Geography of Lithuania offers perhaps of oil deposits, and the southeast could provide high yields of iron ore and granite. According to some geographers, the geographical midpoint of Europe is just north of Lithuania's capital, Vilnius. Geographic coordinates: Lithuania is situated on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea. Lithuania's boundaries have changed several times since 1918, but they have been stable since 1945. Currently, Lithuania covers an area of about 65,200 square kilometres. About the size of West Virginia, it is larger than Belgium, Denmark, Latvia, the Netherlands, or Switzerland. Lithuania is situated on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea and
History of the Jews in Lithuania the lands between the Baltic and Black Seas that would become part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The later and much larger stream of immigration originated in the 12th century and received an impetus from the persecution of the German Jews by the Crusaders. The traditional language of the vast majority of Jews of Lithuania, Yiddish, is based largely upon the Medieval German spoken by the western Germanic Jewish immigrants. The peculiar conditions that prevailed in Lithuania compelled the first Jewish settlers to adopt a different mode of life from that followed by their western co-religionists. In Lithuania of