Kaunas pogrom, June 27, 1941.
Quote:
The International March of the Living commemorated National Memorial Day for the Genocide of Lithuanian Jews with two marches, one in Vilnius on Sept. 24 and another in Kaunas on Sept. 23 [2024].
The events were co-organized by the European March of the Living and the International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania.
A significant change in this year’s memorial events was the inclusion of Kaunas, a city which served as Lithuania’s temporary capital in 1939 and whose Jewish population was almost entirely wiped out during the Holocaust. In particular, the Kaunas march paid tribute to the victims of Fort IX, a site where over 9,000 [9,200] Jews were executed.
In Vilnius, participants retraced the harrowing steps from the former Jewish ghetto to the Ponary mass graves, where over 70,000 Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. This march, now in its tenth year, remains a symbol of the enduring effort to ensure the world remembers the liquidation of the Vilnius Ghetto in September 1943.
Comment:
In Kaunas, young Lithuanian men clubbed Jews to death in a public square with the permission of the Nazis.