The First Holocaust Museum: The Jewish Museum in Vilna, 1944-1949

Recent studies have examined the early history of Yad Vashem and Holocaust historiography in the immediate post-war years. This paper will draw attention to the center of Holocaust research, exhibition and public education that existed in Vilna (Vilnius), in Soviet Lithuania, between 1944 and 1949.
The Jewish Museum in Vilna was founded by poets Abraham Sutzkever, Shmerke Kaczerginski and Abba Kovner, to serve as a repository for the city’s surviving Jewish cultural treasures – books, art, manuscripts, and archives from YIVO, the Strashun Library and other institutions. But from the outset, the museum paid special attention to retrieving the archive of the Vilna ghetto, and to collecting Holocaust documentation of all kinds. Its volunteer staff recorded survivor testimony beginning in late July 1944 - just a few weeks after Vilna’s liberation - and developed a detailed questionnaire of topics for inquiry.
After the museum’s founders left Soviet Lithuania, and Yankl Gutkowicz became director, two changes occurred: Its legal and political status as a state-sponsored institution under the Commissariat of Culture was strengthened; and the museum began to devote itself almost entirely to Holocaust related activity.
The museum’s foremost achievement was its permanent exhibit “Fascism Is Death”, which spanned four rooms and was devoted to the Holocaust in Lithuania. The exhibit carefully balanced Soviet and Jewish perspectives on the subject. The core of the paper will analyze the exhibit based on photographs, text panels, and press reports.