Memorial to the Victims of Nazism at the Ninth Fort in Kaunas
Above Lithuania’s 2nd largest city of Kaunas sits a surreal and sombre Soviet monument dedicated to “The Victims of Nazism” in Kaunas. 50,000 Jewish, Lithuanian and soviets murdered by Nazis on this spot. 30,000 of them were Lithuanian Jews.
It’s located directly next to the “Ninth fort”.
The memorial to the victims of Nazism at the Ninth Fort in Kaunas, Lithuania, was designed by sculptor A. Ambraziunas.
Erected in 1984, the monument is 105 feet (32 m) high. The mass burial place of the victims of the massacres carried out in the fort is a grass field, marked by a simple yet frankly worded memorial written in several languages.
It reads, “This is the place where Nazis and their assistants killed more than 30,000 Jews from Lithuania and other European countries.”
On April 11, 2011, the memorial to the victims of Nazism was vandalized — the memorial tombstones were knocked down, and white swastikas were spray-painted on the memorial.
On the adjacent sidewalk, the words “Juden raus” (German: Jews Out) were inscribed.
