It may be just an accident of geography that the Jewish Holocaust museum here is only a couple of blocks from the Lithuanian Museum of Genocide Victims. Or it may have been someone’s politically pointed choice. At any rate, it’s a very short walk between two perspectives that co-exist uneasily here.

The Holocaust exhibition, in what is known as the Green House, tells the story of old Vilna, once a thriving center of Jewish life in all forms, and its near-complete destruction under the Nazis. There are moving images of individuals, families and institutions before, during and after the horrific three years in which about 90% of Lithuanian Jews were murdered.

Here, for example, is part of a reproduced page from a German log book, recording places, dates and statistics of the mass murders in Lithuanian towns. In my grandfather’s home town Kedainiai, it notes, on Aug. 28, 1941, the Germans and Lithuanians shot 710 men, 767 women and 599 children.

The nearby Lithuanian museum is housed in a massive Tsarist-era building that was used by both the German Gestapo and the Soviet KGB. Inside, the exhibition recounts how Lithuania’s first modern period of independence, which began after World War I, was cut short in 1939, as part of Hitler and Stalin’s secret pact to divide Poland and the Baltics. The Soviets annexed Lithuania in 1940 and quickly decapitated its civic and cultural institutions, arresting and deporting tens of thousands of Lithuanians to Siberia. The repression was so severe that when the Germans invaded a year later, many Lithuanians greeted them as liberators — and a significant number assisted them in the extermination of the Jews.

Of course it was the Red Army, rolling back the Nazis, that liberated surviving Jews; but for most Lithuanians, that represented a return of Stalinist repression. Anti-Soviet guerillas held out in the forests for several years, but received little support from the other side of the Iron Curtain. Most were killed or captured, and a number ended up in the basement of this building, where the KGB jail remains today, pretty much as it was, on display for tourists.

All this casts an uncomfortable shadow over contemporary Vilnius, which both cherishes and markets its history. Sometimes the narratives clash, producing angry accusations that one group is disrespecting the others’ victimhood. That’s the case with a long piece published recently by Slate. I personally found it tendentious and one-sided, and much prefer the perspective of my friend (and fellow Yiddish student) Ellen Cassedy in her book, “We Are Here.”