A handsome, neo-classical, four-story building near the center of Vilnius, the ancient capital of Lithuania, once served as that nation’s Palace of Justice.
It now serves as a Museum of Torture, dedicated to telling the struggle of the Lithuanians in re-establishing the sovereignty they lost in 1939 when Hitler ceded control of the Baltic states and part of Poland to Stalin. Two years later, Hitler double-crossed Stalin and invaded Russia. For four years the Germans then occupied the Baltic States. Control reverted to the Soviets in 1945.
Today, Lithuania, approximately half the size of Ohio with the Baltic Sea to the west and giant Russia to the east, stands independent. Like its two small neighbors to the north, Latvia and Estonia, it is prospering as a member of the European Union. Collectively known as the Baltic States, the three have been important trading centers since the Middle Ages.
Their history is interesting and Janet and I learned something of it during a recent tour we undertook that lasted two weeks.
The Museum of Torture says more than 1,000 executions took place in that building from 1940 to 1967. Brutal interrogations continued after that. A short film we were shown in the cave-like execution room in the basement portrayed victims killed like animals in a slaughter house. Soviet occupation also included forced resettlement of Lithuanians to Siberia and the movement of Russians into Lithuania.
Our Museum guide told us of that as a teenager in the 1970s, he was given a book by Solzhenitsyn, a famous Soviet dissident. Innocently, he told his social studies teacher about the book only to later learn the teacher was a government informant.
"I caused my family big trouble," he said.
A city of nearly 600,000, the Vilnius we saw has a beautifully intact, central city, some of it dating back to the Middle Ages. Much of it was built during the 19th century when Lithuania, like its Baltic neighbors, was part of Czarist Russia. Currently, Vilnius, along with Riga, the capital of Latvia, and Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, are becoming tourist meccas. The three Baltic countries together have a population of approximately 6 million.
Beautiful Riga has nearly 700,000 inhabitants. In the 19th century, Riga was the fourth largest city in Russia. Its churches date back to the middle ages. Riga has the finest assemblage of late 19th century Art Nouveau buildings in the world.
Besides walking with our guide through the city’s beautiful old neighborhoods, we passed through a lively farmer’s market, a larger version of Cleveland’s West Side Market. One evening, we attended a performance of "The Marriage of Figaro" in the city’s gorgeous 19th-century opera house. In Riga, we also toured a group of mass grave sites in a wooded area where the Nazis, having conquered the Baltic states during their invasion of the Soviet Union, shot 20,000 Jews in short order.
The cemetery is well maintained. The Latvians do a better job than the Lithuanians in depicting how the Holocaust played out. Only 5 percent of Lithuania’s 220,000 Jews survived the Holocaust and they receive small mention in the Museum of Torture.
Linguistically, Estonians are the most unique of the three Baltic States. The root of their language is related to those of Hungary and Finland whereas Lithuanian and Latvian are Indo-European tongues, the same as English.
Estonia’s well-preserved central city of Tallinn, still undergoing restoration, goes back to the late Middle Ages. With its small population of 1.3 million, Estonians welcome immigration and we were told one can obtain citizenship online. The Estonians invented Skype. They are proud that their school system is rated one of the top three in the world.
As our bus plied its way along a fine highway connecting the three capital cities of these small nations, we saw abundant forests on flat coastal plains.
After World War II, the people of the Baltic States initiated many efforts to win independence. The most innovative of these occurred on Aug. 23, 1989, the 50th anniversary of the Hitler-Stalin Pact. Some 2 million citizens formed a 500-mile long human chain along the very highway that our bus traveled that connects their three capitals, Tallinn, Riga, and Vilnius.
Independence finally arrived in 1991. The tiny Baltic nations hope the United States and its NATO allies stand firm against any effort by the Russians to re-extend their control over them.
David E. Dix is the retired publisher of the Record-Courier.