Errors omit one-fifth of burials from Prienai cemetery register

About one-fifth of people buried in the Old Prienai Cemetery are missing from its online register, while other entries contain incorrect dates, genders and ages, LRT reported. A local historian said the errors could mislead specialists and reduce the value of the digitisation project.

Burial records from the cemetery are available online through the Cemety.lt register. Local historian Janina Paplauskaitė-Leonavičienė said she had found numerous inaccuracies.

She said the oldest burial identified in Prienai dates to 1854 and that the person’s clearly visible birth year was 1803. However, the register lists the burial as having taken place in 1941 and the birth year as 1861.

She also found a woman recorded as a man and said the details of a young boy had been entered incorrectly, making him appear to have been an elderly man.

Paplauskaitė-Leonavičienė said she could not find records for one-fifth of the people buried in the cemetery.

The digitisation of cemeteries in Prienai district was carried out by Kapinių valdymo sprendimai, a company that won a municipal tender. It was paid more than 180,000 euros for the work.

Prienai District Mayor Alvydas Vaicekauskas said more than 40 hectares and over 16,000 grave plots had been digitised, adding that errors could occur because of the scale of the work.

A Cemety representative said some inscriptions on monuments at the Old Prienai Cemetery were difficult to read and that burial registers were not available. Marketing specialist Karolina Nečiūnė said the data had been entered by people rather than artificial intelligence or an automated programme, leaving room for human error.

Nečiūnė acknowledged that the situation showed the system still needed improvement. She said the company had digitised 85 percent of Lithuania’s cemeteries and that residents could report inaccuracies in the register.