The Green Museum
Green House Reopens in Vilnius; Kostanian is the Star
The Green House, as the Holocaust exhibit of the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum of Lithuania is internationally known, was formally relaunched today in Vilnius after a closure of several months for renovations, technical upgrading of a number of exhibits and the addition of video screens and other facilities.
The history of the Holocaust in Lithuania is presented at the Holocaust exhibition in the old green wooden house on Pamėnkalnio St. 12. The house which was given to the museum as a temporary premises in 1989, was known as the place of the first illegal constituent congress meeting of the Lithuanian Communist party.
The first exhibition, mounted by the Holocaust survivors, was opened there in 1991. A partial renovation of the permanent exhibition “The Holocaust History in Lithuania“ was done in 2010, partially funded by the IHRA. The exhibition was supplemented with new documents from the collections of the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum, Lithuanian and foreign archives, with audio and video materials, and with artefacts acquired by the Museum during the last years. In 2011, the comprehensive catalogue of the exhibition in Lithuanian and English was published. It covers the history and culture of the Lithuanian Jewish community from their arrival in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania up to the WWII massacres, contains authentic photography and document copies from the museum stocks, as well as Lithuanian and foreign archives. In September 2013, commemorating the year of the liquidation of the Vilnius ghetto, the interactive malina (a ghetto hideout) was equipped in the premises of the 
Holocaust exhibition. This helps to attract more visitors, especially young people, to the Holocaust exhibition. In the recreated malina hide-out, visitors can hear extracts from the diary of Ichok Rudaševskis (1927–1943), telling about what he, in his early teens, has gone through while hiding in the malina in one of the warehouses on Šiaulių Street in Vilnius. Among the exhibits, there are authentic photographs that were discovered at the Vilnius Ghetto right after the war, which now are kept in the museum. The malina arrangement is a good example of a cooperation between the museum and a private initiative (company „The Northern Jerusalem”, which funded the project).
From: Gaon Museum
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