VILNIUS - Authorities of the Lithuanian Jewish community and municipality administration of southern Lithuanian city Marijampole agreed there will be no more digging in the location of mass extermination of Jews. The remains of the killed will be buried, Lietuvos Zinios daily reported.
According to the Marijampole Municipality official in charge Gedeminas Kuncaitis, mass killings of inhabitants on the bend of Sesupe behind a military town built during the reigning of the tsars, took place in 1941.
On September 1st of that year alone, Germans, with the help of some Lithuanians, killed over 5,000 inhabitants here, most of whom were Jews, also killing some Lithuanians and Marijampole's inhabitants of other ethnic origins.
"Approximately some 8,000 people were killed here. The killing site is marked by a memorial, but there are no burial grounds of the victims in the area that is identified in documents as a protected Jewish extermination territory, as they all buried under the buildings of the former military town and its vicinities. This was confirmed by archeological inquiries conducted in 1996", Kuncaitis said.
According to the chief specialist, officers had erected a few military equipment storehouses and an ammo warehouse, and made embankments on the massive killing sites during the Soviet times. After the occupational army left Lithuania following the restoration of its independence, the said buildings were given over to the State Property Fund.
A company owned by Vidas Kalasinskas and Daiva Kalasinskiene bought the buildings this year for demolition. Officials of the Municipality of Marijampole issued a permit for taking down the buildings without prior coordination with specialists of the Department of Cultural Heritage. Human bones were found when tidying up the area and dismantling the concrete pavement. Even though construction works were halted at once and bones lying around on the ground were all gathered, any larger downpour of rain washed new bones afloat to the surface.
According to Kuncaitis, no more demolition works are planned on the burial ground site of massive Jew killings, even though a part of it is still covered in concrete. "It is about a meter thick there, therefore it will be impossible to dismantle it without heavy machinery. It hasn't been decided what to do with embankments made by Russian officers, which also contain the remnants of a large number of people's remains.
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