The Holocaust in Kovno
Nazi Germany occupied Kovno (Kaunas), Lithuania, from June 1941 to July 1944. Assisted by parts of the local non-Jewish population, the Germans massacred thousands of Jews within weeks of arriving in the city. They forced the surviving Jews into a ghetto and, later, created a concentration camp. The Germans gradually deported and mass murdered Kovno’s Jewish community. Of the 30,000 people imprisoned in the Kovno ghetto, only around 2,500 survived the war.
Key Facts
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The Soviet occupation of Lithuania (June 1940–June 1941) brought a swift end to Jewish communal life in Kovno. It also led to a sharp rise in antisemitism.
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Under German occupation, Kovno Jews were confined to a ghetto. They suffered extreme hunger, harsh physical labor, humiliation, and abuse. In fall 1943, the SS converted the Kovno ghetto into a concentration camp.
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By August 1944, when the Soviet army seized control of the city, Kovno's flourishing Jewish community had been almost completely destroyed.
The Holocaust in Kovno decimated a centuries-old Jewish community known throughout Europe for its scholarship, literature, and culture.
Between 1941–1944, the Jewish community of Kovno suffered pogroms, mass shootings, confinement to a ghetto, and life in a concentration camp. Under Nazi German control, Kovno Jews experienced debilitating hunger, deprivation, isolation, and the punishing effects of forced labor. They also lived under the constant threat of arrest, deportation, and execution.
An estimated 30,000 people were imprisoned in the Kovno ghetto in 1941. Of those imprisoned, only around 2,500 survived the war.
In addition to the German occupiers, many perpetrators of the Holocaust in Kovno and across German-occupied Lithuania were non-Jewish locals. These individuals actively participated in the persecution and murder of the Jewish population.
Despite the dire circumstances, Jews in the Kovno ghetto created a vast trove of visual and written documentation. Much of this material was buried underground and recovered after the war. This material inspired one of the earliest exhibitions at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: Hidden History of the Kovno Ghetto (1997–1999).
Jewish Life in Kovno Before World War II
Jews lived in the Kovno region of central Lithuania since at least the 15th century.
Traditionally, Jews have called Kovno by its Yiddish name, Kovne (קאָװנע). The city is also known by other names. In Lithuanian, it is Kaunas. In English, it is commonly known as Kovno (the name used under the Russian Empire). Other names include Kowno (in Polish) and Kauen (in German).
Like many cities across Europe, Kovno saw rapid growth in the late 19th century. Many Jews who lived in the Lithuanian countryside migrated to Kovno. There, they discovered a multiethnic, multilingual city. In Kovno, Jews lived alongside Russians, Poles, Lithuanians, and Germans. They contributed greatly to the city’s social and economic development, especially in agriculture and small business.
Kovno Jewry in the Interwar Years
In 1918, soon after the collapse of the Russian Empire and the end of World War I, Lithuania became an independent state. Kovno was the capital of the new Lithuania. For Lithuanian Jews (known as “Litvaks” in Yiddish), the city became the center of political and cultural life.
The interwar Jewish population in Lithuania was distinctive. Of all the Jewish communities in Europe at the time, it was one of the least acculturated. This meant that by the late 1930s, most Jews had not widely adopted Lithuanian culture, even if many of them knew the Lithuanian language. The vast majority of Jews in Kovno spoke Yiddish as their first language and used it in their daily lives. In the 1920s and 1930s, several daily Yiddish newspapers and other periodicals appeared in the city. Many Kovno Jews were also highly proficient in Hebrew.
Yet the Jewish community was not isolated from the rest of Lithuanian society. Kovno Jews engaged in important sectors of the economy, serving both Jews and non-Jews. Some worked as cobblers, carpenters, and tailors. Others worked in business, medicine, and law.
The Kovno Jewish community was also culturally, religiously, and politically diverse. For example, many Jews from across the political spectrum aligned with Zionism, a movement that promoted Hebrew language and culture. A smaller group of secular Jews identified with communist ideology.
