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In June 2014, the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania and the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum announced a competition for the best idea to re-arrange the Paneriai Memorial to victims of Holocaust and all victims of Nazism. Over a period of more than two months Lithuanian and foreign entities submitted 16 project ideas. On 28 November, winner of the competition was identified.
The project “Šnabždesių miškas” (Forest of Whispers, authors: architects Jautra Bernotaitė, Ronaldas Pučka, Andrius Ropolas and Paulius Vaitiekūnas) had been announced the winner of the competition. The authors of the project be awarded a prize in the amount of LTL 10,000. According to the museum’s director Jaša Markas Zingeris, this project represented the idea of the memorial best. “I would like to thank all the participants of the international competition, every single author, for accepting this, I may say, historical challenge. Many powerful projects were submitted for the competition, however, because of strict public procurement rules, they are not among the lucky ones”, said Markas Zingeris.
The museum director noted that the competition helped discover a wide range of architectural ideas and opportunities for comprehensive re-arrangement of Paneriai Memorial, which had been shared by local and foreign participants. “The need to re-arrange the site and to use it for educational purposes and in teaching the youth of Lithuania as well as with the aim to reveal the actual historic truth to foreign visitors had been discussed for many years in a row. Thank God that the Commission managed to finalise the public procurement procedure despite such an enormous time pressure.”
Markas Zingeris highlighted that one of the key duties of the museum is to pay due respect to every single group of people who fell victims to the Nazi heathenism. “Optimum access will have to be ensure to all and every single one of confirmed killing sites or monuments, and at the visitor centre personal stories will be told in their own historic context. At this site of mass killings that counts the biggest number of Nazi victims in Lithuania thousands of people perished. Among them were residents of Vilnius and surrounding areas, Soviet prisoners of war, Polish intelligentsia and participants of the anti-Nazi movement, solders of the Lithuanian National Guard and other Lithuanians who had no reason to be killed at all. However, first and foremost, Paneriai is the site of the Holocaust crimes that a peaceful mind cannot possible comprehend,” said Markas Zingeris.
The authors of the architectural idea “Šnabždesių miškas” suggest that the authentic environment be re-created to the extent possible. The existing old information boards with inaccurate information shall be replaced with new rust-like covered metal stands. The external and internal walls of the visitor centre will be decorated with burnt wood planks. The paths made of burnt wood are seen as a continuation of the wall decoration. The new system of paths is to be built in such a way as not to obstruct further archaeological excavations on the site of mass murder that could be performed by employing modern scanning technologies. According to the director of the museum, any archaeological excavations shall be performed with due respect to the dead as required by Judaism, which says that the bones of the dead shall rest undisturbed.
The architects suggest that the slopes of the seven mass killing and burial pits are restored and dark colours are used to form the bottom of the pits, bushes around the perimeter of the pits are removed and authentic space restored. The shoddy growths around the cultural valuables will also be removed. Vegetation will be used to highlight the pits of murder that were destroyed during the Soviet times.
The memorial will have a spacious visitor centre erected. It will host an interactive exposition on the history of one of the biggest mass killing sites in Europe. The centre will organise lectures and conferences with participation of Lithuanian and foreign lecturers and offer educational and other events with the aim to preserve the memory of the Holocaust, to realise and analyse the disastrous consequences of all Nazi crimes.
The only reconstruction of Paneriai Memorial took place in the Soviet times. It was back in 1985 that the memorial was reconstructed according to the plan developed by architect Jaunutis Makariūnas. It was then that the asphalt-bitumen paths were formed, places of pits marked, lighting systems installed and a small museum erected, which will be deconstructed as suggested by the winners of the competition.
It is expected to implement the project in coming years with the help of the Lithuanian national budget and the European Union funds. According to preliminary calculations of the Ministry of Culture, some LTL 10 million will be needed to complete the comprehensive re-arrangement of the memorial.
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