Spaces of Defiance: The Vilna Ghetto Library

The Vilna Ghetto Library was established in the first days of the ghetto to preserve Jewish cultural artifacts that were identified for destruction or denigration by the Nazis. Jews smuggled art, Judaica, and books from important institutions outside of the ghetto like the Yiddish Scientific Institute (YIVO) into the Library, in hopes that the materials would survive the war even if the smugglers did not. Many of these materials were otherwise bound for local incinerators or Nazi Germany, where they were to be used in the establishment of an institution that was scheduled to study Jews after they had been exterminated.
The Library building became both a cultural epicenter and a meeting place for underground armed resistance organizations that operated in the ghetto. Over the two years that the Library was operational, thousands of documents, books, and works of art were collected, hidden or buried by the Jewish partisans. After the war, two writers who were part of these efforts, Shmerke Kaczerginski and Abraham Sutzkever, unburied the Jewish treasures that had been stashed and founded the Jewish Museum based on these archives. The Museum was later closed by the Soviet government in 1949.
Join Dr. Stanislovas Stasiulis, research fellow at the Lithuanian Institute of History, to learn about the history of this vital place in Jewish history and culture. Hear about the people who worked, read, gathered, and smuggled priceless artifacts to this place. Stasiulis will detail the kinds of books people borrowed from the Vilna Ghetto Library, how this space was used for various events during the war, and how the Library was transformed into a Museum by survivors of the Holocaust. This history will take us forward to today, where plans for the Memorial Museum of Holocaust in Lithuania and Vilna Ghetto is planning to open in the former Vilna Ghetto Library building.