The ghetto in Kovno has its own tragic place in history because of the cruelty of conditions there and the revolt of Jews towards the end of its days. The dire circumstances of the ghetto became more widely known after World War II with the discovery of secret archives, diaries, drawings, and photographs that had been buried in the ground when the ghetto was destroyed. These told the story of Jewish community's defiance, oppression, resistance, and death.

Between 1920 and 1939, Kovno, was the country's capital and largest city. From a small provincial city, it grew into a modern city, and became an example of the traditions of the historically famous Lithuanian Jewry.

Approximately 32,000 Jews lived in Kovno about one-fourth of the city's total population, before the Germans and their Lithuanian helpers began their systematic massacres in 1941.

This book was written in the years just after the war and drew on interviews with Kovno survivors after their liberation, many of them in Displaced Persons camps. The Preface says that this is the first book laying out a detailed account of what happened in the Ghetto.

At its peak, the ghetto held an estimated 29,000 people, most of whom were later sent to concentration and extermination camps or were shot after being rounded up and crowded into the notorious “9^th Fort,” one of several that had been constructed under the Russian Empire in the late nineteenth century for the defense of the city. The book describes the fort as one of the most horrible Nazi mass annihilation sites in Lithuania.

Kovno was liberated by the Red Army on August 1, 1944. A few days later, little by little, the few miraculously surviving Jews started to return to the city. Today, there are about 2,500 Jews in all of Lithuania. About 300 live in Kovno.

May this book serve as a memorial to Jewish Kovno, its people and the Jewish community that was so brutally destroyed.

Kaunas [Lith], Kovno [Rus], Kovne [Yid], Kovna [Heb], Kowno [Pol], Kauen [Ger]

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