On September 4, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu talked at his residence in Jerusalem with Lithuanian Minister of Foreign Affairs Linas-Antonas Linkevičius.

"Today I met with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania Linas-Antanas Linkevičius.

The relations between Israel and Lithuania have been going on for many years, and now we are strengthening it in various fields, "Netanyahu wrote on his Facebook page about half an hour ago.

As reported by the Cursor, in the middle of August this year, a group of archaeologists, including experts from Israel, the United States and Lithuania, who excavated at the site of the destroyed Great Synagogue of Vilnius, discovered two basins for ritual bathing (mikvah).

The great synagogue of Vilnius, which the Jews called Vilna and considered "Lithuanian Jerusalem", was built in the 17th century in the Renaissance-Baroque style.

The new synagogue became the religious and community center of the Jewish quarter, around it there were 12 prayer houses of a smaller size, as well as Jewish pedagogical and trade institutions.

In the second half of the 18th century, the leader of the local community "Gaon mi-Vilna" (Rabbi Eliyahu ben Shlomo-Zalman) turned the Great Synagogue into the main stronghold of spiritual resistance to the movement of Hasidism, and above all Chabad ("mitgagdim" movement).

A large synagogue, like other ritual buildings of the Jewish community of Vilnius, was destroyed during the Holocaust.

In the forest tract of Ponary (Paneryai), the Nazis and their accomplices, in 1941-1944, shot at least 100,000 Jews.