State-Of-The-Art Jewish Museum Coming To Former Lithuania Shtetl
Image by Yad Vashem
(JTA) – The architects of Warsaw’s award-winning POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews will design a state-of-the-art Jewish museum outside a former shtetl in Lithuania.
The museum, slated to open in 2019, will be part of the “Lost Shtetl” memorial complex inaugurated in 2015 in and around the small town of Šeduva. It will be located across the road from the town’s restored Jewish cemetery, which is part of the complex.
Sergey Kanovich, the founder of the Šeduva Jewish Memorial Fund, said the museum will be designed by the Finnish company “Lahdelma & Mahlamäki Architects,” which designed POLIN. Preliminary images show it incorporating several connected structures.
Architect Rainer Mahlamäki said in a statement that the design was inspired by ancient Lithuanian architecture as well as by the neighboring old Jewish cemetery and the rural landscape surrounding the site.
Besides the cemetery, the Lost Shtetl complex already consists of a memorial sculpture in the center of Šeduva, and memorials at the sites of three Holocaust mass executions of Jews near the town.
A historical study about Šeduva’s Jews also was carried out as part of the project, as well as a documentary film.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
