Memorial

Today we headed for the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, but had an overnight stop in Kaunas. At the end of the 19th century the city of Kaunas was fortified and by 1890 was encircled by eight forts and nine gun batteries. Construction of the Ninth Fort (its numerical designation having become its name) began in 1902 and was completed on the eve of World War I From 1924 on, the Ninth Fort was used as the Kaunas City prison.
During the years of Soviet occupation, 1940-1941, the Ninth Fort was used by the NKVD to house political prisoners pending transfer to Gulag forced labor camps.
During the years of Nazi occupation, the Ninth Fort was put to use as a place of mass murder.At least 10,000 Jews, most from Kaunas and largely taken from the Kovno Ghetto, were transported to the Ninth Fort and killed by Nazis with the collaboration of some Lithuanians in what became known as the Kaunas massacre.
Notable among the victims was Rabbi Elchonon Wasserman of Baranovitch. In addition, Jews from as far as France, Austria and Germany were brought to Kaunas during the course of Nazi occupation and executed in the Ninth Fort. In 1943, the Germans operated special Jewish squads to dig mass graves and burn the remaining corpses. One squad of 62 people managed to escape the fortress on the eve of 1944. That year, as the Soviets moved in, the Germans liquidated the ghetto and what had by then come to be known as the "Fort of Death". The prisoners were dispersed to other camps. After World War II, the Soviets again used the Ninth Fort as a prison for several years. From 1948 to 1958, farm organizations were managed from the Ninth Fort.
In 1958, a museum was established in the Ninth Fort. In 1959, an exhibition was prepared in four cells, telling of the Nazi war crimes carried out in Lithuania.The memorial to the victims of Nazism at the Ninth Fort in Kaunas, Lithuania, was designed by sculptor A. Ambraziunas. Erected in 1984, the monument is 105 feet (32 m) high. The mass burial place of the victims of the massacres carried out in the fort is a grass field, marked by a simple yet frankly worded memorial written in several languages. It reads, "This is the place where Nazis and their assistants killed more than 30,000 Jews from Lithuania and other European countries.