A short companion to “What Lithuania Means When It Says ‘Vanished,’ ‘Lost,’ or ‘Perished’”

Full article: https://grantgochin.substack.com/p/what-lithuania-means-when-it-says

Survivors of the Seventh Fort in Kaunas said the Jews imprisoned there felt like herrings in a barrel.

The phrase was not metaphor enough. Jewish men were forced to lie motionless on open ground under the sky. Jewish women were forced into the fort’s dark casemates — vaulted chambers built into the structure of a military fort, often dark, enclosed, and semi-underground. There was alcohol for the Lithuanian guards. They partied, drank and celebrated.

Jewish men who wore glasses were called out under the pretext of being registered for lighter work, because doctors, lawyers, and engineers were supposedly needed by the Lithuanians. The Jewish men did not return. They were murdered on the other side of the wall.

Testimony records that thirty to forty Jewish women brought into the casemates were raped and murdered by drunken Lithuanian guards.

Records of interrogations of TDA members describe Jews brought to the pits in groups and shot ten at a time. One day, 463 were shot. The next day, 2,514 people were brought to one huge pit. Germans brought machine guns. Germans and Lithuanians........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)