Museum of Genocide Victims

KGB Inner Prison | Collections | Armed Resistance | Unarmed Resistance | Repressive Institutions | Deportation

To persecute Lithuanian people, corresponding institutions were established; network of prisons and detention centers was widened. The so-called NKVD inner prison (pre-trial detention center) was arranged at the basement of former courthouse in the autumn of 1940, when NKVD Vilnius board was established here.

No care was taken about the convenience of the arrested. The prisoner of 1940-1941 M. Valavičius recalls: "Bunks in the prison of NKVD were made of iron framework covered with thick cloth [�] at 10 o'clock in the evening they were lowered and at 6 o'clock in the morning they were locked to walls.  The cells were cold, damp and almost not ventilated. The walls of the cells were wet, green and covered with mould. Water drops fell from the walls".

There is no information about the cells of the Nazis occupation period (1941-1944) but it can be easily assumed that the occupants did not make large reconstruction in the prison.

When the Soviets occupied Lithuania for the second time, the prison was expanded adopting several auxiliary premises for imprisonment. In 1947, there were 57 ordinary cells and 2 cells for solitary confinement in the prison. Officially, not more than 300 arrested people could be kept in the prison assigning the area of 2.5 sq.m. for each prisoner.

In reality, much more people were imprisoned shutting even 15-20 arrested in one cell. Maybe that was a reason why it was decided to manage without bunks. The post-war prisoners remember that they had to lie on the floor spreading everything they had underneath. There were no furniture in cells. The bars on the windows of the prison were assembled from the outside, the windows of the cells were glassed in camouflage glass in order the imprisoned could not see the street. Board shields covered the windows of cells from outside.

Just in 1947, the wooden floor was furnished in the cells, the closets and bunks equipped. In 1964, when the armed resistance was already broken down the most of prison premises were transferred for storing the secret KGB archives. Further, opponents of the Soviet regime and fighters for human rights were imprisoned in the rest 23 cells (19 later on). Now the prison looks the same as it did in August 1991 as KGB vacated it moving out of the building. Before moving out, they even repainted the prison. Of course, the present appearance of the prison hardly resembles that prison in which the post-war period members of the anti-Soviet resistance were tortured.