Jewish Kaunas

Jews are first known to have arrived in Kaunas in 1410, settling as was decreed by law in the Slobodka (now Vilijampolė) district of the town. In 1858 living restrictions were lifted and many resettled in Old Town. By the time of the German invasion of 1941 just 6,000 of Kaunas' 30,000 Jews still lived in Slobodka. That summer the Nazis ordered all Jews back to the area, turning it into the notorious Kovno Ghetto, which housed around 40,000 Jews of whom almost all perished in the camps at Auschwitz, Dachau and Stutthof, or at the nearby killing fields of the Ninth Fort. The systematic murder of the Kaunas Jews began a few days after the invasion, the most infamous event being the torture and murder of 68 Jewish men, women and children by willing Lithuanians at the city’s Lietūkis bus station on June 27, 1941. Several of the perpetrators are now considered national heroes for their fight against the Soviets, a controversial fact that continues to cause much heated debate. Today, a tiny population of around 1,000 Kaunas Jews still lives in the city.