The Museum of Genocide Victims was set up on 14 October 1992 on an order from the Minister of Culture and Education of the Republic of Lithuania and the President of the Union of Political Prisoners and Deportees. It was established in the building where plans for deportations and the arrests of peaceful inhabitants, the persecution of opponents and the suppression of the resistance were devised and carried out by Soviet institutions between 1940 and 1991.
For the whole Lithuanian nation, this building is a symbol of the 50-year-long Soviet occupation. Set up in the former KGB headquarters, the museum is the only one of its kind in the former Soviet republics. The museum was reorganised in 1997. By a resolution of the government of the Republic of Lithuania, dated 24 March 1997, the responsibility for running the museum was taken over by the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania. The museum’s objective is to collect, keep and present historic documents about forms of physical and spiritual genocide against the Lithuanian people, and the ways and the extent of the resistance against the Soviet regime
The building which houses the Museum of Genocide Victims is over 100 years old. Its history reflects the complicated events in the history of Lithuania at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. From the end of the 18th century, Lithuania was a part of the Russian Empire. It was erased from the map of the world; it did not exist even in the administrative division of Russia. Its territory was divided into provinces, which included not only Lithuanian lands. This building was constructed in 1899 to house the courts of the Vilnius province. It was designed by the architect Mikhail Prozorov and the engineer Leonid Viner, according to sketches by the academician Wassilij Prussakov. The design started in 1888.
At present, several institutions are based in the building: The Museum of Genocide Victims, the Lithuanian Special Archive, where documents of the former KGB archive are kept, the Lithuanian Genocide and Resistance Research Centre, and courts of justice.
Opening times:
Wednesday to Saturday 10–18;
Sunday 10–17.
Adresse:
The Museum of Genocide Victims
Aukų g. 2a, LT-01113, Vilnius.
Lithuania
Telephon: +37 (0) 5 249 6264
Fax: +37 (0) 249 62 64
Internet:
muziejus
genocid.lt
http://www.genocid.lt/muziejus/
