A Museum in the Place Where it Happened

There are many kinds of museums, and historical ones can be particularly powerful when they are located in the exact spot they are commemorating. The Ninth Fort just outside of Kovno is such a place. It was constructed in the 19th century as part of a string of fortified structures to protect the city of Kovno. The Soviets used the fort as a prison and the Nazis used it as a prison and an extermination center. Vilna also had such a place, called Ponar.

Inside the fortification is a small museum arranged in the cells from its time as a prison. From this vantage point it looks fairly serene.

A monument to the victims, now acknowledging specifically Jews rather than a generic statement about "citizens" killed by Nazis.

This was first used as a prison by the Russians who brought prisoners here from many places.

A list of the last transport that arrived here just months before the end of the war. Many of those brought here were from France.

They knew their fate and they scratched their names into the wall to let the world know that they had existed and that they should not be forgotten.

Diplomats paid a huge role in trying to help people escape Europe. The Japanese consul in Lithuania, Chiune Sugihara experienced a dilemma, as his country was an ally of the Nazis, and he felt a moral obligation to help people escape. He issued exit visas in spite of what his country told him.

Sugihara helped 6000 Jews escape Europe. He is recognized as a righteous person by Yad Vashem (Holocaust Memorial Museum) in Israel.

The Netherlands has the highest number of people who rescued or hid Jews during WWII and included the Dutch diplomat Jan Zwartendijk. He and Sugihara actually worked together, as people needed to transit East through Asia as well as through Europe.

Some of those recognized for their courage and the room also had displays of some of the people they had helped.

When you hear the term "liquidate" in reference to one of the ghettos, it means bringing people to a place like the Ninth Fort and shooting them and burying them in mass graves. Others were sent on to concentration or work camps if they were able-bodied.

The monument at the killing fields was erected in 1984, and is an example of brutalist sculpture. I know in this case that kind of term sounds totally appropriate, though it is actually a style of sculpture or architecture which includes such buildings as the former Whitney Museum in New York (Marcel Breuer). The artist this sculpture is A. Abraziunas. It's very much a Soviet style monument with two sets of victims on either side, and the "victors" in the center. Not sure what the victory is.

Towards the end of the war, the Nazis began systematically covering up their crimes, or trying to. They brought in 64 slave laborers to dig up bodies and burn them.

One of the cells was converted to a dormitory for the laborers who knew that since this was part of a cover up, when their task was over they would be killed too.

They made an escape through this door that they had slowly cut a space in (lower right second level) to crawl out of. They did so on Christmas Day while the Nazis were getting drunk. 30 of them survived the escape and they are the only proof against the Holocaust deniers about what happened here.