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| Crumbling synagogue in Romania |
The last few remaining synagogues in Lithuania are all falling apart, according to press reports in France.
The wooden synagogues of Lithuania, the last sign of Jewish presence that was wiped out during the Holocaust, are falling into ruin by lack of funding and support.
Hidden behind a row of houses, the wooden synagogue in the eastern city of Alanta looks more like an old barn than of a house of worship.
This rundown building, which served as a warehouse for fertilizer during the days of state farms, is now used for storage by Algis Jakutonis, a farmer who lives next door.
"I can keep my things there, and still find vestiges of the Soviet era," the 60-year-old Jakutonis said, while displaying the large iron key from the old synagogue, which he acquired before Lithuania's independence in 1990.
Before that, the land was officially atheist, in line with the policy in the Soviet Union, which has marginalized religion, synagogues and Russian Orthodox churches, with its golden onion domes. All Catholic churches and mosques were used for storage or abandoned and left for ruin.
Before World War II, the vibrant Jewish community of Lithuania numbered 200,000 people, 90 percent of which Nazi Germany and its local collaborators killed between 1941 and 1944.
"Jews owned 20 stores around here. Following the war, there was nothing left," Danielius Drazdauskas, a carpenter, 63-years-old, who was born and raised on the streets of the synagogue, said.
“I believe that the Jewish community abroad needs to come together and save their own history which was left behind after the Second World War. It will be difficult to get state funding especially since the Euro zone is marred in an unprecedented economic crisis,” Nigel Christopher, 50, a historian in Bucharest, Romania told YourJewishNews.com.
Lithuania has 13 wooden synagogues today, according to calculations by Gilles Vuillard, a French artist based in Lithuania.