Even as new political and cultural trends emerged, Kovno remained a hub of Jewish learning and religious observance. On the eve of World War II, there were some 40 synagogues and batei midrash (institutions dedicated to Torah study) in Kovno. The city was also home to one of Europe’s most prestigious yeshivas (seminaries that trained men in the study of Jewish religious texts).
Gathering Clouds: Jews in Independent Lithuania
The relationship between the Jewish community and the Lithuanian state was complex.
The Jewish community had supported the fight for Lithuanian independence at the end of World War I. Some Jews, including young men from Kovno, had served in the Lithuanian army. For several years after World War I, the Lithuanian state allowed Jews to participate in local and national politics. It also granted funding to Jewish schools and recognized Hebrew and Yiddish as minority languages.
Authoritarianism was on the rise in Lithuania in the 1920s and 1930s. During this time, Jews’ standing in society fell. Like other minorities, Jews were largely excluded from the civil service and government. They were also driven out of economic industries and universities. Increasingly, antisemitism boiled over into the public arena. Still, there was no official state policy of antisemitism in Lithuania at this time. For the most part, Jews were not targeted for violence.
Before the German Occupation: World War II and the Soviet Occupation
World War II began in Europe in September 1939. That month, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland in accordance with the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
In June 1940, the Soviet Union annexed Lithuania with Nazi Germany’s tacit permission. By then, many Kovno Jews were aware of Nazi Germany’s extreme antisemitism. They considered the Soviet takeover as the lesser of two evils. However, the period of Soviet occupation (June 1940–June 1941) would prove disastrous for Kovno citizens as a whole, and especially for the Jewish community.
Impact of Soviet Occupation on the Jewish Community in Kovno
Across Lithuania, the Soviets curtailed religious expression, opposed free enterprise, nationalized private property, and squashed national movements. For the Jewish community, this crackdown meant the dissolution of most Jewish cultural and religious institutions, as well as the suppression of Zionist political activity.
Soviet officials arrested thousands of Lithuanian citizens, including Jews. They exiled these detainees to Siberia and, later, to Soviet territories north of the Arctic Circle. The Soviet authorities considered these people a threat to the new regime.
The economic fallout of Soviet policies was swift. The middle class in Kovno, which was largely Jewish, was hardest hit. Many Jews’ homes were confiscated, and their quality of life decreased.
Nevertheless, Soviet occupation brought some benefits and opportunities to the Jewish community. Under the Soviet regime, Jews could work in professional fields that had previously been off-limits to them.
Rise in Antisemitism During the Soviet Occupation
In 1940–1941, Jews in Lithuania faced rising antisemitism. The false, antisemitic idea that all Jews were disloyal to the Lithuanian state was already prevalent in the interwar period. Now, it took on new meaning under the Soviet occupation. The involvement of some Jews in the new Soviet administration intensified the antisemitic myth of Judeo-Bolshevism. According to this myth, communism was a Jewish conspiracy, and Jews were responsible for its crimes.
The German Occupation and the Beginning of the Holocaust in Kovno
The Holocaust began in Kovno in late June 1941. On June 22, Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union and quickly moved east. They forced the Soviet army to retreat from all of Lithuania, including Kovno. Fearing the approaching German forces and Nazi persecution, thousands of Jews attempted to flee eastward into the Soviet Union. But the Soviets closed the border to refugees, making flight close to impossible.
In Kovno, the Holocaust began with several days of local violence, even before the Germans took over the city. However, following the arrival of the Germans on June 24, antisemitic violence escalated, becoming more systematic and deadly.
Local Violence and Lawlessness: June 23–June 25, 1941
In the days between the Soviet retreat and the German arrival, Lithuanian perpetrators attacked Jews across the country, including in Kovno. These perpetrators humiliated, beat, robbed, and murdered individual Jews they found on the street. Many other Jews, in some cases entire families, were arbitrarily seized from their homes and arrested.
