By Dr. Chevy Weiss
Baltimore residents cannot afford to ignore growing local and global anti-Semitism, whether it is swastikas painted on Jewish gravestones in a Dundalk cemetery or expanding white supremacy and nationalist movements in America and around the world.
With a recent Anti-Defamation League report showing Maryland faced historically high levels of anti-Semitic incidents last year despite a 4 percent decrease nationally, we must must proactively stand up against anti-Semitism rather than simply cite the mantra, “Never Again”.
As Baltimore’s Jewish community has strong roots in Lithuania, it should pay particular attention to plans there to build a business conference center atop the Jewish Shnipishok cemetery in Vilnius (Vilna).
Shnipishok was founded in the 1400s and houses 50,000 Jewish graves, including those of many Torah scholars, authors and community leaders. Despite awareness that the cemetery’s desecration violates U.S., Lithuanian and international laws, the mayor and city council of Vilnius insist the Jewish cemetery is the only location for a conference center in the entire region and Jewish opposition to the desecration obstructs local economic growth.
The all-too-familiar blaming of Jews for economic challenges is history repeating itself and the start of a slippery slope.
Three years ago, Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.) signed a Congressional letter to the Lithuanian prime minister, opposing the desecration of the Jewish cemetery and urging respect for the Jewish remains buried there.
The effort was halted when construction did not begin; there was hope that the matter was resolved, even after a newspaper published detailed blueprints for the conference center and no alternative site was sought for the conference center.
This month, immediately following an announcement by the prime minister that COVID-19 has created a temporary postponement of the project, the Vilnius City Council voted 24-1 in favor of developing the conference center atop the cemetery.
It must be stopped.
Tens of thousands of Lithuanian Jews immigrated to Baltimore beginning in the late 1800s, building families, businesses and institutions such as the Ner Israel Rabbinical College, which was named after famed Lithuanian Rabbi Israel Salanter.
Ninety-seven percent of Lithuania’s Jews fled the Nazis or were murdered, often buried in unmarked pits or turned into ashes in concentration camps. The Shnipishok cemetery is among the few remaining signs of Vilna’s past Jewish life, a city once renowned for being the Jewish center of ethics.
Noting that Jewish cemeteries were traditionally destroyed to eradicate any sign of Jewry, research by England’s Staffordshire University reports that cemetery preservation can combat “cultural and physical genocide within Jewish cemeteries, directly tackling racism, xenophobia, and hostility.”
Today, Chaya Fried, a Baltimore native and the daughter of Rabbi Dovid Kronglass, one of the earliest leading rabbis of Ner Israel, is working with her husband, Dov, to lead an international effort to protect the graves of Dov’s relatives and the other Jews buried there.
In 2015, Lithuania passed a resolution authorizing the construction of the conference center, which must be repealed to protect religious freedom, stop anti-Semitism and uphold the dignity of its deceased Jews. Unless the 2015 Lithuanian resolution is repealed, construction on the conference center can be imminent, despite it violating many laws and agreements, including a 2002 International Agreement between Lithuania and the U.S.; 2008 U.S. Senate Resolution; 2014 U.S. Protect Cemeteries Act (H.R. 4028); Lithuanian Constitution (Articles 22 & 26); Lithuanian Law on Protection of Immovable Cultural Heritage; European Rights Convention (Articles 8 & 9); Seimas Resolution 10 (December 2020, No XIV-65 Vilnius); and Congress Antisemitism Awareness Act of 2019 (H.R. 4009).
Cardin and his colleague Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) are members of the U.S. Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, making them leading voices in international affairs. By driving a renewed Senate letter signing campaign urging Lithuania to preserve the cemetery in accordance with Jewish law, they will support the concerns of 15 Jewish organizations, 44 human rights organizations and individuals in Baltimore and around the world working to preserve the Vilna cemetery earmarked for destruction.
By requesting that Lithuania repeal the resolution authorizing the cemetery’s desecration, Senators Cardin and Van Hollen can hinder growing global anti-Semitism, because intolerance toward deceased Jews is one small step away from hatred towards living Jews.
Can we prevent history from repeating itself? When it comes to anti-Semitism, we must try.
Dr. Chevy Weiss, who grew up in Baltimore, is a descendant of Lithuanians who arrived to the city in 1904, fleeing poverty, anti-Semitism, the Russian draft and wars. Her ancestors started a business and raised a family on Lombard Street. When her grandfather, Mordechai “Mac” Cohen, passed away a few years shy of his 100th birthday, he left a legacy of around 100 direct descendants that had Lithuanian-Baltimore roots.
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