At a hearing dated October 1, 2020 in a Vilnius court in Lithuania, lawyers for the defendant, Turto Bankas (a property bank which is owned by the state), argued that the Sports Palace, in the Shnipishok cemetery has moved.
Therefore they claimed, the bank has a right according to the law, to build a conference centre on the Sports Palace.
The move in the Sports Palace edifice is based on more recent government maps which have deliberately been charted to exclude the Sport Palace. All maps prior to the construction of the Sports Palace, position the area in the heart of the cemetery.
The expert witnesses for the plaintiffs, Dr Neil Rosenstein, a world authority on genealogy and Dr. Shnayer Leiman, an expert in history on the Shipishok cemetery, both filed maps in their affidavits. Pointedly, those maps are precisely the same maps that were used by the defendants in the agreement they inked to proceed with the development of the conference center, signed on January 2020.
The maps clearly include the Sports Palace in the cemetery.