The Lithuanians who committed this violence were a varied group that stepped into a power vacuum. Many belonged to the Lithuanian Activist Front (Lietuvių aktyvistų frontas, LAF). The LAF was founded in 1940 to liberate Lithuania from Soviet control. The LAF activists called themselves “partisans” or “freedom fighters.” They also sought to rid Lithuania of Jews. Other perpetrators who joined these “partisans” included a variety of individuals such as ex-convicts, clerks, farmers, and merchants.
Pogroms and Mass Arrests of Jews: June 25–June 30, 1941
By June 25, 1941, the German military had taken control of Kovno. A specialized Nazi SS and police unit called Einsatzgruppe A accompanied the German army. This unit was tasked with destroying Germany’s enemies, in particular Communists and Jews. With the arrival of Einsatzgruppe A, attacks on Jews became more organized and deadly. Mass violence unfolded with remarkable speed.
On June 25–26, a pogrom took place in the old Jewish quarter of Slobodka. Some so-called “partisans,” joined by Lithuanian students, broke into Jewish homes. They carried guns, axes, and knives. These perpetrators murdered more than 800 Jewish men, women, and children. They set homes on fire, burning the people inside. They drowned other Jews in the nearby Vilija River. In other cases, they forced some of the victims to dig their own graves before murdering them.
On June 27, Lithuanian—and possibly some German—perpetrators forced dozens of Jews to a garage courtyard in the city center. The courtyard was located outside an administrative building that belonged to Lietūkis, a large nationwide union of agricultural cooperatives. In the courtyard, the Jews were publicly tortured and beaten to death in front of a crowd of spectators.
Massacres at the Seventh Fort: June 30–July 7, 1941
Within a week of the German invasion, Lithuanian perpetrators had arrested thousands of Jewish men, women, and children. In late June, they took many of the arrested Jews to the Seventh Fort, one of the city’s 19th-century fortifications.
The Seventh Fort was under joint German-Lithuanian control. It was administered by a short-lived Lithuanian provisional government (June 23–August 5, 1941). Both Germans and Lithuanians were present.
At the Seventh Fort, perpetrators detained the Jewish prisoners without food or water. They locked up the women in the underground barracks. Some women were abused and raped; several dozen were murdered.
For several days, the men were kept outside on the grounds of the fort. They suffered in the scorching July heat. Many of these men were taken out in groups and shot outside the perimeter of the fort. The perpetrators of these shootings consisted of German SS and policemen, as well as Lithuanian guards. These guards belonged to a newly-formed battalion of Lithuanian policemen.
The shootings culminated on the night of July 6–7, 1941. On that night, the Lithuanian guards murdered several thousand Jewish men. In all, about 5,000 Jewish men were shot at the Fort between June 30 and July 7. In the following weeks, shootings of both Jews and non-Jews continued at the Seventh Fort, although on a much smaller scale.
The Kovno Ghetto: Creation and Early Months
In July 1941, the German occupiers and local authorities ordered the Jews of Kovno into a ghetto. The ghetto was located in the Slobodka neighborhood, the historic hub of Kovno’s Jewish community. Slobodka (known in Lithuanian as Vilijampolė) was an area of small wooden houses. It had no sewage or running water. Over the coming weeks, Jews from all over the city were expelled from their homes. They were forced to resettle within the designated ghetto area.
On August 15, 1941, some 30,000 of Kovno’s Jews were imprisoned behind barbed wire fences. They could no longer freely exit or enter the ghetto boundaries.
Initially, the Kovno ghetto was divided into two areas: the “small” and “large” ghettos. The two ghettos were connected by a pedestrian bridge and divided into four precincts. The area of the ghetto shifted as the Germans repeatedly redrew the borders.
Housing in Slobodka was meager. At first, several hundred families had to live on the street. Those who did find housing often shared a small room with five or six people. Both the large and small ghettos were severely overcrowded. Few buildings met basic standards of hygiene and sanitation. As a result, the people in the ghettos were vulnerable to disease and infection.
