Kovno

SOVIETS OCCUPY LITHUANIA June 15, 1940 Soviet forces occupy Lithuania. The new government bans Jewish organizations and takes over Jewish schools and cultural institutions. Soviet secret police begin arresting individuals believed to have anti-Communist sympathies, regardless of their political standing. The Soviet Union later annexes Lithuania in August 1940, creating a Soviet Socialist Republic. GERMAN FORCES ENTER KOVNO June 24, 1941 Two days after Germany launched a surprise offensive against the Soviet Union, German forces enter Kovno. Immediately before the occupation of Kovno by German forces, Lithuanian nationalists began to attack Jews in the city, accusing them of supporting the Soviet occupation. The Lithuanian nationalists killed hundreds of Jews. LITHUANIANS LAUNCH POGROM AGAINST JEWS June 25, 1941 Encouraged by the SS, members of the Lithuanian Activist Front, a pro-German partisan organization, participate in a pogrom against Jews in Kovno. They attack rabbis and their followers in the suburb of Vilijampole, known to local Jews as Slobodka. In a two-day pogrom, Lithuanian partisans set fire to synagogues and burn down some 60 homes. They kill between 800 and 1,000 Jews. MASSACRE AT LIETUKIS GARAGE June 27, 1941 While crowds of spectators and many German soldiers look on, Lithuanian partisans kill 60 Jews at the Lietukis garage in central Kovno, battering most of them to death with iron bars. German army photographers take pictures for use in German publications. LITHUANIAN AUXILIARY POLICE ESTABLISHED June 28, 1941 As detachments of Einsatzgruppe (mobile killing unit) A enter Kovno, the German army disbands the Lithuanian Activist Front. The Germans reorganize politically reliable members of the Front into a Lithuanian auxiliary police force to assist the Germans during the occupation of Lithuania. Some of these auxiliary police units will assist the German SS and police in the systematic killing of Jews in Kovno. MASSACRE AT SEVENTH FORT July 6, 1941 Acting under orders of the SS, Lithuanian auxiliary police units shoot nearly 3,000 Jews at the Seventh Fort, one of the nineteenth-century fortifications surrounding Kovno. Throughout the occupation of the city, the SS and police use several of the forts around Kovno as prisons and massacre sites. KOVNO GHETTO ESTABLISHED July 10, 1941 German and Lithuanian authorities order all Jews in Kovno to move into a ghetto to be established in the suburb of Slobodka (Vilijampole). There will be nearly 30,000 Jews in the ghetto when the Germans seal the area in August 1941. The ghetto area is characterized by old, wooden houses without sewers or running water. The ghetto area is divided into two sections called the large ghetto and the small ghetto. "INTELLECTUALS ACTION" IN KOVNO August 18, 1941 In what comes to be known as the "intellectuals action," SS, police units, and their Lithuanian auxiliaries shoot hundreds of Jewish professionals at the Fourth Fort. Einsatzgruppe (mobile killing unit) commander SS Colonel Karl Jaeger reports that units under his command shot more than 1,800 Jews at the Fourth Fort on this date. SMALL GHETTO DESTROYED October 4, 1941 The SS and their Lithuanian auxiliaries kill about 1,800 Jews, destroying the small ghetto in Kovno. The SS transfers to the large ghetto those Jews they deem to be fit for work and shoots those without work certificates, mostly women and children, at the Ninth Fort. The SS also sets fire to the Hospital for Infectious Diseases with patients and hospital staff still inside. MASSACRE AT NINTH FORT October 28, 1941 In an operation that becomes known as "the Great Action," SS Sergeant Helmut Rauca of the Kovno Gestapo (secret state police) conducts a selection in the Kovno ghetto. All ghetto inhabitants are forced to assemble in a central square of the ghetto. Rauca selects more than 9,000 Jewish men, women, and children, about one-third of the ghetto population. The next day, SS and Lithuanian units shoot them at the Ninth Fort. This is the largest mass killing of Lithuanian Jews. SECRET GHETTO ARCHIVES ESTABLISHED November 25, 1941 Chaim Nachman Shapiro agrees to head the Education Office of the Jewish council in