Count the trees and you have the dead. Thirteen oaks and one lime stand in a semicircle on this street corner, one for each of the thirteen men and one woman killed when Soviet troops stormed the Vilnius television tower on 13 January 1991. That night is the hinge of modern Lithuanian history. Unarmed civilians had gathered around the tower and the parliament to defend the independence declared the previous March, and the deaths hardened resistance at home and opinion abroad. Within a year Moscow had recognised the country. Šilalė's memorial is small and exact. The trees ring a sculpture by Kazimieras Kisielis, Laisvės šauklys, Freedom's Crier: thirteen oaks and a single lime for thirteen men and a single woman. There are benches, and the whole plot covers about a fifth of a hectare. The town declared it a natural heritage object in 2006. These are young trees, and nobody pretends otherwise. No planting date has been published for them, but they most likely went in with the monument during the 1990s, which makes them roughly 30 to 35 years old. They are here for what they mean, not for their girth, and nobody has measured them one by one. The Independence Oak stands 90 metres away at the same junction, so the two memorials make one stop: a tree for the state founded in 1918, and fourteen for the people who died to restore it.
J. Basanavičiaus / Nepriklausomybės street intersection, around the 'Laisvės šauklys' (Freedom's Crier) sculpture, central Šilalė You can recognise it by the semicircle of thirteen oaks and one lime ringing the Freedom's Crier sculpture, with benches. It stands at the Basanavičiaus and Nepriklausomybės junction, 90 metres from the Independence Oak.
Free; public street-corner plot with benches, no gate or fee, genuinely reachable
Central Šilalė, about 90m from the Independence Oak, walkable