The Massacres of Fall 1941
Between August and October 1941, the Germans conducted a series of massacres (called “Aktionen” in German). By this time, the Germans had formally organized anti-Soviet Lithuanian activists into auxiliary police battalions. These units assisted the Germans in perpetrating the massacres that decimated the ghetto population.
On August 18, the Germans rounded up 534 Jewish men, among them teachers, doctors, and engineers. The men were told they were needed for work in the city archives. But this was a trap. Instead, they were taken to the Fourth Fort and shot, most likely by Lithuanian policemen.
The following month, on September 26, ghetto residents living in the area around Ariogolos and Velianos streets were ordered to assemble. At the assembly point, the Germans selected 1,200–1,600 Jews, including many women and children. The selected Jews were murdered at the Ninth Fort.
Then, on October 4, the German and Lithuanian perpetrators cordoned off the small ghetto. They selected approximately 1,800 people and shot them at the Ninth Fort. The perpetrators also set fire to the Jewish hospital for infectious diseases. The doctors, nurses, and patients who remained inside were killed.
As of early October, only the large ghetto remained.
The “Great Action” in the Kovno Ghetto: October 28–29, 1941
The mass shootings in fall 1941 culminated on October 28–29.
On October 28, the approximately 26,000 people who had survived the first wave of massacres were ordered to appear on Demokratų Square, a vast open field in the ghetto. From morning to evening, the Germans selected more than 9,200 Jews for murder. This group consisted of many sick and elderly Jews, as well as others who looked feeble. Nearly 4,300 of the victims were children.
Under heavy guard, the victims were transported to the former area of the small ghetto. There, they were held overnight. The following morning on October 29, German and Lithuanian police units forcibly took them to the Ninth Fort. Once at the Ninth Fort, they shot the victims into pits.
By the end of October 1941, nearly half of the Jewish population imprisoned in the ghetto in August had been murdered. Many of the 17,000 Jews in Kovno who survived had lost relatives and were grief-stricken.
Life in the Kovno Ghetto: 1941–1943
After the Great Action, the Kovno ghetto population had a period of respite from mass killings. Between fall 1941 and summer 1943, life mostly revolved around forced labor and the search for food.
The German Administration and the Jewish Council
In Kovno, the ghetto was mainly run by the German civilian administration. The Lithuanian city administration actively supported the German occupiers.
In preparation for the ghetto’s establishment, German authorities ordered the creation of a Jewish council. Jewish councils were German-created administrative bodies that liaised between the Germans and the Jewish population.
In early August 1941, at the prompting of German authorities, Jewish communal representatives chose Dr. Elkhanan Elkes, a renowned physician, to lead the council. A Jewish police force tasked with maintaining order in the ghetto also formed around this time.
The Kovno ghetto Jewish council was required by the Germans to enforce German orders and decrees. To facilitate German demands, the council created a number of institutions. These institutions included labor, health, and housing offices.
While charged with carrying out German regulations, the Jewish council expanded the scope of its activities to provide aid and relief to ghetto residents. They set up additional institutions, like a social welfare office, to help those in particularly dire need. Above all, the council fought to meet the ghetto residents’ basic needs, such as food, firewood, and other supplies necessary for survival. They also worked to ensure the safety of the community. For example, they enforced hygiene and cleanliness standards to prevent the spread of infectious diseases.
Sites of Forced Labor
The Kovno Jewish council hoped that if the Jewish prisoners made themselves useful to the German war effort, the ghetto population would survive. After the fall 1941 massacres, the council focused on meeting the quota that Germans officials had set for forced labor. Jews were assigned to work in four main settings:
- Ghetto workshops: Workshops created by the Kovno Jewish council employed thousands of Jewish women, children, and the elderly who were unable to perform more physically-demanding labor. The workshops included departments for shoe repair, brush and glove making, and a laundry facility.
- City labor brigades: Several thousand Jews worked in labor brigades outside the ghetto as mechanics, metalworkers, electricians, carpenters, and engineers. Some Jews repaired equipment for the German army. Others maintained the buildings that housed the German civilian administration.
