Seventy-four years ago the territory of the Lietūkis Garage of the Lithuanian Agricultural Cooperative in Kaunas became the venue for one of the worst mass murders of Jews in Lithuania and Europe, Kaunas Jewish Community leader Gercas Žakas said Friday at a ceremony to commemorate the victims of the massacre.

“I believe that this pogrom at the Lietūkis Garage was one of the most brutal, not just in Kaunas, not just in Lithuania, but throughout Europe. The sort of brutalities which took place here are difficult to
comprehend,” Žakas said.

The area around the marker commemorating the Lietūkis massacre was cleaned up in late May following complaints from the Jewish community. Žakas thanked municipal leaders for their understanding and cooperation in the matter.

Israel’s ambassador to Lithuania Amir Maimon spoke at the event and said it was difficult for him to believe a tragedy of that sort could have happened in the city’s center, and that the site had been left untended for so long.

“It is difficult to believe that here, at this site, not somewhere deep in the forest but here, in the center of the city, more than sixty people of Jewish ethnicity were brutally murdered. It is difficult to believe that
the people of this city were those who brutally murdered Jews. And it is difficult to believe that this location was cleaned up just a few weeks ago. For so many years it didn’t seem to be a site of memory worthy of respect,” the ambassador said [note: quote retranslated from Lithuanian translation of ambassador’s words in English. His exact words were different and this is merely a paraphrase to provide a general sense of {his remarks.–translator].

On June 27, 1941, more than 50 Lithuanian Jews were tortured to death in public at Lietūkis Garage in Kaunas. Lithuania’s Cultural Heritage Department entered the site on the national register of cultural heritage sites in 2014.