Ghetto Kauen (Kaunas / Kowno)

Scope and content

The collection contains primarily:

Various invoices, catalogs, inventories, correspondence and plans of the Kauen Ghetto, performance reports of the CC work sites, administrative orders, file plan of the administration, listing of women who had been liberated by the Red Army, listing of surviving Jews

History of Ghetto and Concentration Camp Kauen (Kaunas, Kowno) 1941-1944:

The Lithuanian city of Kaunas (dt. Kauen, russ. Kowno) was seized by German troops on 24 June 1941. Shortly before this, the Lithuanian nationalists ignited a pogrom against the Jewish population, accusing them across the board of having allegedly collaborated with the Soviet authorities during the year-long occupation of Lithuania from 15 June 1940 until 24 June 1941.This violent atmosphere was intensified by the activities of the Special Task Group A and the SS. In the first two days of the German occupation 800 to 1,000 Jews were murdered as a result of the continuing “wild” pogrom. In the days that followed, the German troops moved on to systematic acts of murder. On 6 July 1941 a massacre took place in Fort VII, a czarist fortress in the city area, where 3,000 Jews were murdered. Another execution site was Fort IX, here again a part of the old Kaunas fortress. Of the 40,000 people in the Jewish population who had been living in Kaunas before the German occupation, only 30,000 survived this first wave of murders. At the end of July/early August the German Occupation Authorities turned their focus towards the Jews still living in a ghetto in the Viliampole/Slobodka suburb. Immediately following the “resettlement”, which lasted until 15 August 1941, there was a renewed intensification of acts of murder. By October 1941 an additional 13,000 Jews from the Ghetto were murdered by the SS and Lithuanian collaborators. In a fashion similar to that of the Riga ghetto, the Kaunas ghetto was converted into a deportation destination for transports from all over the German Reich and its annexed territories. On 29 November 2,000 Jews from Vienna and Breslau arrived at the ghetto. Further transports from France and Czechoslovakia followed. Many of those deported were selected immediately upon their arrival and executed in Fort IX. During the so-called calm phase in the history of the ghetto (1942 until early 1943) larger “operations” did not take place; however, sporadic deportations, daily terror of slave labor and supply shortages, as well as news from other ghettos exacerbated the sense of existential threat. The Elders‘ Council, which was established on 15 August 1941, endeavored, within the very restricted limits of possibility it had, to maintain certain semblance of normalcy, among others by complying with the profit and exploitation efforts of the occupation authorities and engaging the majority of the ghetto inmates 1942/43 in work for the German weapons industry. As a result of the restructuring of the Kauna ghetto into Kauna Concentration Camp, the living conditions of the inmates grew increasingly worse. On 1 November 1943 the SS assumed control and, until early 1944, by eliminating the Elders’ Council--- was able to intensify the exploitation by way of slave labor, which involved selecting and deporting old people, children, and the sick. On 8 July 1944, with the Red Army coming ever closer to Kaunas, the SS began clearing out the Concentration Camp. The few Jews who were still alive were deported on trains and ships, most of them being sent to Concentration Camp Stutthof. While retreating the SS set fire to the camp compound. An estimated 2,000 people died in their hideaways as a result of the fire and the destruction

Source: Matthäus, Jürgen: Kaunas (Ghetto und KZ), Artikel in: Lexikon des Holocaust, ed. by Wolfgang Benz, München 2002, pp. 117-119.