- Satellite labor camps: In the summer of 1942, the Germans established several labor camps outside the city. Several hundred Jews were forcibly relocated to these sites. Those taken were often separated from their families.
- The worksite at Aleksotas Airfield: Jewish forced laborers were forced to construct an airfield for the German army in the suburb of Aleksotas. For the Jews of the Kovno ghetto, this was the largest and most dreaded work site. At the airfield, the forced laborers worked 12-hour shifts in weather that ranged from debilitating heat to extreme cold, depending on the season. They were forced to dig canals, carry sacks of mortar, and pour concrete. The German guards supervising the airfield would beat Jews assigned there. Many forced laborers became severely ill and died as a direct result of this labor.
Inequality in the Kovno Ghetto
The unequal burden of forced labor created deep divisions within ghetto society. Individuals with ties to Jews in leadership often avoided the harshest assignments. Those without connections were most likely to suffer in the worst working conditions. In diaries and poems, some Jews in the ghetto criticized what they viewed as a society based on favoritism and inequality.
Hunger in the Kovno Ghetto
Food in the ghetto was rationed and woefully inadequate. In violation of German regulations, Jews tried to secure additional food as well as other necessary supplies.
Secretly finding additional food often depended on where a person was assigned to forced labor. For example, Jews assigned to the city work brigades had opportunities to barter with non-Jewish Lithuanians on the black market. At great risk, they often traded what few valuables they had, such as clothing, for food or firewood. In contrast, those forced to work in the airfield had restricted access to additional food. Strict supervision at the airfield prevented these workers from bartering.
Smuggling Goods in and out of the Kovno Ghetto
Jews who did manage to trade valuables for food or supplies still had to smuggle it back into the ghetto. Smuggling was extremely dangerous. The Germans officially forbade it. They would often shoot Jews caught carrying extra food, firewood, or other supplies through the ghetto gate. Still, the ghetto's Jews saw smuggling as essential to their survival. They found ways to disguise their contraband, bribe guards, and enlist the support of Jewish policemen who stood watch at the gate.
Terrorizing Jews in the Ghetto: 1941–1943
The years 1942 and 1943 brought a reprieve from mass shooting operations. However, German officials and Lithuanians continued to terrorize Jews in the Kovno ghetto.
Arrest and Execution
The specter of arrest and execution haunted the ghetto’s Jews every day. German officials regularly arrested Jews and took them to the Ninth Fort, where they were imprisoned, interrogated, and often executed.
The arrested Jews were punished for disobeying an array of German orders and decrees. Many of these rules were nonsensical. For example, Jews were forbidden from walking on the sidewalk, buying newspapers from non-Jews, or removing the yellow Jewish badge from their clothing. Starting in October 1942, the Germans instituted a policy of collective punishment. This meant that the family members of those arrested were often shot with them.
Plunder
A variety of perpetrators regularly stole valuables and clothing from Jews in the ghetto. Soon after the ghetto was established in August 1941, German soldiers systematically searched Jews’ homes for gold, silver, jewelry, and other possessions. The ghetto population also occasionally fell victim to Lithuanian intruders who entered the ghetto after dark. The perpetrators broke into Jews’ apartments and stole money, clothing, and valuables. The effects of such plunder were severe. Victims were left with even fewer possessions to trade for food or supplies. Moreover, the incursions into Jews’ homes were often accompanied by brutal violence.
Expulsions and Overcrowding
The Germans constantly modified the borders of the Kovno ghetto, making the ghetto smaller and smaller. Jews who had already once been forced to move from their homes into the ghetto, were again forced to move, often within hours. Each expulsion affected hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of Jews, many of whom desperately searched for shelter. These decrees deepened the housing crisis in the ghetto and led to increasingly severe overcrowding.
