As Jewish New year approaches, to take place September 14 and 15 this year, it’s traditional to visit the graves of relatives. The tragic events of World War II, the Holocaust, means that there is usually more than one mass Jewish grave in every Lithuanian city and town. On September 3 members of the Kaunas Jewish Community visited mass murder sites in Petrašiūnai and at teh Seventh Fort, where Jews were murdered in August of 1941.

On August 30, 1941, 23 children, 72 women and 30 men were murdered at Petrašiūnai because they were Jews. More than 4,000 Jews were murdered at the Seventh Fort and on August 18, 1941, alone more than 500 Jewish intellectuals imprisoned in the Kaunas ghetto were murdered in an attempt to kill the elite and most educated first.

Kaddish was said at monuments to these horrible events and people shared their thoughts and feelings. The family of every member of the Kaunas Jewish Community suffered great losses during the Holocaust. A group of local oldtimers participated at the commemoration ceremony in Petrašiūnai on their own initiative. Some of them were children when the mass murders took place and became eye-witnesses to a horror which even now has not faded in their minds. Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Gercas Žakas thanked everyone in the name of the Kaunas Jewish Community who safeguards the truth of history and witnesses to the truth, and he thanked the Kaunas city maintenance department for taking care of the sites visited.