Obj. ID: 48830
Jewish Funerary Art First Old Jewish cemetery in Vištytis, Lithuania
According to ESJF European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative, the Old Jewish Cemetery of Vistytis was established in 1570 when the elder of Vistytis, Kristupas Jesmanas, granted the territory for burials to local Jews. The cemetery existed until the Nazi occupation in Lithuania. During the wartime, the Germans sold gravestones to locals for their needs. In this way, the cemetery was destroyed. Only a few fragments of former tombstones can be found today among the grass. In 1998, the cemetery was registered into the Cultural Property Register of the Republic of Lithuania. At the beginning of the 1990s, a stone monument was erected at the site with an inscription in Yiddish and Lithuanian: “The old cemetery. Holy is the memory of the deceased”. There are about 200 gravestones. The cemetery is unfenced.
The cemetery is located in the fields near the border of Lithuania and Russia. Park at the end of Kalno street and then walk for 300m north west, crossing the Vydupis river, until you reach the cemetery.