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The Jews of Kovno
Text and Photos by Jono David
www.JewishPhotoLibrary.com
At the corner of Ariogalos and Linkuvos streets in the Vilijampole
district of Kaunas, Lithuania, stands a simple, lone granite memorial to
those Jews who perished at the hands of the Nazis in World War II. It
stands like a lone sentinel, keeping a 24-hour watch over the souls of
the dead. Quietly but determinedly, it commands us to heed its eternal
message of remembrance. It was here in this suburban district known to
the Jews as Slobodka that on German orders, the Kovno (as Kaunas was
once called) Ghetto was sealed on 15 August 1941 with 29,000 impounded
people. The area had been a Jewish village for four hundred years.
Jewish history runs particularly deep Lithuania. Before the war, some
200 communities across the nation supported the lives and livelihoods of
nearly 240,000 people. More than ninety percent perished. Jews are first
known to have lived in Kovno as early as 1410 when they were brought
forcibly as prisoners of war by the Grand Duke Vytautas. Many of those
Jews were later active as traders between Kovno and Danzig (today's
Gdansk, Poland). Living conditions for many Jews were squalid. In 1858,
archaic living restrictions were relaxed and all but 6,000 of the city's
35,000 Jews flocked to the Old Town in search of something better. In
July 1941, however, the Nazis expelled all the Jews from the town and
sent them back to Slobodka. The Kovno Ghetto was thus established.
The first pogrom was on 25 June 1941. On 7 July 1941, Avraham Tory noted
in his Kovno Ghetto Diary: "Soviet rule has disappeared. The Jews are
left behind as fair game; hunting them is not unprofitable, because the
houses and courtyards of many of them brim with riches. Slaughter the
Jews and take their property' - this was the first slogan of the
restored Lithuanian rule..." By October, some 1,800 people were
consigned to their deaths in a smaller Ghetto.
Like other Ghettos, not all the days were tragic. There were moments of
joy betwixt long days of false hope, delivered with fresh supplies of
food or bundles of firewood. Avraham wrote in his Diary that some
cultural events were, remarkably, maintained, such as a Purim festival
and a Passover celebration. On 24 July that year, he wrote that the
Zionist party was "a festive occasion, pervaded with splendour."
Remarkably, the Ghetto also organised a symphony orchestra, lectures,
art classes, discussions, and Yiddish classes for children. Maintaining
even a semblance of Jewish life and tradition was as great a statement
of resistance as picking up a gun. But that resistance only lasted so
long. Following the July 1944 liquidation of the Kovno Ghetto, only a
quarter of the Ghetto's original number remained. Men were then
transported to Dachau and women to Stuffhof where they met their
barbarous fate.
Today, not much remains of Kovno but fragments of that old community:
derelict buildings, slanting wooden houses, and the wonder of what the
place was like, both pre and post war. It is a depressed area. If not
for the memorial, today's residents of Vilijampole would apparently be
oblivious to the events of fifty-plus years ago.
Today's five hundred or so members of the Jewish community are certainly
not oblivious of their past. On the back wall of Die Synagogue to the
left of the bimah hangs a prominent memorial to the Lithuanian Jewish
communities decimated in the Holocaust. The names of those communities
which were annihilated are spelled out and presented in tabular form.
Whilst appreciating the length of the list, I stood behind a man who
bowed his head in silent memory. When a fellow community member took a
position next to him, they exchanged a wordless but deep, firm
handshake. As it turned out, the first of three evenings I attended
services was quite mirthful despite the solemn display of remembrance I
had just witnessed.
"Die Synagogue", Kaunas
Kaunas has a small though peppery congregation. In the sanctuary of the
synagogue, I met an aging but spry group of men (no women were present)
I had not expected to meet. The voices of the congregation were
particularly boisterous, rising like a star on a Shabbat evening. I was
also impressed with the synagogue's simple beauty, its stained glass,
and grandness, though it appeared somewhat weary from the outside,
fatigued by Soviet occupation. Built in 1871, it is today the only
remaining synagogue in a city which once had some thirty-six synagogues
and prayer houses (the shells of two other synagogues are located in the
Old Town).
Kaunas' darkest side is IX Fortas, one of a series of forts built by
the Russians but later used by the Nazis as a murder factory. Located in
Kaunas' northwest outskirts, the fort failed the Russians in their
attempt to defend their western frontier, falling to the Germans in only
eleven days of battle. Inside, primitive bedding remains firmly behind
double meshed bars covering the windows of the cells. The prison's
fortified walls exude a stale coldness, creating an appropriate somber
mood for viewing the numerous displays of photographs and reports of the
gruesome events which took place here. In addition to the communal cells
was the "Health Room", a 3 metre by 1 metre hole beneath a stairwell,
and the "Wet Room", a fairly spacious but dank chamber of concrete
without a crack of light. I was particularly drawn to an exhibit on
Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese diplomat in Kaunas (1939-40) who was
personally responsible for issuing 6,000 visas for safe passage out of
Lithuania to Japan.
The Path of Death, IX Fortas, Kaunas
For those held captive in the IX Fortas, it was a short shuffle from
the front gate down the Path of Death to the Wall of Death, a corner
of a moat-like trench where people were lined up as targets and shot.
Today, this wall is still riddled with bullet holes and is the fort's
starkest reminder of the evil which was perpetrated here. In all, some
80,000 people from Lithuania, Austria, France, and other Nazi occupied
areas, were slaughtered at the fort, including most of Kovno's
population. Just behind the trench is a field where the dead were
discarded. Today, it is a peaceful spread of green backdropped by a new
housing development. Adjacent to the field is the leviathan Monument to
the Victims of Fascism, a concrete crush of desperate faces rising
from the earth in immortal resistance. Behind the synagogue stands a
memorial to the 1,800 children who were murdered here.
At This Wall Nazis Shot and Burnt People 1943-1944
Kaunas became an important centre of Jewish cultural life in the latter
half of the 19th century. Distinguished Jewish leaders moved here from
Vilnius, the capital, to establish yeshivas. Influential thinkers also
moved to Kaunas. When Vilnius was annexed by Poland during he inter-war
years, Kaunas became the provisional capital of Lithuania. In 1928,
there were 1,000 Jewish students at the Vytautas Magnus University.
There was even a Semitic studies program. In 1931, the Jewish
Ethnographic Museum was opened. Within only a few years, it had
collected some 3,000 Jewish art works and artifacts. By the mid-1930s
there were successful Jewish writers, poets, and artists residing in the
city. By 1938, the Jewish population was nearly 40,000 and the area was
a booming hub for Jewish businessmen, entrepreneurs, artisans, doctors,
and lawyers. Five Jewish newspapers were published daily. There were
schools for all ages, adult training centres, theatres, libraries,
sports clubs, and political groups. Even the Central Jewish Bank of
Lithuania was centred in Kaunas.
The potent influence the Jewish community had in Kaunas before the war
was snuffed out forever but, for their numbers, the vigour of the
remaining Jews most certainly rivals that of past communities. I was
able to discern that energy when Synagogue President Chatskal Zack
zestfully shook my hand on the evening of my third visit, and eagerly
invited me back for the following morning's Shabbat service (which I was
unable to attend).
As I exited, other men standing in the foyer warmly bid me a "Shabbat
Shalom", leaving me with the impression that all is peaceful again. At
that moment, I realised that those men are the true sentinels of Kovno.
~~~~~~~
from the August 2000 Edition of the Jewish Magazine
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