Hidden history of the Kovno ghetto

In summer 1941, special killing squads accompanied the German army's sweep through the Baltic states, murdering tens of thousands of Jews. In Kovno, Lithuania, however, four fifths of the city's 37,000 Jews were spared this deadly assault and instead herded into a ghetto in the poor suburb of Vilijampole. For three years they faced mass murders and endured forced labour and deportations. It seems beyond question that the Nazi regime planned to exterminate them and all traces of their ordeal. But the Jews of Kovno refused to let their suffering be forgotten. With photographs, paintings, drawings, letters and reports, they meticulously recorded their plight and hid these artefacts and documents from their oppressors. This text collects the Kovno materials together, drawing them from individuals and archives in Lithuania, Israel and the United States.