A group of archaeologists, including specialists from Israel, the United States and Lithuania, which excavates at the site of the destroyed Great Synagogue of Vilnius, discovered two basins for ritual bathing (mikvah).
The Great Synagogue of Vilnius was built in the Renaissance-Baroque style in the 17th century.
The 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 of Vilna gaon (Rabbi Eliyahu ben Shlomo-Zalman) turned the Great Synagogue into the main stronghold of spiritual resistance to the Hasidism 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 (Paneryay), Hitlerites and their accomplices in 1941-1944 shot at least 100,000 Jews. The present archaeological work began after archivists discovered the plan for the reconstruction of ritual pools, compiled at the end of the 19th century, which, as a rule, were located in or near synagogue buildings.