Kaunas

During World War II, after the outbreak of the German-Soviet war and even before the Germans occupied the city (June 24, 1941), Jews were killed in Kaunas by Lithuanian Fascists. Immediately after the German occupation, large-scale anti-Jewish pogroms took place affecting some 35,000 Jews. At the instigation of Einsatzgruppe A, Lithuanian "partisans" carried out a pogrom in Slobodka (Vilijampole), in which 800 Jews were killed. Jews were also arrested in various parts of the city and taken to the Seventh Fort, a part of the old fortress, where between 6,000 and 7,000 of them were murdered in the beginning of July. An order issued on July 11, 1941, stipulated that between July 15 and August 15 all the Jews in the city and its suburbs were to move into a ghetto to be set up in Slobodka. This was followed by other anti-Jewish measures. On Aug. 7, 1941, 1,200 Jewish men were picked up in the streets and about 1,000 put to death. In these pogroms, as in the later persecution and Aktionen, the Lithuanians again took a very active part.
The Slobodka ghetto contained 29,760 people. Following an Aktion there, 9,200 Jews were killed at the Ninth Fort situated near Slobodka on October 29, 1941. Another 20,000 with their belongings were sent there from Germany, Austria, France, and other European countries – for "resettlement in the East" – and murdered. Another 4,000 ghetto residents were murdered in various other Aktionen between August and December 1941. Two "resettlement actions" took place in 1942 in which Jews from Kaunas ghetto were transferred to *Riga. On Oct. 26, 1943, approximately 3,000 Jews were deported to concentration camps in Estonia. The ghetto was then turned into "concentration camp Kauen." At this time the united Jewish underground, which had been operating in the ghetto from the end of 1941 and had 800 members, began sending people to the Augustova forests (74 mi. (120 km.) south of Kaunas) to join the partisan resistance against the Germans. Through lack of experience and the hostility of the local population many of the members of the underground were killed or captured. A group of them, who were employed by the *Gestapo in burning the corpses of the victims in the Ninth Fort, managed to escape on Christmas Eve of 1943. They were then sent by the ghetto underground to the forests of Rudnicka (about 90 mi. (150 km.) east of Kaunas) and were absorbed into the Soviet partisan units, which comprised various national groups. From the fall of 1943 to the spring of 1944, the underground, aided by members of the Aeltestenrat (see *Judenrat), especially its chairman, Elhanan *Elkes, and the Jewish ghetto police, managed to send about 250 armed fighters to Rudnicka and other forests, where more than one-third were killed in action against the Germans. The leader of the underground, Chaim Yelin, was captured and killed by the Gestapo. A group of Jewish partisans died in a clash with Gestapo forces on the outskirts of Kaunas in April 1944. On March 27–28, 1944, another special Aktion took place in which 2,000 children, elderly and sick persons were hunted down. When the Soviet attack began in July 1944, the Germans liquidated the Kaunas ghetto and concentration camps in the area, using grenades and explosives, to kill the Jews hiding in the bunkers. In this Aktion about 8,000 Jews and others were sent to Germany. The men were sent to *Dachau and the women to *Stutthof, and over 80% of them died in these camps before liberation. Kaunas was taken by Soviet forces on Aug. 1, 1944. Most of the Jewish survivors did not return to Lithuania, but chose to remain in the *Displaced Persons' camps, where they were later joined by other Jews from Kaunas who had left Lithuania after its liberation.