Reformed Church Removes Its Front Stairs, Made of Jewish Gravestones

[Jerome]

Reformed church finally acts after years of pleas to stop trampling on the gravestones. Some of the worn-down inscriptions and symbols were still visible!

2012 photo of the congregation:

Vilnius • Reformed Evangelical Church

"the Protestant Church in Lithuania dates back to John Calvin’s lifetime in 1557, although this particular Neoclassical building was constructed considerably later between 1830 and 1835.....the church was closed by the Soviets in 1953 and turned into a cinema. Its entrance steps allegedly contain gravestones pilfered from one of the city’s former Jewish cemeteries."

News story from last weekend about the stones being removed:

2019-01-19 Antkapiai nebebus bažnyčios laiptais

 

[Jerome]

A similar situation I ran across in English history:

Geneva Bible translator William Whittingham, after he returned to England, ordered that 'too ornate' tombstones in his parish be hauled out of the graveyard and used for base purposes. His Huguenot wife used some as threshold stones, to be trodden underfoot.

The County of Durham: Its Castles, Churches and Manorhouses

"...toumbes, which stones Deane Whittingham did cause to be pulled downe and taken away, and dyd breake and deface all such stones as had any pictures....he caried them all awaie, and did occupie theme to his owne use"

"Mrs. Whittingham, after the death of her husband, toke...dyverse grave-stones of blew marble, and....when she buylded her house in the Baley, which stones some of theme ar laid in the threshold of the dores, and two great ones lyeth without the doures, over against the walle before her front stead"