Kovno. Shapiro also launches a secret archival project and encourages artists and writers to document the history of the Kovno ghetto. Avraham Tory, a member of the Jewish council, has been writing a diary since July 1941. He collects documents for the clandestine archives. The ghetto resistance will bury the archive in three lead boxes before the final destruction of the ghetto. CENTRAL EUROPEAN JEWS DEPORTED TO KOVNO November 29, 1941 Two thousand Jews deported from Vienna and Breslau arrive in Kovno. The SS and police shoot the Jews, including 1,155 women and 152 children, at the Ninth Fort. During the war, the SS and police kill more than 5,000 Jews from Germany, Austria, France, and Czechoslovakia at the Ninth Fort in Kovno. RESISTANCE MOVEMENTS UNITE December 31, 1941 Several Communist resistance groups in the Kovno ghetto merge to form the Antifascist Organization under the leadership of Haim Yelin. The Kovno ghetto has an extensive Jewish resistance movement which acquires arms, develops secret training areas in the ghetto, and establishes contact with Soviet partisans in the forests around Kovno. Hundreds of ghetto fighters escape from the ghetto to join anti-German partisan groups. Very few fighters, however, will survive the war. PREGNANCIES FORBIDDEN IN GHETTO July 24, 1942 German authorities forbid pregnancies and births in the Kovno ghetto, declaring that women who are up to seven months pregnant will be shot if they do not terminate their pregnancies by mid-September 1942. Despite the risks, some women carry to term and hide their babies from the Germans. SS TAKES CONTROL OF GHETTO September 15, 1943 The SS assumes direct authority over the Kovno ghetto. The transfer of authority from the German civilian administration signals the intensification of SS control in the Kovno ghetto. SS authorities formally declare the ghetto area a concentration camp and begin imposing increased regimentation on ghetto inhabitants. JEWS DEPORTED FROM KOVNO October 26, 1943 Russian and Ukrainian auxiliary units assist the Germans in the deportation of at least 2,700 Jews from Kovno. Those of working age are deported to forced-labor camps in Estonia, while the very young and the elderly are deported to their deaths at the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp in German-occupied Poland. ESCAPE FROM NINTH FORT December 25, 1943 More than 60 Jews escape from the Ninth Fort. The SS had assigned them to exhume and burn the remains of Jews the SS had shot at the fort. The exhumations and burning were part of Aktion 1005, the systematic attempt to eliminate the evidence of mass murder in eastern Europe. Thirteen of the escapees hide in Kovno and document German efforts to destroy the evidence of mass killings at the Ninth Fort. GHETTO POLICE ARRESTED March 27, 1944 In what becomes known as the "Police Action," SS and police officials arrest 130 Jewish ghetto policemen. They suspect the ghetto police of participating in resistance activities. Despite torture, most of the policemen refuse to divulge any information on resistance activities. The SS kills about 40 of them during questioning. The SS and its auxiliaries go from house to house in the ghetto looking for hiding places and rounding up the ghetto's remaining children and elderly. A few women in the resistance manage to hide about 60 children. The SS seizes 1,300 children and either takes them to the Ninth Fort or deports them to Auschwitz where they are killed. FINAL DEPORTATIONS BEGIN July 8, 1944 German forces and their Lithuanian auxiliaries begin the final deportation of Jews from Kovno. Over the next five days, they set fire to the former ghetto area to force Jews out of their hiding places. They kill almost 1,500 Jews in Kovno. As many as 400 Jews flee to nearby forests. The Germans deport the remaining Jews to the Stutthof and Dachau concentration camps. SOVIET FORCES LIBERATE KOVNO August 1, 1944 Soviet forces liberate Kovno. A few Jews who had escaped the final destruction of the ghetto emerge from hidden bunkers in the former ghetto area. Of Kovno's Jewish survivors, 500 survived in forests or in bunkers; an additional 2,500 survived in concentration camps in Germany.