The Museum of Genocide Victims was set up on 14 October 1992 on an order from the Minister of Culture and Education of the Republic of Lithuania and the President of the Union of Political Prisoners and Deportees. It was established in the building where plans for deportations and the arrests of peaceful inhabitants, the persecution of opponents and the suppression of the resistance were devised and carried out by Soviet institutions between 1940 and 1991. For the whole Lithuanian nation, this building is a symbol of the 50-year-long Soviet occupation. Set up in the former KGB headquarters, the museum is the only one of its kind in the former Soviet republics. The museum was reorganised in 1997. By a resolution of the government of the Republic of Lithuania, dated 24 March 1997, the responsibility for running the museum was taken over by the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania. The museum’s objective is to collect, keep and present historic documents about forms of physical and spiritual genocide against the Lithuanian people, and the ways and the extent of the resistance against the Soviet regime.

Director of the museum - Eugenijus Peikštenis