Every year on the last Sunday in October members of the Kaunas Jewish Community and others gather to remember the victims of the so-called Great Action at the Ninth Fort in Kaunas. The largest mass murder operation to kill Jews in the Kaunas ghetto was carried out from October 28 into October 29 in 1941. Approximately ten thousand people were murdered during the single operation, including about 4,300 children.

Ninth Fort Museum director Jūratė Zakaitė spoke first at the ceremony, followed by Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Gercas Žakas. Žakas as well as Kaunas deputy mayor Vasiliy Popov, deputy Israeli ambassador to Lithuania Yehuda Gidron and Russian embassy attaché Svetlana Lepayeva spoke about how we must never forget the atrocities committed and must talk about the subject with young people, including humanity’s apparent inability to learn from its mistakes and parallels with racist crimes today. Kaunas Jewish Community member Julijana Zarchi, a Holocaust survivor and Soviet deportee, shared her experiences and insights.

A musical composition by students from the Tolerance Center at Veršva High School was performed at the ceremony and the actress Kristina Kazakevičiūtė, whose father rescued Jews, read a poem. Kaddish was said at the end of the ceremony.