Haapalah / Aliyah Bet

Kaunas
Каунас
Ковно
Kauen
Koўнa
Kowno
Kovno
Kovne
קאָװנע

In 1410, Jews were brought to Kovno Kaunas forcibly as Prisoners of War, by the Grand Duke Vytautas.

On June 22, 1941, the June Uprising against the retreating Red Army began in Kaunas Kowno, and began a short-lived period of independence was proclaimed in Kaunas Kowno, on June 23, 1941.
Prior to and after the German occupation, the anti-Communist Nazi insurgents attacked Jews, blaming them for Soviet repression, especially along Jurbarko and Kriščiukaičio streets.
They murdered more than 3,800 Jews, taking hundreds more to the Lietūkis garage where they killed them.

On June 25, 1941, the main German forces marched into Kaunas Kowno, without opposition.
On July 17, 1941, the occupying forces established a German civil administration in Kaunas Kowno, under SA Major General Hans Kramer.

On July 10, 1941, Kazys Palciauskas, Mayor of Kaunas Kovno, ordered all Jews to wear a yellow Star of David on every article of clothing.

The Nazis established the Kaunas Kowno Ghetto and, by the end of the war, murdered most of the Jews.
On August 15, 1941, the Kaunas Kowno Ghetto was sealed.
The ghetto had two parts, the small and large ghetto, separated by Paneriu Street.
Each ghetto was enclosed by barbed wire and closely guarded.
Both ghettos were overcrowded, with each person allocated less than ten square feet of living space.
The Kaunas Kowno Ghetto provided forced labor for the German military, using Jews primarily as forced laborers at sites outside the ghetto, especially in the construction of a military airbase in Aleksotas.
Michael Ruskin cites: "Persons identified as fit for work were concentrated in “The Workers Ghetto”, and were assigned to slave labor groups."
"All Slobodka Jews were ordered to sew yellow Stars of David on the fronts and backs of their clothing, and were prohibited from using money or the side walks."
"The only compensation the Jewish laborers received was a weekly ration of horsemeat and bread, and an infrequent allotment of potatoes. In order to obtain items such as vegetables, fruit, butter and sugar, the Ghetto inhabitants were forced to barter their personal belongings - shoes, watches, jewelry and other valuables."
The Jewish Council of Elders, headed by Dr. Elchanan Elkes, hoping the Germans would not kill Jews who were producing for the army, ran workshops inside the Kaunas Kowno Ghetto for those women, children, and elderly who could not participate in the labor brigades.
Eventually, these workshops employed almost 6,500 people.

There were a number of Jewish resistance groups in the Kaunas Kowno Ghetto, which haddeveloped secret training areas in the ghetto, and established contact with Soviet partisans in the forests around Kaunas.
In 1943, the Yidishe Algemeyne Kamfs Organizatsye was established, uniting the major resistance groups in the Kaunas Kowno Ghetto, with some 300 ghetto who fighters escaped from the ghetto to join partisan groups.

In the autumn of 1943, the SS assumed control of the Kaunas Kowno Ghetto and converted it into the Kauen concentration camp.
More than 3,500 Jews were transferred to sub camps.
On October 26, 1943, the SS transported more than 2700 people from the main camp, those deemed fit to work to labor camps in Estonia.

Convoy 73's final destination Kaunas, Lithuania. or Reval Tallinn, Estonia.
Convoy 73 was one of the rare trains from France comprised only of men.

On March 27-28, 1944, the German and Ukrainian SS soldiers of Einsatzgruppen A undertook Die Kinder-Aktion, rounding up 2,500 children, infants to twelve-year olds, and elderly and disabled Jews in the Kaunas Kowno Ghetto, and loading them onto trucks and military vehicles and taken to the Kaunas 9th Fort Devintas Kauno fortas, konwn as 'Fort of Death', a place of mass murder.
On March 27, 1944, over 250 children and many elderly were transported to Auschwitz.
Jews from France, Austria and Germany were also brought to Kaunas and executed in the Kaunas 9th Fort Devintas Kauno fortas.
When the Soviets moved in, the Germans liquidated the Kaunas Kowno Ghetto, and transpored the remaining Jews to the Dachau concentration camp or Stutthof camp.
The Jewish community in Kaunas documented its story in secret archives, diaries, drawings, and photographs, which were buried in the ground when the ghetto was destroyed, and were discovered after the war, written remnants that provide evidence of the Jewish community's defiance, oppression, resistance, and death.

On July 8, 1944, the Germans evacuated the Kauen concentration camp, transporting most of the remaining Jews in boxcars, the men were sent to Dachau concentration camp, and the women were sent to Stutthof camp.

On August 1, 1944, the Red Army liberated Kaunas.
The Germans had already razed the Kaunas Kowno Ghetto with grenades and dynamite.
As many as 2,000 more people had burned to death, or had been shot while trying to escape,