On December 25, 1943, 64 prisoners at the Ninth Fort in Kaunas pulled off a daring escape. The Jews and Soviet POWs were the crew selected by the Nazis to exhume and burn corpses.

The Ninth Fort Museum in Kaunas has set up a special exhibit to mark the 80th anniversary of the escape featuring the testimonies of survivors.

Ya’arit Glezer’s father Pinia Krakinovski was one of the escapees and she came from Israel to speak at the opening of the new exhibition. Yakov Faitelson also spoke through an audio recording–his father Aleks was one of the escapees–as did Medel Deich’s son Grisha Deich. Israeli ambassador to Lithuania Hadas Wittenberg-Silverstein attended the event and spoke to the audience about the importance of history in the context of current events.

The Ninth Fort was where the majority of Jews from Kaunas and surrounding areas were murdered by Lithuanian Nazis during the Holocaust.

Photo: Israeli ambassador to Lithuania Hadas Wittenberg-Silverstein, photo by Marina Macrì.

Photo: Ya’arit Glezer, photo by Marina Macrì.