Uncovered floor of Vilnius’s Great Synagogue bears witness to Nazi, Soviet devastation

Archaeologists have uncovered parts of the floor of the Great Synagogue in Vilnius, Lithuania, illustrating the extent of the 17th-century synagogue’s destruction by successive Nazi and Soviet oppressors last century, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) said last week.

Findings dated to the 17th and 18th centuries included parts of the synagogue’s women’s section, huge water basins used to ensure the purity of the synagogue’s ritual bath, or mikveh, and a giant pillar, now collapsed on its side, that stood near the synagogue’s bimah, a podium for Torah reading, the IAA said in a statement.

“The architectural wealth and vitality we encounter — alongside the destruction of impressive giant columns that collapsed during the destruction of the synagogue by the Nazis and the Soviets — tell the tragic story of a community that lived here, that is no more,” said the excavation’s directors, Jon Seligman and Justinas Rakas.

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The excavations, held on behalf of the IAA, the Association of Lithuanian Archaeology, the Good Will Foundation and the Lithuanian Jewish community, were the fifth since 2015 at Vilnius’ Great Synagogue, the beating heart of one of the most important Jewish communities of the early modern era. Previous excavations have uncovered the synagogue’s bimah and holy ark.

The new section uncovered by the archaeologists showed that the synagogue’s floor had been decorated with patterns of red, white and black flowers.

The synagogue was burned during the Nazi occupation of Lithuania, between 1941 and 1944, and razed by Soviet authorities, who ruled Lithuania from the end of World War II until 1990.

At its height, the Great Synagogue stood at the center of a complex of community institutions, known as Shulhoyf, which included other smaller synagogues, a community council building, mikvehs, study houses, a library and the home of Rabbi Eliyahu of Vilna — the Yiddish name for Vilnius — who is better known as the Vilna Gaon.

The illustrious Gaon — literally “genius,” the title of heads of the classic Babylonian yeshivas — was the premier figure of 18th-century European Jewry. A man of unparalleled scientific, Talmudic and Kabbalistic erudition, the Gaon cemented Vilnius’s position as a center of Jewish learning, earning it the moniker “Jerusalem of Lithuania.”

The Gaon’s intellectual rigor gave rise to the modern European yeshiva. He also spearheaded the translation into Hebrew of classic scientific texts, including Euclid’s Elements.

The Gaon is also remembered for his backlash to the nascent Hasidic movement, whom he and his followers accused of flouting serious Torah study. A large cohort of the Gaon’s disciples came to the Land of Israel, in part to counter the growing Hasidic presence there.

By the 19th century, Vilnius was incorporated into Imperial Russia. It was part of the Pale of Settlement, the sliver of the empire where Jews were permitted to settle.

After World War I, the city was briefly the capital of Lithuania, before the Soviets conquered parts of the newly independent republic. While fighting the Soviets, Polish troops entered the city and carried out the first pogrom in its modern history.

In World War II, Vilnius was conquered by the Germans during their push into Russia in 1941. The city’s Jews — some 55,000 out of a total population of 200,000 — were forced into a ghetto, whose final inhabitants were deported to labor and death camps in 1943. The Nazis also looted and burned the Great Synagogue.

Vilnius was liberated by the Red Army in 1944. The communist regime’s antagonism toward religion weighed greatly on Soviet Jews. The Soviet attitude toward Judaism, rooted in centuries of Russian blood libels and tinted with antagonism toward “reactionary” Zionism, made it near-impossible to practice the religion.

Under the Soviets, the Great Synagogue of Vilnius, like almost all the country’s roughly 5,000 synagogues, was closed. It was demolished in the mid-1950s. A school was built on its ruins.

“In the face of rising antisemitism and attempts to deceive and deny, there is one undeniable truth, both simple and tragic, which tells us about an entire magnificent community that was destroyed due to hatred of Jews: Never Again,” said Eli Escusido, director of the IAA. PJC