Changes await Paneriai Memorial, the site commemorating the most egregious Nazi crime in Lithuania. The Ministry of Culture of Lithuania and the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum announced a tender in June 2014 for the idea of a comprehensive rearrangement of Paneriai Memorial to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust and all victims of Nazism. Sixteen projects from both Lithuania and abroad were submitted. Public evaluation of the projects took place on 9 October. 

“We seek to make Paneriai an important centre of Holocaust commemoration and education by rearranging the memorial. A contemporary visitor, whether a Japanese tourist or a Lithuanian school student, must walk out of Paneriai a changed person. His spiritual world must acquire a clear moral and humanistic focus,” Markas Zingeris, director of the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum, said when greeting the participants of the event.

The following experts expressed their opinions: Prof Marius Pranas Šaliamoras, chairman of the Lithuanian Union of Architects and head of the Department of Architecture at Vilnius Academy of Arts, Dr Tomas Grunskis, professor at Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, and Jurga Silvija Večerskytė-Šimeliūnė, landscape architect and designer of the Bernardinų Garden reconstruction project. They evaluated how impressive and impactful each of the sixteen projects were from an artistic and architectural point of view, as well as how to preserve authentic elements and how to accommodate them with the natural and historical environment. 

The projects were also discussed by foreign historians: Dr Jacek Nowakowski, senior curator at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and Dr Piotr Cywinski, director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum (Poland). 

According to Mr Cywinski, the greatest asset of the Paneriai memorial is its serenity and emptiness. It would be a mistake to fill it with objects: “Artistic solutions in places like Paneriai must be moderate in terms of their expression, restrained and subtle, and at the same time they must reflect the authenticity of the memorial. It is important that the voice of the architect does not break the silence of the victims,” Dr Piotr Cywinski said.

According to Dr Jacek Nowakowski, a great Holocaust memorial is both informative and respectful to the victims. It must not contain architectural elements that dominate the environment. He also said he agreed with the idea of using modern technologies at the memorial: “If used wisely, they would allow educational facilities to penetrate the environment without compromising the authenticity of the site”.

The three best ideas for the comprehensive rearrangement of the Paneriai Memorial will be announced in the near future, and reconstruction should be completed in several years with financing from the Republic of Lithuania and support funds of the European Union.