Deportations and the Separation of Families
The Germans repeatedly relocated or deported Jews of the Kovno ghetto to labor camps. Often, these labor camps were in the vicinity of Kovno. Sometimes, however, German authorities deported ghetto residents to labor camps outside Lithuania. In both February and October of 1942, several hundred Jews were deported by train to labor camps in the city of Riga in German-occupied Latvia. As news about these transports spread, the residents were overcome with panic. The Jews did not know with certainty where the trains were heading. They feared that they were being led to their deaths. They were also deeply frightened about being separated from their families. Many hid to avoid being included in these deportations. Others caught up in the deportations took extreme measures to try and save themselves, such as jumping from the trains.
Jewish Responses to Terror and Imprisonment in the Kovno Ghetto
Jews in the Kovno ghetto were prisoners, and their ability to act was limited. Nevertheless, they responded to their imprisonment in varied ways.
Documentation
Some individuals and groups in the Kovno ghetto documented their experiences in diaries, memoirs, drawings, and paintings. A photographer named Zvi Hirsch Kadushin (later George Kadish) took hundreds of clandestine images in the ghetto. Jewish policemen in the ghetto organized a secret archive that included investigative files, correspondences, and arrest reports. In all, they collected around 30,000 documents.
Religious and Cultural Life
Jews in the Kovno ghetto continued to practice their religion and celebrate Jewish culture, often in secret. Rabbis preached in small circles. Under the guidance of Chaim Nachman Shapira, a renowned scholar and the son of Kovno’s chief rabbi, teachers taught Jewish children. Jewish writers gathered in literary salons. Irgun Bnei Zion (IBZ), a Zionist youth organization, secretly printed its own Hebrew-language newspaper, Nitzotz (Spark). People such as Mikhal Burshtyn, an acclaimed Yiddish writer, collected Jewish folklore, songs, and even macabre jokes. Music also filled the ghetto. Starting in summer 1942, a Jewish police orchestra staged a number of concerts.
Armed Resistance
In the Kovno ghetto, key figures on the Jewish council and in the Jewish police were directly involved in resistance activities. Several commanders in the Jewish police belonged to the Zionist underground. They secretly trained its young fighters to use firearms. The Communist underground in Kovno was led by Chaim Yellin, a Yiddish writer and activist. Yellin and his followers made contact with Soviet partisans (resistance fighters) in the forests around Kovno. In 1943, the General Jewish Fighting Organization was established under Yellin’s leadership. Under this organization's direction, at least 250 ghetto fighters escaped from the Kovno ghetto. They joined partisan groups in the Rudniki forest in the eastern part of Lithuania.
From Kovno Ghetto to Kauen Concentration Camp (Summer and Fall 1943)
In June 1943, SS leader Heinrich Himmler ordered that the ghettos in Reichskommissariat Ostland (a civilian administration that included German-occupied Lithuania) be converted to concentration camps. Jews who were deemed unfit for work were to be evacuated from the ghettos and murdered.
In Kovno, this process began in September 1943. At that point, the SS took control of the ghetto and turned it into a concentration camp. Soon afterward, in October, the SS deported more than 2,700 Jews from Kovno. Of those deported, 2,000 were sent by train to German-occupied Estonia. In addition, around 700 children and elderly Jews were sent to Auschwitz, where they were murdered.
Of the 30,000 who were imprisoned in the ghetto in August 1941, only about 13,000 Jews were still alive in Kovno in November 1943. The area where these people lived was now part of the newly-formed Kauen (Kovno) concentration camp (Konzentrationslager Kauen). Under the new SS regime, the role of the Jewish council in Kovno was curtailed.
Gradually, the SS sent about 5,000 of these people to a network of subcamps. These subcamps were created at the sites of forced labor where Jews from the ghetto had worked in prior years. Now, with the subcamps under the direct supervision of the SS, men and women lived separately and toiled under still harsher conditions. Even more isolated from Kovno, these camp inmates struggled to find food.
The Murder of the Children and Elderly: March 27–28, 1944
In the spring of 1944, the SS accelerated their murderous plans by targeting the ghetto’s most vulnerable populations.
