The Shoah (1939–1945)
Erasure of traces at Fort IX
Nov. 1943·Kaunas (IXᵉ fort)
The toll is reproduced exactly as the source states it — never rounded, never added to another. Tolls overlap from one event to the next.
A commando of prisoners is forced to exhume and burn the bodies of those shot at the fort; sixty-four escape on the night of December 25.
The IXth Fort, part of the former fortified belt around Kaunas, had served as a place of execution since the first weeks of the occupation. In the autumn, faced with the advancing front, the occupier undertook to erase the traces of the shootings.
A commando of detainees, chained and housed in the casemates, was forced to open the mass graves, remove the bodies, and burn them on pyres. On Christmas night, sixty-four of them escaped through a forced door after weeks of preparation; several would survive to bear witness.
- Period :
- The Shoah (1939–1945)
- Type :
- Shoah
- Region :
- Central and Eastern Europe
- Country :
- Lituanie
Musée du IXᵉ fort, Kaunas ; Yad Vashem ; témoignages des évadés, recueillis en Lituanie.