 The area had been used to hide the bodies of Lithuanian residents – mostly resistance fighters against the Soviet occupation and Nazi collaborators – who had been executed by the NKGB and MGB in the Vilnius' KGB Palace between 1944 and 1947 but also those who died fighting Polish Armia Krajowa soldiers.The remains from the mass grave were placed in a columbarium built underground, beneath an artificial hill, and consecrated in 2004.In 2001, workers laying telephone line in "Šiaurės miestelis", near the former garrison, discovered a mass grave that was found to contain the bodies of about 2,000 soldiers – the remnants of Napoleon's Grande Armée as it retreated from Moscow.