On March 27, the SS stormed the Kauen main camp and its subcamps. They were joined by former Soviet soldiers, most of whom had been POWs captured by the Germans. Together, they hunted children under the age of 12 and adults over the age of 55. Moving door to door, the perpetrators tore the victims away from their loved ones and threw them onto buses and trucks. Parents who frantically tried to protect their children were brutally beaten.
As survivor Rivka Wolbe recalled after the war:
The scenes that unfolded before our eyes in the ghetto streets and the sounds of heartbreak horrified us to our very core. In the streets, mothers and fathers who had just returned from work pulled their hair out and screamed their children's names … It appeared as if people had lost their minds.
Over two days, the perpetrators rounded up around 1,000 children and 300 elderly Jews. Another 500 victims were taken from the subcamps. The exact fate of the victims is not known. Some were likely deported and murdered in Auschwitz or Majdanek. Others were shot at the Ninth Fort.
The End of the Holocaust in Kovno
In early July 1944, as the frontline approached Kovno, the Germans evacuated the Kauen concentration camp. They deported the remaining Jewish women to the Stutthof concentration camp near Danzig on the Baltic coast. The men were sent to the Dachau concentration camp in Germany. Most of the approximately 6,000 Jews deported from Kovno later died in these camps. For example, Dr. Elkes, the Jewish council chairman, died in Kaufering, a subcamp of Dachau, in October 1944.
Many Kovno Jews desperately tried to avoid deportation by sheltering in hideouts or bunkers. But the Germans forced them out using sniffer dogs and grenades. German forces then razed the former ghetto area using dynamite. The vast majority of those in hiding were burned to death in the ensuing fire or shot while attempting to escape.
Several weeks later, on August 1, 1944, the Soviet army retook Kovno. Of Kovno's Jewish survivors, around 500 had survived in forests or in bunkers. Another 2,000 or so survived imprisonment in various concentration camps and were liberated later by the Allied forces.
Kovno Jews in the Aftermath of the Holocaust
After the war, a small number of Kovno ghetto survivors returned to the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic (1944–1990). The majority of survivors, however, found their way to displaced persons (DP) camps in Germany, Austria, and Italy. Between 1945–1948, many boarded ships for British Mandatory Palestine (later, the State of Israel) and the United States.
History Writing and Memorialization
In the DP camps, survivors began writing the first historical studies about the Kovno ghetto. They authored memoirs, gathered testimonies, and collected songs and folklore. The ghetto photographer Kadushin exhibited a portion of his photographs throughout the American Zone of occupation in postwar Germany.
The first efforts to memorialize the victims of the Holocaust in Kovno also took place in the DP camps. Survivors who lived in the Munich area, for example, gathered on the anniversary of the Great Action in which 9,200 of their fellow Jews were murdered.
In accordance with Jewish tradition, they chose to commemorate this event on or around its date on the Hebrew calendar (the 7th day in the month of Cheshvan).
The events of October 1941 also fueled many survivor recollections about the loss of their prewar home. “Jewish Lithuania is no more,” one survivor mourned in 1945.
Kovno is no longer a Jewish city, and Slobodka, the last Jewish settlement that turned into a ghetto, has been utterly destroyed. Oh, my dear and beloved Lithuanian cities, which are so imprinted on my heart! Who would have believed that in our generation your fate would be so tragic?!
Jacob Oleiski, Kovno survivor, 12 November 1945
Footnotes
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Footnote reference1.
J. Olejski, “28 Oktober: Di grojse akcje in kowner geto,” Landsberger lager tsaytung No. 5 (12 November 1945), p. 4.
Critical Thinking Questions
Learn about the lives of the Jews in the community of Kovno before 1939.
How does the example of this ghetto demonstrate the complexity and the systematic nature of the German efforts to abuse and kill the Jews?
Examine the realities and choices faced by Jewish council members in the ghettos.
In what ways did Jews resist while forced to live in the ghettos?
Explore different types of primary sources. How do they further our understanding of how and why the Holocaust happened?