Very cosmopolitan and modern in some ways, Vilnius's painful history is ever present. Lithuania was the last pagan country in Europe, finally conquered and converted by returning Crusaders. Lithuania was repeatedly occupied by Poland and Russia. Vilnius was the home of the largest Jewish population in eastern Europe; most (140,000) were murdered by the Nazis.
Today the tour went to old churches and the university (founded as a Jesuit college in 1570), but most memorable was the KGB museum, commemorating victims of genocide. The KGB simply took over the same buildings that had housed the earlier oppressive regimes: Tsarist Russia, Polish occupiers, Bolsheviks, Nazis. Same basement prison cells.
Above are cold water and padded cells.
Below is the execution room, where prisoners entered and were shot in the head, then their bodies passed through small windows to be loaded in trucks and buried in mass graves. The room was listed as the "kitchen" in building plans, and as the Soviet Union fell the bullet holes in the wall were hidden and a false floor added to try to hide the evidence, now revealed and covered by a glass floor. A film clip showing an all too realistic movie reenactment plays constantly.
Dahlia, the Lithuanian tour guide, lost both her grandfathers after the war, one a teacher, the other a former military officer. Both were considered enemies of the Soviet state and exiled to Siberia, fate unknown, never to return.
Outside is the small memorial to all the Lithuanians murdered under the Soviet regime.
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