is to help the visitors to feel, at least to a small degree, what it meant to be a Jew in the ghetto during the Second World War.

Malina exhibition was funded by the private initiative – organization “Jerusalem of the North”.