Vilnius, Lithuania: Located in the basement of the KGB building in Vilnius, the Genocide Victims’ Museum memorializes several important eras in local history. A small part of the museum is dedicated to chronicling the Nazi occupation of the area and their use of the jail wing as a detention area for resisters. However, the most attention is given to the fate of anti-soviet dissidents, who were imprisoned, tortured, and killed in the depths of the building. Guided tours show visitors artifacts of Lithuanian resistance, but also chronicle the extreme suffering of those imprisoned. Padded isolation cells, and crumbling, damp concrete cell blocks testify to the inhumane conditions under which many suffered. During the 1990′s, over seven hundred bodies were discovered and exhumed from a nearby mass grave. Their remains are being temporarily stored in the now museum, the very site where many are believed to have been killed.
