If you were to list your top 10 travel experiences,chances are a museum dedicated to genocide wouldn't rate a mention. Yet every year,thousands of travellers visit the likes of Hitler's concentration camps or Nelson Mandela's former prison cell and,in Vilnius,the capital of Lithuania,the Museum of Genocide Victims (aka the KGB museum) is high on the local tourism board's"must-see"list.
Set in Vilnius's legal district,just off the city's most chic street,Gediminas Avenue,the entrance to this 19th-century building is low-key. Just a plaque and an open door. There's no sense of what's inside.
You should visit Lithuania's fairytale castles and towering cathedrals but not all touring is glamorous and relaxing. The museum,its granite-block walls bearing the names of massacred resistance fighters,makes no apology for its content - but don't we travel to learn?
The day I visited was warm but the foyer was chilly and damp,its thick stone walls cold. I stepped inside and straight away the museum's message was made clear:"This exhibition ... shows how Moscow,with the help of local collaborators,destroyed gradually the sovereignty of the state,ruined the system of state power and administration,implemented communist ideology and deported and imprisoned people".
Life in 20th-century Lithuania seems a recurring nightmare:after a century under imperialistic Russia and brief German occupation in World War I,the little Baltic state,which borders Poland,Belarus and Latvia,was invaded by the Soviet Union in 1940 and the deeply committed Catholic country was declared a Soviet Socialist Republic. Almost 11,000 people were arrested in one year,many dying of hunger or going insane.
It then became the front line in the war between the Soviets and Hitler's Germany. Independence was declared in 1941 but then,after barely a breath of freedom,Germany abolished the provisional government and incorporated Lithuania into the Third Reich. Still,there was no hope. As Hitler's grip loosened,the Soviets re-entered Lithuania in 1944,dragging it into a nine-year Partisan War,during which 22,000 partisans,or freedom fighters,were killed. More than a thousand were murdered in the bleak execution chamber in this building's basement.
The classical whitewashed structure served as the office of the KGB and the head of the invading government,with administration offices from street level up. From street level down,the area is divided into rows of cells that housed the victims of these wars. Incredibly,the last prisoners were released in 1987,most protestors of the"Russification"of Lithuania. The country finally declared independence in March 1990 although Russian troops didn't leave for another three years.
Black-and-white snapshots of those who disappeared are pinned to courtyard walls outside,their names printed below. The walls are also lined with photographs of freedom fighters in their winter camouflage clothes - soiled white overalls that matched the harsh,snowy landscape - and their poems. One is inscribed:"For a lasting memory,Adelyte{aac}. You will recall me some day,when I am not in this world. Vytantas."
This late afternoon,there were perhaps a dozen people in the museum - including a young Asian traveller,a silent couple,and a quartet of cheerful Germans calling out to each other as they moved between the displays of guns,letters,knives and grainy photographs.