Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Lithuanian Capital’s Last Synagogue Shuts Down

(JTA) — The Jewish Community of Lithuania temporarily closed the only functioning synagogue of the capital Vilnius, citing security issues that may be connected to a debate about the honoring of Nazi collaborators.

“The Lithuanian Jewish Community has received threatening telephone calls and letters in recent days,” Faina Kukliansky, the chairwoman of the community, wrote in a statement Tuesday. It was a “painful but unavoidable decision” to close Choral Synagogue in Vilnius along with the headquarters of the Jewish community, which is also a Jewish community center.

The shutdowns are without precedent in Lithuania since its independence from Russia in 1990.

Last month Vilnius Mayor Remigijus Šimašius ordered the removal of a controversial plaque in central Vilnius that honored Jonas Noreika, a collaborator with Nazi authorities, allegedly also in the murder of local Jews, who is celebrated posthumously in Lithuania as a hero for fighting communism.

The municipality last month also voted to rename a street that had been named for another collaborator, Kazys Škirpa, who called for Jews to be driven out of Lithuania. The decisions provoked protests and outrage in nationalist circles.

Anti-Semitic attacks are very rare in Lithuania.

The Choral Synagogue has been at the center of several controversies and fights between Kukliansky’s community and the Chabad-Lubavitch emissary to the country, Rabbi Sholem Ber Krinsky, and his congregants.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.