Lithuania - Hill of Crosses

After Riga, we headed straight to Lithuania as time was pressing to get to Krakow on time, where we had a meeting with friends from Leipzig. Our first stop was the Hill of Crosses, a place of pilgrimage in northern Lithuania, which is considered a holy place for Catholics. Pilgrims erect crosses here on this hill as a thank you, a wish, or anything else possible... Around 1900, there were about 150 crosses on this hill, and by 1940, this number had increased to about 400 crosses. With the Soviet Union's occupation of Lithuania, the erection of crosses decreased. When many of the Lithuanians deported to Siberia returned after Stalin's death in 1953, they erected crosses on the hill as a memorial to the deceased in the Siberian labor camps. The hill increasingly became a thorn in the side of the Communist Party, and in 1961, a first destruction action took place with bulldozers. Others followed in 1973, 1974, 1975, but the communist enterprise remained unsuccessful, and the hill became a symbol of national resistance. In the early 1990s, students from Vilnius attempted to count the number of crosses - they stopped at 50,000. In 2006, there were said to be more than 100,000, and it was also completely impossible for us to say how many there were. Very very very very very many. Quite impressive and a little creepy.