Following a meeting between the Israeli ambassador and the mayor and city council of Kaunas in early March, on the first Friday in April the Kaunas deputy mayors, municipal staff and the chairman of the Kaunas Jewish Community visited the Jewish cemetery in the Slobodka neighborhood [Vilijampolė] and the mass grave at the Seventh Fort. During this meeting in the field, it was resolved that the municipal body Kapinių priežiūra [Cemetery Maintenance] would set up an information stand at the entrance to the Slobodka cemetery and would post signs forbidding cars, smoking, walking dogs and lighting fires there.

Another resolution was adopted for the Seventh Fort mass murder site: the city maintenance department (represented by Jolanta Miliauskienė) is to clean up the site (clean flagstones and collect garbage) around the monument to the Jews murdered there. The environmental department (represented by Radeta Savickienė) is to cut down trees and bushes according to a request drafted by cultural heritage department head Saulius Rimas which includes a photograph showing what is to be cut down and with the consent of Gercas Žakas, chairman of the Kaunas Jewish Community.

The cultural heritage department (represented by Saulius Rimas and Zenonas Girčys) will set up a new commemorative monument/sign at the mass murder site at the Seventh Fort in the third and fourth quarter of this year. A project will be drafted and implemented which is to include:

• erection of a commemorative monument/sign;
• clean-up of the surrounding area and creation of comfortable access to the statue;
• setting up lighting for the area.

The statue to the Jews murdered currently standing at the Seventh Forth will remain where it is.

Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Gercas Žakas and cultural heritage department head Saulius Rimas also discussed future restoration of the statue at the Radvilėnai cemetery commemorating the first victims of the Holocaust.

Rimas told Žakas a memorial plaque would be erected this year to commemorate Jewish soldiers who died in battles for Lithuanian independence. The plaque is planned for A. Mapu street No. 18 with the inscription: “The Union of Jewish Soldiers Who Participated in the Liberation of Lithuanian Independence operated in this building from 1937 to 1940.”