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“I don’t know what’s going on, but someone is organizing something, that’s for sure,” laughed P. Beniušienė, who spoke at Pajūrio žinios.
Like the Eiffel Tower in Paris
Laisvūnas Kavaliauskas, the chief inspector of the Klaipėda Territorial Division of the Department of Cultural Heritage (CRD), also described this story as interesting.
Photo by V. Kandrotas / Salantai
A couple of weeks ago, a representative from a law firm representing a secret client submitted a request to the territorial unit headed by him and asked if the Salantai Tank was included in the Register of Cultural Heritage. Later, when L. Kavaliauskas contacted the lawyer by phone, he pointed out that the tank was a dangerous weapon and that it could not be kept in the middle of the field, as it is now. More details came out: The enigmatic owner of an antique shop has already sent a wish to the Vilnius Police Commissariat to ensure the officers are escorted on the way when transporting heavy equipment from Salantai.
“I went to Salantai, spoke with the old man of the city Kazys Galdikas, as well as with the old man imbarė Antanas Turauskas, the director of the Regional Park of Salantai Modestas Šečkus. As these people agreed, the tank is as important to the Salantai region as the Eiffel Tower is to Paris, ”L. Kavaliauskas laughed. As far as he knows, the Salantai Tank has been attacked more than once in 30 years: it is the gaze of the owners of the Kaunas War Museum and Grūtas Park.
Interested in being exceptional
The day after the coup in Moscow, in 1991. On August 24, 2006, V. Orvid was allowed to transport the tank to his home by decision of the then Salantai City Municipal Council, but on the condition of have the tank off your property.
After the administrative reform, after the abolition of the municipality of the city of Salantai, its functions were automatically assumed by the municipality of the Kretinga district. However, the truth is that the tank is not yet inventoried and is not registered as property. Politicians and authorities changed over the years, and much of the tank’s history was forgotten and never surfaced.
Photo by A.Jašinskienė / 15min.lt/Salantai
“The circle of time has changed, there are those who want to treat the situation in their own way,” asked L. Kavaliauskas. “That old owner believes he can house and store the tank in his yard just because he has a permit to keep a gun.”
The interlocutor said that he did not have exact data on the owner of the antiquity, but there are facts that Russia is gradually trying to recover the old equipment from World War II. The Salantai tank is of interest, it is not a simple medium-weight tank, of which more than 100 thousand have been created, but the only one in Lithuania, perhaps even in the Baltic States. Called IS-2 (encrypted by Josif Stalin), the tank weighed 46 tons, and in the second half of the war, in 1943, it was created as a counterweight to the German heavy tank Tiger.
“The circulation of these two tanks is small: around 3 thousand, the price is high. A year ago, I read that the well-maintained Tigras, which was handled well at auction abroad, sold for a million euros.” L. Kavaliauskas said.
However, from the Salantai tank, it can be said that a projectile remains: the internal team no longer exists, because during the war, when it hit a mine in Salantai, it exploded. If anyone wanted and could, they chose those details. “These days, we have assured the security-minded police that such an empty tank is not a danger to anyone,” he said.
Photo by Sigitas Platukis / Vilius Orvidas
He didn’t take inventory because he didn’t care
P.Beniušienė joked: if the tank is not inventoried, is not on the records of the district municipality, then maybe you can buy it for a symbolic price? Especially since Vilius taught the Salantai city township to obtain permission to transport this Soviet-era relic to his farm, and he also built an Independence Monument next to the church.
L. Kavaliauskas also considers those words to be an interpretation. In his hands there is an official letter that the property right belongs to the Municipality. The Soviet-era relic was not inventoried because at the time, no one cared, no one thought anyone would need it. The Chief Inspector of the Klaipėda Territorial Unit of the CRD proposes a solution: take an inventory now, enter it in the register of cultural values with a separate number or start the review of the valuable properties of the Orvidai farm. Among the protected objects are more than 30 stone sculptures created by V. Orvidas, these values would be complemented by another: a Soviet tank of impressive weight. Elders in the Salantai region still remember that in the city itself it was not possible to remove it from the pedestal with a Japanese crane at any given time: it was taken to the farm by parts and the building was built on the ground.
“The place for the tank there is ideal, and no one promises to change it, we would not understand it,” said the mayor of the Kretinga district municipality, Antanas Kalnius. According to him, it happens when people want to go through a needle hole, collect what does not belong to them and benefit from it.
Such a tank is now said to cost hundreds of thousands of euros.
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