The annual commemoration of the Jewish victims tortured and murdered at the Lietūkis garage in Kaunas took place last week at the site on Miško street with kaddish performed for the dead as well at the Jewish cemeteries in the Slobodka and Žaliakalnis neighborhoods.

The Lietūkis garage massacre became one of the most notorious episodes in the Holocaust in Lithuania. Jewish men were rounded up at random and brought to the automobile service station were they were attacked with picks, crowbars and shovels, and water houses were stuffed down their throats and turned on till their stomachs burst. Around 68 Jews were killed there after enduring hours of torture.

According to German statistics from 3,500 to 4,000 Jews were murdered in Kaunas between June 24 and June 30, 1941, but the peculiarity of the Lietūkis garage atrocities was that they were committed by local Lithuanians rather than Nazis. German soldiers appeared only as spectators and didn’t intervene. The names of most victims and perpetrators remain unknown. The German Wehrmacht photographer who was there recalled:

“After everyone was killed, the young man put the crowbar down, grabbed an accordion and climbed on top of a pile of dead bodies. He played the Lithuanian national anthem on the mountain of corpses. The behavior of the spectators, including women and children, was incredible: they cheered and clapped at each blow of the crowbar, and when the executioner began playing the national anthem, they joined in.”

The Kaunas Jewish Community thanks everyone who participated in the commemorations despite the rain, including Community members and friends, the musicians Ilana Kri and Garry Libson, deputy Kaunas mayor Mantas Jurgutis, deputy director of the city’s culture department Nomeda Prevelienė and Lithuanian MP Andrius Kupčinskas.